Subject: Re: bug#22564: Fundamental mode isn't fundamental enough.

From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 May 2022 19:47:41 -0400

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  > The difficulty is that the hook and the characters vary significantly
  > from major mode to major mode.  The latter one, for example, can in
  > some modes include characters that are very unintuitive, like ':'.

That is true -- I did not speak clearly.  Of course, when a major mode
customizes this, it's the major mode's responsibility to document
how it sets up such indentation.

But what does Electric Indent mode it do in modes that DON'T customize it?
For instance, what does it do in Fundamental mode?  It doesn't say.
I as a user don't know anywhere to look for this.

  > Why is that important?  Fundamental mode is not supposed to be used
  > frequently by Emacs users, so why single out that mode, and why
  > specifically for this minor mode?

Because Fundamental mode is the default for a file with no special
name or contents to specify another major mode.
And because that minor mode is enabled by default.

So a user who visits the file foo.bar gets behavior
which apparently is not documented anywhere.
Not in the doc string of fundamental-mode,
and not in the doc string of electric-indent-mode.
So where should it be?

  > > The doc string also fails to say what, concretely, reindenting does, or even
  > > what controls what reindenting does.  So it needs a lot of improvement.

How about adding, "Typically the major mode controls what reindenting does."?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)