bug#6202: Async shell command, switching mode, and sleep-for

[Arni Magnusson]

I maintain a major mode, where some functions have broken between Emacs 
23.1 and 23.2, and I believe the current Emacs behavior could be described 
as a bug.

What I want to do is to run a shell command asynchronously (so I can watch 
the output scroll by in a secondary window while continuing my work), but 
the output should not be syntax-highlighted. By default, the output is 
shown in `shell-mode', where negative numbers are highlighted in 
`font-lock-comment-face',

  123 -456 789

but I want these three numbers to be shown in the `default' face.

My approach is to switch the secondary window to `fundamental-mode' to 
ensure that nothing is syntax-highlighted. The following example uses the 
shell command "set", because it produces some output Linux and Windows, 
although it does not demonstrate negative numbers:

(defun foo ()
  (interactive)
  (shell-command "set &")
  (select-window (get-buffer-window "*Async Shell Command*"))
  ;; (sleep-for 3)
  (fundamental-mode)
  (other-window 1))

My window and buffer control is slightly more sophisticated, but the 
function above focuses on the problem. This function works in Emacs 23.1, 
but in Emacs 23.2 the secondary window is empty, and the shell command 
output is not found in any buffer. The same problem occurs when switching 
to some other mode than `fundamental-mode'. The same problem also occurs 
when replacing the ampersand `shell-command' with the new 
`async-shell-command'.

While debugging the problem, I found that the function does work in Emacs 
23.2 if `sleep-for' is called before switching to `fundamental-mode', so 
the foo function above can be "fixed" by uncommenting that line. Sleeping 
for 0.001 seconds is not enough, though.

I also stumbled upon a separate issue, where the above function (after 
uncommenting the `sleep-for' line) makes Emacs dutifully freeze for 3 
seconds in Linux, but not in Windows. This bug/limitation is not mentioned 
on the help page for `sleep-for'.

Thanks in advance for looking at these issues,

Arni

P.S. It would of course be nice if the `*-shell-command' functions would 
have an optional argument to specify a mode other than the currently 
hardwired `shell-mode'.