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Re: mode lines



    Date: 26 January 1981 09:55-EST
    From: George J. Carrette <GJC>
    Re:   mode lines

    ... I just think the present implementation is un-necessarily crufty,
    really a relic from ITS Emacs, and one which would take extra amounts of 
    code to implement in maclisp, finally arriving and an inferior and weak
    feature ...

I heartily agree. This really hits the mark. The file property list in its
present form is indeed a hard thing to find and decipher. I had formerly not
given much thought to the situation, but indeed, there is no reason that it
could not be given Lisp-readable syntax. In the worst case, you might have
to write something of the form...

	(FILE-PLIST Mode Lisp Package Macsyma  ...)	; -*- Lisp -*-

where the -*- Lisp -*- was just for Emacs' sake and was redundant with info
in the file property list. Indeed, suppose Zwei wanted some new mode like 
"Mode LispMLisp" which Emacs didn't support [yet], you might actually want
to be specifying the two things independently anyway...

    I have nothing against putting 
    (-*- Mode Lisp Package Macsyma Syntax Old Base 8 -*-) ...
    The above is easier to parse, for human or computer, than
    ;;; -*- Mode: Lisp; Package Macsyma; Base 8 -*-
    which looks more like the syntax of Algol... What could be the objection
    to supporting a sharp-sign feature which controlled read syntax? e.g.
    #S(Mode Lisp Package Macsyma Syntax Old Base 8)

Actually, one might oppose the use of #S on the grounds that doing

    #S(Mode Lisp Package Foo Sharpsign Disabled)
    (LOAD "...")

where "..." has a #S(...) at the top. If you take the attitude that every
file needs to be read under default settings, then you have a problem that
if the guy sets syntax of chars manually in a file (eg, init file), the
effects don't stick after the load.

An intermediate suggestion between GJC's and LispM's current one, would
please me. Eg, if a file starts with 

;;; -*-( ZweiMode Lisp Package Foo ...)-*-

then the form after the "Modes:" would be in Plist form, fit for reading
with lisp read. This would make parsing it infinitely easier. Further,
for the sake of varying the syntax table, I suggest that people be strongly
encouraged to put in it only symbols with alphabetic printnames, and only
vanilla lists. No dotted pairs or funny syntaxes. This will insulate people
 from the backslash/slash controversy, strange macro characters, lisps that
can't read tokens like .FOO., etc.  The list be read in base 10 (maybe this
is already done on LispM, I dunno) so that people can do
-*-( ... Ibase 10 )-*- or -*-( ... Ibase 8 )-*- as appropriate. You might
even want to bind the syntax table explicitly so that alpha chars were 
read as symbols, digits as digits or extended alphabetics, and all else 
(eg, space, tab, and even ";") as whitespace. This lets you do

;;; -*-( ZweiMode Lisp
;;;      Package  Foo  )-*-

and still win because the ";;;" would be whitespace... And lisps that didn't
know about the convention wouldn't be confused by such an extended syntax.

I really think we ought to take George's comments very seriously. I have yet
to see elegant code to hack the file property-list. Many different languages
have to understand these things, and the current algolish syntax has really
been painful for me to interpret [correctly] from both Maclisp and Teco...

-kmp