7.4 Zmacs Query

[Scott McKay <SWM%sapsucker.scrc.symbolics.com@RELAY.CS.NET>]

    Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 1:41:22 EDT
    From: ncramer@BBN.COM (Nichael Cramer)

    Two questions about Zmacs in 7.4:

    1] There seems to be a new command (well, new to me anyway) with the
    interesting name COM-RELEASE-LOCKS.  Documentation says only:

      "Release all of the node locks in the current buffer.
       With a numeric argument, releases all of the node locks in all of 
       the buffers."

    Doesn't seem to be a corrsponding COM-LOCK-LOCKS.

    Any idea what this does?  What is a node lock?  (I notice that the code
    follows COM-SET-READ-ONLY; are they related?  Is this a generalization of
    Read-Only Buffers?  Am I warm? 

No.

In the face of multiple Zmacs processes, it is necessary to interlock
operations.  For instance, if one editor is compiling a buffer, you are
not allowed to modify things out from under it by using another editor.
This interlocking is done at the granularity of a single node (which is
usually the same as a section).  1com-release-locks0 releases all such
locks.  Very occasionally, this is useful because, say, warm booting did
not reset enough state.  Otherwise, use it at your own peril.

    2] I notice in 7.4 when the Mode-Lock key is down (which is a *lot* easier
    to do on the NewAge keyboards) that my Zmacs acts differently sometimes
    (e.g. it sometimes seems to drop modifier keys).

I've never seen anything like this.

    Any ideas.

    3] (So I can't count) Is this key actually supposed to be used for something?

Any program can use it.

The debugger supplies a form 1dbg:when-mode-lock0 which I use all the time
when debugging commonly used system code.