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From: "Barry A. Warsaw" <bwarsaw@CNRI.Reston.VA.US>
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To: Martin Buchholz <mrb@eng.sun.com>
Cc: XEmacs Beta Test <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>
Subject: Re: (modify-syntax-entry ?_ "w")
References: <199705181327.GAA09948@xemacs.eng.sun.com>
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>>>>> "MB" == Martin Buchholz <mrb@Eng.Sun.COM> writes:

    MB> This is related to the question of whether editing modes
    MB> should bind delete/backspace.  I feel it's evil for almost all
    MB> modes to change the syntax of ?_ to "w", since it's not
    MB> consistent with other modes.

Well, you know I'm going to agree with you, because you've read this
comment in cc-mode.el:

(defun c-populate-syntax-table (table)
  ;; Populate the syntax TABLE
  ;; DO NOT TRY TO SET _ (UNDERSCORE) TO WORD CLASS!
  (modify-syntax-entry ?_  "_"     table)
  ...)

:-) My opinion is that the syntax table is mine to touch (wearing my
language mode designers hat), not yours (wearing your user hat).  It's
there so I can make sure the language parsing routines do the right
thing.  It isn't there to support the U/I.  Although it is in practice
mostly harmless for a user to make this change, I definitely won't
guarantee that everything will continue to work.

The real reason users want to make this change is, as I think Kyle
says, many of them really want identifier (sexp?) centric commands
where they now have word centric commands.  The sexp centric commands
are bound, and probably would make 90% of the _-rebinders happy, but
they aren't in the most convenient places.

-Barry

