RE: Fontless Info

[Drew Adams]

> This happens because font-lock-mode gets turned off in Info buffers.
> Type "M-x font-lock-mode RET", and all the niceties are back.  (You
> could guess that this is the problem if you'd go to the un-decorated
> text and type "M-x describe-text-properties RET" there.)

The same thing is true for the symptoms of bug #13751:
font locking gets turned off in Emacs Lisp buffers if you do 
 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
and in Dired buffers if you use Dired+.

In all such cases, `M-x font-lock-mode' turns it back on, but it should never
have been turned off.

> The reason seems to be the changes in revision 111794: their result is
> that, after Info mode is turned on and turns on font-lock, font-lock
> is turned off again by something called
> global-font-lock-mode-check-buffers.

But the definition of `global-font-lock-mode-check-buffers' has not changed
since before this regression was introduced, AFAICT.  Nothing in its file,
font-core.el, was changed.

It is the definition of `define-globalized-minor-mode' that was changed,
radically it seems.

`C-h f global-font-lock-mode-check-buffers' shows no doc string but tells us it
is a compiled function in `font-core.el'.  There is however no explicit
definition of it in that file.  It is created by `define-globalized-minor-mode'.


Our help system sends the user on a wild goose chase here.  S?he has no hope of
reorientation and finding a way out of the swamp.  You can't get there from
here.

Emacs seems to be little-by-little losing its character of being
self-documenting, by the use more and more of macros that generate functions
without doc.  And by the use more and more of `defstruct' without providing doc
for accessor etc. functions.  Dommage.

At the very least (and no, it would by no means be a substitute for documenting
the resulting objects themselves), the doc for `define-globalized-minor-mode'
should mention the objects that it creates, such as function
`MODE-check-buffers'.

> Since the voodoo of easy-mmode is beyond me, I'll let others fix this.

Hear, hear.  "Easy", indeed.  Easy for those defining things, perhaps.  Hard on
Emacs users.  Dommage.