why mode isn't enabled?

Question

I've got an emacs configuration file whatever.el :

(abbrev-mode +1)
(provide 'whatever)

and in my init.el :

(require 'whatever)

but when i start emacs, abbrev-mode isn't enabled. why ?

thank you

Answer 1

Quoting from http://emacswiki.org/emacs/AbbrevMode:

You can also put the following in your ~/.emacs file if you want it always on:

(setq default-abbrev-mode t)

If you only want it on in text and derived modes, you could do something like this:

(add-hook 'text-mode-hook (lambda () (abbrev-mode 1)))

For multiple modes, use something like the following:

(dolist (hook '(erc-mode-hook
                emacs-lisp-mode-hook
                text-mode-hook))
  (add-hook hook (lambda () (abbrev-mode 1))))

Answer 2

Abbrev-mode is enabled per-buffer.

One way is to create a hook function that you could add to the major mode hooks you will want to use it in.

For example:

(defun my-enable-abbrev-mode ()
  (abbrev-mode 1))
(add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'my-enable-abbrev-hook)
(add-hook 'java-mode-hook 'my-enable-abbrev-hook)

Another approach is to use change-major-mode-hook.

Answer 3

While others explained how to get what you presumably want, I'll just point out that w.r.t to your actual question ("Why?"), the reason is simple: abbrev-mode is a buffer-local minor-mode, so when you run (abbrev-mode +1) at startup it will just enable abbrev-mode in the buffer that happens to be current during evaluation of the ~/.emacs (typically scratch) but not in subsequent buffers.