Re: Bugs caused by recent use of define-derived-mode

[Richard Stallman]

    I think that would work, as long as modes only created their own
    abbrev-table when the mode is clearly `unique enough' (compared to the
    mode it's derived from) that most users would want to put abbrevs in the
    derived-mode's table.

I think that is almost never.  Some people would like to have a
separate abbrev table for Mail mode, and it would be ok to have one if
that were painless for everyone else, but I think most users would
rather share abbrevs between Mail mode and Text mode.

And in such cases, two separate abbrev tables with no inheritance
would be fine.