bug#10254: 24.0.92; Local variable bibtex-dialect has no effect

[Roland Winkler]

On Mon Jan 16 2012 Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > +(make-variable-buffer-local 'bibtex-dialect)
> 
> I don't think you should force it to be buffer-local.  Just leave it as
> a global setting by default, and just change the code so that if the
> user decides to make it local to some buffer, the rest of the code
> handles it properly.

This variable (and everything going with it) is new in Emacs 24. So
to some extent we have to speculate about "typical usage patterns"
of this variable.

Yet after having thought about this a bit more I tend to agree with
the OP that the need for a buffer-local binding of bibtex-dialect
may occur more often. I expect that users want to set the default
value of this variable in their init file. Yet when they want to set
this variable interactively (via the menu bar or the command
bibtex-set-dialect) I expect this to occur more often in a context
similar to the one that made the OP look into a file local binding:
one has got one BibTeX file that does not match the default binding
of bibtex-dialect so that one needs to change the buffer local value
of this variable.

On the other hand I cannot think of many scenarios where one might
want to change this variable interactively for all BibTeX buffers
one is working with.

Am I missing something?

Roland

PS: My patch is based on the assumption that interactively setting
bibtex-dialect changes all relevant variables only buffer-locally.
If one also wanted to support the possibility that the default value
can be changed interactively (thus affecting all BibTeX buffers)
this would require a few more lines of code. Yet as I tried to say,
I am not sure this would really be useful.