Re: File type misclassification

[David Kastrup]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>>>>> opening the following file in emacs-snapshot from Ubuntu Edgy
>>>>> (sorry, I don't have a fresher CVS Emacs at work) will throw the
>>>>> buffer into PostScript mode, presumably because it starts with
>>>>> "%!".  This seems rather like overkill.
>
> Same old problem where the file's content and the file's extension do not
> agree on what the file actually contains.  And once again, the file
> extension is the better predictor whereas Emacs uses magic-mode-alist in
> preference to auto-mode-alist.
>
>> Sigh.  Seems like a magic string for the "TeXshop" TeX editor.  But I
>> think just ruling out [VT] is still asking for trouble.
>
> I think a bug report to the TeXshop is in order.

Uh, you people are joking, right?  It is not a bug in TeXshop if
Emacs' magic-mode-alist goes out of control and calls everything
"PostScript".

>>> 3) Remove it from magic-mode-alist.
>> Also an option in my book.
>
> Agreed, a very good option I'd say.  Especially since editing
> postscript is rather uncommon.

Since I don't seem too good at explaining what appears as common sense
to me, I'll fix the magic expression myself to "#!PS".  That's still a
less drastic change than removing it altogether, and most people seem
to agree that the latter option would be quite feasible.

This won't catch "#!\n" which seems to be used in some hand-crafted PS
files, but then the handcrafted files (vasarely.ps, for example)
should be discernible by file extension, and one would have to
actually use some generic line-ending recognizer instead of "\n",
anyway, since PostScript has no fixed line-ending convention.

If others find they want even the "#!PS" gone (which I don't really
see as a problem), or add some form of "#!lineend", feel free to
discuss and fix.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum