Info Catalog elisp: Derived Modes elisp: Major Modes elisp: Mode Hooks

elisp: Basic Major Modes

 
 22.2.5 Basic Major Modes
 ------------------------
 
 Apart from Fundamental mode, there are three major modes that other
 major modes commonly derive from: Text mode, Prog mode, and Special
 mode.  While Text mode is useful in its own right (e.g., for editing
 files ending in ‘.txt’), Prog mode and Special mode exist mainly to let
 other modes derive from them.
 
    As far as possible, new major modes should be derived, either
 directly or indirectly, from one of these three modes.  One reason is
 that this allows users to customize a single mode hook (e.g.,
 ‘prog-mode-hook’) for an entire family of relevant modes (e.g., all
 programming language modes).
 
  -- Command: text-mode
      Text mode is a major mode for editing human languages.  It defines
      the ‘"’ and ‘\’ characters as having punctuation syntax (
      Syntax Class Table), and binds ‘M-<TAB>’ to
      ‘ispell-complete-word’ ((emacs)Spelling).
 
      An example of a major mode derived from Text mode is HTML mode.
      SGML and HTML Modes (emacs)HTML Mode.
 
  -- Command: prog-mode
      Prog mode is a basic major mode for buffers containing programming
      language source code.  Most of the programming language major modes
      built into Emacs are derived from it.
 
      via Parsing::) and ‘bidi-paragraph-direction’ to ‘left-to-right’
      (Bidirectional Display).
 
  -- Command: special-mode
      Special mode is a basic major mode for buffers containing text that
      is produced specially by Emacs, rather than directly from a file.
      Major modes derived from Special mode are given a ‘mode-class’
      property of ‘special’ (Major Mode Conventions).
 
      Special mode sets the buffer to read-only.  Its keymap defines
      several common bindings, including ‘q’ for ‘quit-window’ and ‘g’
      for ‘revert-buffer’ (Reverting).
 
      An example of a major mode derived from Special mode is Buffer Menu
      mode, which is used by the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer.  Listing
      Existing Buffers (emacs)List Buffers.
 
    In addition, modes for buffers of tabulated data can inherit from
 Tabulated List mode, which is in turn derived from Special mode.  
 Tabulated List Mode.
 

Info Catalog elisp: Derived Modes elisp: Major Modes elisp: Mode Hooks