comparison man/major.texi @ 38461:23f63206a867

Proofreading fixes from Chris Green <[e-mail]>.

38460:6bee7ffac2cd

addition, the commands which handle comments use the mode to determine
how comments are to be delimited.  Many major modes redefine the
syntactical properties of characters appearing in the buffer.
@xref{Syntax}.

  The major modes fall into three major groups.  Lisp mode (which has
several variants), C mode, Fortran mode and others are for specific
programming languages.  Text mode, Nroff mode, SGML mode, @TeX{} mode
and Outline mode are for normal text, plain or marked up.  The remaining
major modes are not intended for use on users' files; they are used in
buffers created for specific purposes by Emacs, such as Dired mode for
buffers made by Dired (@pxref{Dired}), Mail mode for buffers made by
@kbd{C-x m} (@pxref{Sending Mail}), and Shell mode for buffers used for
communicating with an inferior shell process (@pxref{Interactive
Shell}).

  Most programming-language major modes specify that only blank lines
separate paragraphs.  This is to make the paragraph commands useful.
(@xref{Paragraphs}.)  They also cause Auto Fill mode to use the
definition of @key{TAB} to indent the new lines it creates.  This is

@noindent
For example, one element normally found in the list has the form
@code{(@t{"\\.c\\'"} . c-mode)}, and it is responsible for selecting C
mode for files whose names end in @file{.c}.  (Note that @samp{\\} is
needed in Lisp syntax to include a @samp{\} in the string, which is
needed to suppress the special meaning of @samp{.} in regexps.)  If the
element has the form @code{(@var{regexp} @var{mode-function}
@var{flag})} and @var{flag} is non-@code{nil}, then after calling
@var{mode-function}, the suffix that matched @var{regexp} is discarded
and the list is searched again for another match.

;-*-Lisp-*-
@end example

@noindent
tells Emacs to use Lisp mode.  Such an explicit specification overrides
any defaulting based on the file name.  Note how the semicolon is used
to make Lisp treat this line as a comment.

  Another format of mode specification is

@example

@findex normal-mode
  If you change the major mode of a buffer, you can go back to the major
mode Emacs would choose automatically: use the command @kbd{M-x
normal-mode} to do this.  This is the same function that
@code{find-file} calls to choose the major mode.  It also processes
the file's local variables list if any.

@vindex change-major-mode-with-file-name
  The commands @kbd{C-x C-w} and @code{set-visited-file-name} change to
a new major mode if the new file name implies a mode (@pxref{Saving}).
However, this does not happen if the buffer contents specify a major

38461:23f63206a867

addition, the commands which handle comments use the mode to determine
how comments are to be delimited.  Many major modes redefine the
syntactical properties of characters appearing in the buffer.
@xref{Syntax}.

  The major modes fall into three major groups.  The first group
contains Lisp mode (which has several variants), C mode, Fortran mode
and others.  These modes are for specific programming languages.  The
second group contains Text mode, Nroff mode, SGML mode, @TeX{} mode
and Outline mode.  These modes are for normal text, plain or marked
up.  The remaining major modes are not intended for use on users'
files; they are used in buffers created for specific purposes by
Emacs, such as Dired mode for buffers made by Dired (@pxref{Dired}),
Mail mode for buffers made by @kbd{C-x m} (@pxref{Sending Mail}), and
Shell mode for buffers used for communicating with an inferior shell
process (@pxref{Interactive Shell}).

  Most programming-language major modes specify that only blank lines
separate paragraphs.  This is to make the paragraph commands useful.
(@xref{Paragraphs}.)  They also cause Auto Fill mode to use the
definition of @key{TAB} to indent the new lines it creates.  This is

@noindent
For example, one element normally found in the list has the form
@code{(@t{"\\.c\\'"} . c-mode)}, and it is responsible for selecting C
mode for files whose names end in @file{.c}.  (Note that @samp{\\} is
needed in Lisp syntax to include a @samp{\} in the string, which must
be used to suppress the special meaning of @samp{.} in regexps.)  If the
element has the form @code{(@var{regexp} @var{mode-function}
@var{flag})} and @var{flag} is non-@code{nil}, then after calling
@var{mode-function}, the suffix that matched @var{regexp} is discarded
and the list is searched again for another match.

;-*-Lisp-*-
@end example

@noindent
tells Emacs to use Lisp mode.  Such an explicit specification overrides
any defaults based on the file name.  Note how the semicolon is used
to make Lisp treat this line as a comment.

  Another format of mode specification is

@example

@findex normal-mode
  If you change the major mode of a buffer, you can go back to the major
mode Emacs would choose automatically: use the command @kbd{M-x
normal-mode} to do this.  This is the same function that
@code{find-file} calls to choose the major mode.  It also processes
the file's local variables list (if any).

@vindex change-major-mode-with-file-name
  The commands @kbd{C-x C-w} and @code{set-visited-file-name} change to
a new major mode if the new file name implies a mode (@pxref{Saving}).
However, this does not happen if the buffer contents specify a major