Re: [Bug-AUCTeX] 2013-12-18; Broken comment padding

[Tassilo Horn]

Derrik Petrin <address@hidden> writes:

Hi Derrik,

>     ispell-add-per-file-word-list: Wrong type argument: sequencep, 1

Hm, that's actually an emacs bug.  `comment-padding' is documented to be
either a string or an integer, so `ispell-add-per-file-word-list' should
be able to handle both cases.

> My recommendation?  Run 'TeX-comment-padding-string' during
> initialization!

That won't help.  `TeX-comment-padding-string' only returns a string
representation of `comment-padding' without changing its value.

So AUCTeX could initialize `comment-padding' to " " directly, but
there's already a comment there that it's initialized to an integer
because of compatibility reasons with older emacsen, whatever "old"
means here.

Here's an even more minimal recipe for testing if your emacs has this
bug:

  (progn
    (setq comment-padding 1)
    (ispell-add-per-file-word-list "fofofo"))

That DTRT with emacs 23.4 and the current Emacs 24 bzr trunk, but it
errors with emacs 24.3.  I currently have no other versions for testing,
though.

So it looks like the problem is only there with 24.3.  I assume that
people running 24.3 will quickly update to 24.4 where the bug is fixed
when it's released.  So I won't do anything about it, because that would
break compatibility with older emacsen whose users are more likely not
to update to a current emacs release.

As a workaround, you could add something like this to your ~/.emacs:

  ;; work around an emacs 24.3 ispell bug
  (add-hook 'TeX-mode-hook (lambda ()
                             (setq-local comment-padding " ")))

Anyway, thanks for the perfectly written report!  It'll at least serve
as documentation for those running 24.3 and suffering the same problem.

Bye,
Tassilo