Re: Heuristics for: is a major-mode a "programming language" mode?

[Xah Lee]

On Sep 15, 8:08 am, Stefan Monnier <monn...@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> >> So there must be some code which decides "which type" is the given
> >> major mode.  I would prefer the bulk of the decision to be made
> >> programmatically, THEN let the user override if the auto-choice was
> >> wrong.  Anyone with ideas how to do this?
>
> BTW, it occurred to me that maybe checking indent-line-function is
> a good way to figure out whether the current mode is a programming mode.
>
> > there are 2 other thoughts similar to this... one is a desire to have
> > a formatting command that works for any lang. e.g. you press a button,
> > and the curren block, or region, or buffer, gets formatted, in any
> > lang, to a user set preference. No longer the pains to align code or
> > press tabs, per line. (there are tools for this in different lang...
> > usually called something-lint.)
>
> In theory we already have 2 commands to do that:
> - indent-region (C-M-\): works well in practice, but limited to
>   re-indenting; i.e. it won't add/remove newlines.
> - fill-region: in practice doesn't work at all.  In some major modes
>   fill-paragraph will do what you want (or a variant of what you want,
>   depending on your particular needs), but fill-region lacks hooks right
>   now, so even the most careful major-mode writer won't be able to make
>   it do the right thing.  There's a lot of room for improvement here.

nice info. Yeah i use them... experience just as you described.

> > ... also, it's a fantasy of mine for C-h f to work in any lang. If
> > info file doc for the lang doesn't exist, just send user to web
> > browser of the lang's doc on that func.
>
> The "info doc" part already exists: it's bound to C-h S.
> It should be easy to make it able to use browse-url instead of Info.

haven't used this before. When i tried to do that in perl or python
mode, the mini-buffer seems to try to search the info doc but couldn't
find it....

am wondering to what extent it is currently being used in practice.
Does anyone reading here use this daily?

 Xah