[ESS] File mode specification error

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "StEgl" == Stephen Eglen <S.J.Eglen at damtp.cam.ac.uk>
>>>>>     on Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:10:11 +0000 writes:

    >> Is there any fix or workaround for this yet (beyond using emacs21,
    >> that is)? A lot of people will start encountering this now that the
    >> default emacs on OS X is 22.1.1.

    StEgl> I just had a look; the problem is that the file
    StEgl> noweb-font-lock-mode.el is not being loaded, and that is where the
    StEgl> function noweb-font-lock-mode is.

    StEgl> A work around should be to add
    StEgl> (require 'noweb-font-lock-mode) at the start of your ESS
    StEgl> initialisation.

    StEgl> Alternatively, try:

    StEgl> (setq ess-noweb-use-font-lock t)

    StEgl> before loading ESS.  

Yes, that helps too.
Thanks a lot, Stephen  (and Balaji for reminding us)!

    StEgl> The issue seems to be that the variable takes the value of
    StEgl> 'window-system' by default; with "emacs22 -nw" that variable has te
    StEgl> value nil and yet font locking is still possible, so we need to change
    StEgl> that default... but that's for another day!

well, if it was only changing the default, that *could* easily
happen today.

The real bug is that currently

 1.
     (setq ess-noweb-use-font-lock nil)  ;; *before* loading ESS

 2. then loading "ess-site"

 3. then M-x Rnw-mode

fails in any case  {also in X-enabled emacs} -- because
font-lock is active

However, I think I've found the solution:
Using  font-lock-mode (which is also a logical variable, not
       		       just a function)
instead of window-system
seems to work for both font-locking and turned-off font-locking.

---> This will be in ESS 5.3.7


As others have said, a normal user should never have encountered
that bug, since (s)he really should work with a
"window-system"-enabled version of emacs.

Martin