CoCoA » CoCoA-5

One possible solution is to forcibly load the .abbrev_defs file before loading cocoa5 mode. I believe thsi can be done with the following lines, perhaps at the start of the .emacs file:

;; forcibly read abbrev-file *before* reading CoCoA mode
(if (file-exists-p abbrev-file-name)
    (quietly-read-abbrev-file))

A quick test suggests that this does not work, or at least not as I would like (e.g. Lambda is still recognized as a keyword even though my current cocoa5.el does not declare it).

The file .abbrev_defs may contain abbrevs from other modes so we cannot simply delete it (e.g. if it is older than cocoa5.el). Probably the correct way to update it is to read it, overwrite the "old" cocoa5-abbrev-table and then save all abbrevs in .abbrev_defs. It seems a bit wasteful to do this every time.

I also note that even if .abbrev_defs is newer than cocoa5.el that gives no guarantee that cocoa5-abbrev-table is up-to-date, as some other abbrev table may have been updated after cocoa5-abbrev-table was saved.

What to do? Since cocoa5.el redefines the abbrev table whenever it is loaded, the simplest would simply be to say not to save cocoa5-abbrev-table; can this be done? Perhaps abbrev tables are not the right way to implement this?

I noticed the problem because emacs kept on converting not into Not which is decidedly counter-productive now that not is no longer a keyword (and that the function is called not).

One post I read suggested that cocoa5-abbrev-table should be cocoa5-mode-abbrev-table. Investigate and decide.

John Abbott wrote:

One post I read suggested that cocoa5-abbrev-table should be cocoa5-mode-abbrev-table. Investigate and decide.

yes, I agree.
I see that I have many things in my "~/abbrev_defs" file (I didn't even know it existed, gosh), and they are all called "blah-mode-abbrev-table"

John Abbott wrote:

Somehow we'll have to tell those who have created .abbrev_defs to remove it (or edit it to remove the cocoa5-abbrev-table).

should not be needed since we change the name into cocoa5-mode-..

[ note 20140319 JAA: but the "junk" will remain in their .abbrev_defs file]

It does seem odd that you cannot simply say "don't save this abbrev table"...

Maybe you can, but some emacs-geek user might want to save his own additions to the cocoa5 table. So we cannot protect every user. So the safest option for both experts and non-experts is to prevent automatic saving of the abbrev file.