Re: nxml-mode: Derive from prog-mode instead of text-mode

[Philipp Stephani]

Jostein Kjønigsen <address@hidden> schrieb am Do., 11. Mai 2017 um 09:30 Uhr:

On Wed, May 10, 2017, at 08:59 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

These seem all to stem from your personal setup, not from inherent

features of prog-mode that are absent from text-mode.  In fact,

prog-mode is exceedingly minimal: it only sets 3 variables, none of

them related to what you describe.

Obviously.

But prog-mode represents a API, a endpoint, for end-users and developers to wire up anything and any customization they deem programming-related.

With prog-mode API-wise being a "success", shouldn't Emacs core honour that API by using it where appropriate? That would IMO be the consistent thing to do.

prog-mode is more of an implementation detail than an API. See e.g. the discussion in http://cc-mode-help.narkive.com/KcrSl9QI/standalone-cc-mode-doesn-t-run-prog-mode-hook: "The fact that many programming lanuguage modes are derived from prog-mode is an internal implementation detail, not a user level feature, and users taking advantage of such things are liable to get into trouble."

I think it also represents a false dichotomy: computer languages can't be arbitrarily classified in "programming" and "text"; it's rather a continuum. If HTML is a "programming language", why not reStructuredText or Markdown? All three are markup languages originally intended for documents, with well-defined grammars. If Markdown is also a "programming language", why not plain text files that contain similar ad-hoc markup?