Re: magic-mode-alist has too high a priority

[Richard Stallman]

    So I suggest something like: magic-mode-alist doesn't take precedence over
    auto-mode-alist.  Instead, we look them up both, and if there's a conflict,
    we lookup a new var `mode-precedence-alist' to see if the user prefers one
    over the other.  If that doesn't resolve the conflict, check
    `derived-mode-p'.  If the conflict is still not resolved, prompt the user.

If this really works, it would be a great solution.
Could you find the messages where we discussed this issue
before installing magic-mode-alist, and see the specific
cases that were being considered?  Then you could see
if this solution would do the right thing in those cases.

Jason Rumney wrote:

    Rather than introduce yet another user variable for setting the mode 
    automagically, why don't we get rid of magic-mode-alist and build that 
    functionality into auto-mode-alist instead.

People tend to add new elements to the front of auto-mode-alist,
because that is the easiest thing to do.  If we were to do this,
adding a new element to the front would tend to override
magic-mode-alist, and that isn't usually the right thing,