Re: c-submode-indicators at wrong place in minor-mode-alist

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Nick!

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Nick Roberts wrote:

> > >  I have two suggestions:

> > >  1) Clicking mouse-2 on the characters after "C" on the mode-line
> > >  describes c-submode-indicators.  It would be helpful if this
> > >  variable was documented to explain the meaning of its value.

> > >  2) The sub-menus of the "Toggle..." menu-item should be radio
> > >  buttons so the user can see their current value.

> > >Also the menu item "Syntactic indentation" is permanently disabled
> > >and can't be toggled.

> > As a matter of interest, are any of these mousey things coupled with
> > a particular window manager or toolkit or the like?  (Personally, I
> > develop with Emacs on a tty.)

>If you develop on a tty, how do you know if GUI related features work?

Good point.  I've just been having a look at C Mode in X, and there seem
to be one or two things there needing sorted out.

>The patch below seems to fix it for me.  I think I have associated each
>function with the right variable but these aren't really minor modes in
>the normal sense (if they were the functions and variables would have
>the same name).

OK.  Do you have any feel for how portable the fix is (In Emacs 20.n,
21.n, XEmacs 21.4.n)?

> > >For some reason none of the defvars in cc-langs.el seem to have doc
> > >strings.

> > Some do - `c-identifier-syntax-table', for example.

>OK, but it seems particularly important that c-submode-indicators has one
>if the user is to understand the mode line.

Another good point!  The c-submode-indicators might be getting merged
with the major-mode string, so this needs thinking about.

> > >The missing functionality might be due to my setup: CC mode almost
> > >seems to be a dialect of Emacs Lisp with its own virtual world of
> > >macros.

> > That's not unfair.  ;-)  Most of these macros are for smoothing over the
> > differences between (X)Emacs versions (we've only just dropped support
> > for Emacs 19.34), getting a steady compilation environment (so that byte
> > compilation will do the Right Thing regardless of what's loaded in the
> > Emacs Lisp space) or for language variables.

>CC mode seems to have become much more complicated, but that might be
>because its much more powerful.  I don't know, I just find it hard to
>understand.

It is hard to understand.  Partly, it's because C and friends are such a
dreadful languages (to parse, that is ;-), partly because CC Mode handles
seven different languages in a single package.  It "jumped in complexity"
between releases 5.28 and 5.30 (Summer 2003).  It's probably more
accurate to say that the complexity has been concentrated in a few
hot-spots, allowing simplicity to pervade the rest.

>Nick

[ Supplied patch read]

-- 
Alan.