Re: Why is it not possible to use "nil" any more in init files ?

[Stefan Monnier]

> I know that departing from proven approaches for no sensible reason is top
> of the art but is there any kind of other rationale to make the thing not
> backward-compatible?

Of course, there's a reason: All minor modes since Emacs-23 (IIRC)
should turn themselves ON when called with a nil argument, so you don't
need turn-on-FOO-mode and you can just say:

   (add-hook 'bar-mode-hook 'foo-mode)

The better part of this incompatible change is that it silently *fixed*
many people's .emacs since many people already used:

   (add-hook 'bar-mode-hook 'foo-mode)

without realizing that this could actually turn the mode OFF in
some cases.


        Stefan