bug#54993: 28.1; Editing etc/NEWS on master with Emacs 28 signals an error

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> We could add NEWS to auto-mode-alist instead, and that would solve the
> issue cleanly for everyone.  That was one of the original
> alternatives, but somehow it was forgotten now.

My worry with that was that adding etc/NEWS to auto-mode-alist would be
false positives (for other files with that name).  But I guess we could
check that it's actually an Emacs NEWS file before enabling the mode.

But that would mean removing the mode: setting from NEWS itself, because
mode: takes precedence over auto-mode-alist, I think?  (But I may well
be misremembering.)  So then we're back to people editing the file in
Emacs 28 in fundamental-mode.

> Btw, another issue with emacs-news-mode is that it invokes
> outline-minor-mode, which means all the headings-related commands are
> now bound to different keys than they were before.  Wouldn't it be
> better if emacs-news-mode were a minor mode invoked by Outline
> instead?

emacs-news-mode is quite major-modeish, though, so I think that would be
awkward.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no