[emacs-devel] emacs-24.0.92 and backquote

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

In testing emacs-24.0.92, I discovered that some venerable code that
has worked from Fall 1994 through emacs-23.* versions now fails to
load in emacs-24.0.92.  I get this error:

Loading /u/sy/beebe/emacs/ltxmenu.el (source)...
setq: Invalid function: (\` ("LaTeX main menu" ((\,
    internal-x-LaTeX-menu-startup)) ((\, internal-x-LaTeX-menu-accents))
    ((\, internal-x-LaTeX-menu-insertion)) ((\,
    internal-x-LaTeX-menu-begin-end)) ((\,
    internal-x-LaTeX-menu-begin-end-1)) ((\,
    internal-x-LaTeX-menu-begin-end-2)) ((\,
    internal-x-LaTeX-menu-begin-end-3)) ((\,
    internal-x-LaTeX-menu-begin-end-4)) ((\,
    internal-x-LaTeX-menu-checking)) ...))

The code in ltxmenu.el (available at

        http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/emacs/ltxmenu.el

) has this function:

(setq internal-x-LaTeX-menu-of-menus
      (`("LaTeX main menu"              ;this menu title is never displayed
        (, internal-x-LaTeX-menu-startup)
        (, internal-x-LaTeX-menu-accents)
...
        (, internal-x-LaTeX-menu-miscellaneous)
        )))

I dug around in the emacs-24 source code, and in lread.c, found the
function load_warn_old_style_backquotes().  However, I cannot find any
indication in ChangeLog files or the *.texi files that the syntax of
backquote has changed, so I don't know what ``old-style backquotes''
is supposed to mean.

As new versions of emacs have appeared, it has been rare to require
modification of my existing Emacs Lisp code (70K lines or so).

Can any of you offer suggestions as to what is expected here, or have
I possibly exposed a bug in the new emacs-24 code?

Our university's winter term break begins next week, and that is
usually the time that we make newer versions of software and hardware
the default ones, so I would like to get this resolved soon.

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- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
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