Re: AUCTeX and "builtin latex mode" integration

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2022 at 3:58 AM
> From: "Stefan Monnier" <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> To: "Tassilo Horn" <tsdh@gnu.org>
> Cc: "David Kastrup" <dak@gnu.org>, auctex-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: AUCTeX and "builtin latex mode" integration
>
> >>> I wonder why/if it's important that the AUCTeX modes identify as the
> >>> builtin modes, i.e., what would be the issue with having (La)TeX-mode
> >>> major-modes which have no relationship to (la)tex-mode at all plus a
> >>> setup command users would call in their init file in order to modify
> >>> `auto-mode-alist' so that the AUCTeX modes are added?
> >>
> >> It might cause problems for people with `-*- latex -*-` in their
> >> files.  But other than that, it's also an option, indeed.
> >>
> >> Personally, I like the idea that `auto-mode-alist` (and mode cookies)
> >> should describe the type of a file, rather than the specific mode to
> >> use for it, but that's just me
> >
> > Could you elaborate a bit here?  I can't quite follow.
>
> What I mean is that the entries in mode cookies and auto-mode-alist
> (and magic-mode-alist, ...) should not say "use this specific mode" but
> "use the mode which the user chose for files of this specific type".
>
> Emacs doesn't have the corresponding concept, so instead we use
> `latex-mode` resp. `perl-mode` as "the name of the mode to use for LaTeX
> resp. Perl files" and then we rely on hacks based on `defalias` or
> `advice-add` to make that symbol point to the user's favorite mode for
> that file type.
>
> > Anyway: where the actual complaints not more or less like "I want to
> > use the stock tex/latex modes but also with cdlatex which requires the
> > auctex package which then hijacks my editing"?
>
> No (BTW, `cdlatex` doesn't require AUCTeX any more).

There was discussion with Carsten of incorporating the cdlatex
functianality into both built-in tex-mode & latex-mode; and
Auctex.  Could this be made to happen since we're at it.

> > I think that wouldn't be a bad idea anyway (except for compatibility
> > reasons) because nowadays we all agree that merely installing and
> > loading a package should not have side-effects.
>
> Agreed.  Maybe `AUCTeX-mode` should be a global minor mode which causes
> `AUCTeX-minor-mode` to be enabled in the appropriate major modes.