Re: Clojure mode

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: chad <yandros@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2023 16:51:12 -0400
> Cc: bozhidar@batsov.dev, dmitry@gutov.dev, rms@gnu.org, danny@dfreeman.email, 
>       emacs-devel@gnu.org, manuel.uberti@inventati.org
> 
> What I had in mind was something akin to autoload that, rather than providing 
> _any_ clojure mode (in
> this specific example), instead provides the user with a buffer conveying 
> that Clojure support in
> emacs is available, but is not currently bundled directly, and offers the 
> user a short description of
> each of the two packages clojure-mode and clojure-ts-mode, along with buttons 
> to install and activate
> each package. 
> 
> Thus, if a new user started a freshly downloaded emacs, they would find some 
> guidance (rather than,
> for example, "[No match]" from M-x or fundamental-mode from opening 
> test.clj), and we could provide
> some short info backed by the full package description in cases where there 
> was no current
> always-recommend. The message/guidance could be conceptually similar to the 
> disable-command
> machinery.
> 
> I had autoload in mind based on the idea that this guidance code would be 
> supplanted by an actually
> installed package (and, I think, ideally restored if the package was later 
> removed). In other words, I'm
> suggesting adding an optional dispatching step for the paths most likely to 
> invoke a
> not-directly-supported-in-core language.
> 
> Perhaps *eventually* something similar could be done for suggesting say, 
> c-sharp-ts-mode and
> cc-mode for a fresh emacs and "C-x C-f test.cs". I imagine that there are 
> refinements that could be
> useful for someone who wanted to try assembling a small-core emacs, but I'd 
> be surprised if there
> weren't important lessons to learn before that point.
> 
> I hope this description is clearer; please let me know if I missed or forgot 
> anything important.

Thanks, it's more clear now.

However, this is a kind of feature we never had in Emacs, so I think
we should first discuss how to present such suggestions to users, and
also how to keep the database of packages we'd like to suggest
installing in this way.