On Thu, 19 Mar 2020, davidson wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Mar 2020, Default User wrote:
[snip]
>> dummy@dummy:~$ sudo aptitude show emacs
>> [sudo] password for default:
>
> Just FYI, it would greatly surprise me if you actually needed root
> privileges for aptitude's "show" command. I wager you could get the
> same information with
>
> dummy@dummy:~$ aptitude show emacs
>
> and save yourself a password entry.
>
> (I am wagering, not promising, because I use apt-get exclusively,
*apt-get and apt-cache
> never aptitude.)
[big snip]
> Then, in emacs, do
>
> M-x info
>
> This brings up a menu of info documentation properly installed on your
> system. You'll want to traverse "Emacs" > "Abbrevs".
I now see that GW Haywood has already pointed you to a version of the
same document, posted on the web:
[🔎] alpine.DEB.2.21.2003191433310.9593@piplus.local.jubileegroup.co.uk" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/[🔎] alpine.DEB.2.21.2003191433310.9593@piplus.local.jubileegroup.co.uk
--
The day will come | Last words, August Spies (1855--1887).
When our silence will be | Hanged, by the U.S. state of Illinois,
More powerful than | alongside fellow journalists
The voices you strangle today | Adolf Fischer and Albert Parsons.
Davidson, thank you for the link to the information.
1) Yes, "dummy@dummy:~$ aptitude show emacs" does work just fine. I guess I just got into the habit of using "sudo" more than I really need to.
2) The book is Second Edition (1996). Almost a quarter of a century old, but still quite useful, especially for a "mature" program like Emacs.
3) I do have "emacs-common-non-dfsg" installed, and do have "non-free" in my /etc/apt/sources.list. I do use "info" from time to time, but I more often use man pages, or just search online.
4) The problem has been SOLVED.
I believe it was due to the insistence on Emacs on using
~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs to store the saved abbreviations, instead of
~/.abbrev_defs as suggested in the book.
I am guessing this is due to the change in recent years to using ".d" supplemental directories.
The fix was to change a section of".emacs" from this (in the book):
(setq-default abbrev-mode t)
(read-abbrev-file "~/.abbrev_defs")
(setq save-abbrevs t)
to this:
(setq-default abbrev-mode t)
(setq save-abbrevs t)
(setq abbrev-file-name "~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs") ;; tell emacs where to read abbrev definitions from . . .
;; (read-abbrev-file "~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs") This line may be obsolete [from "Learning GNU Emacs"]
[Note: it seems to work either with or without (read-abbrev-file "~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs") being commented out].
So now "M-x write-abbrev-file" does seem to save the edited abbreviations as it was supposed to all along.
I had mentioned that it was possible to manually edit ~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs to remove the entry, and then save ~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs, as a work-around.
But if I should be able "To delete any abbreviation, delete the line for that abbreviation and save the file by
typing M-x write-abbrev-file.", then I should be able to do so.
Anyway, problem solved.
Thanks to all for the help.