Re: CC Mode troubles and Emacs 29

[Gregory Heytings]

> Previously, CC Mode fontification was missing some types.  Judge for 
> yourself what is better: missing types, or randomly adding types?

That's the problem.  Clearly you prefer the former (all bug reports in the 
long list that Alan shared were filed by you), and others prefer the 
latter.  There is a tension between fontifying too few identifiers with a 
type face and fontifying too many identifiers with a type face.  And that 
problem cannot have an accurate solution without a parser.  (In fact, even 
a parser is not enough for that job if you want 100% accuracy.)

> > Note that this can easily be fixed with C-u C-x x f C-x x f.
>
> Or re-enabling C Mode.  Both of which are annoying things that weren't 
> necessary in Emacs 28.

Alan did not add a defcustom around that new feature (and rightly so, 
AFAIU), but you can also turn it off with a single short line in your init 
file:

(advice-add #'c-fontify-new-found-type :override #'ignore)

> It worked in Emacs 28, 27, and since before that, because it really is 
> not vital for CC Mode to proactively look for types.

Evidently that's your opinion and preference, and it's not what others 
prefer: they are more annoyed by type identifiers that remain unfontified 
than by occasional fontification of non-type identifiers as types.

> AFAIU tree-sitter has the same problem: it does not understand typedefs 
> previously encountered in a buffer

Yes, as I said above if you want 100% accuracy, you need more than a 
parser, you need a full compiler.

> In the meantime, the so-called ``fontification based on an actual 
> parser'' does not even understand traditional C code.  Last I checked, 
> it also had problems indenting the Motif WM hints structure that people 
> copy everywhere.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by this, or how it is related to 
the problem at hand.