21.12.1 Older Modes for C and AWK

SXEmacs provides older versions of a C Mode and an AWK Mode in the prog-modes package. These older modes do not share the indentation engine in CC Mode have have their own specific means of customizing indentation. To use these modes the prog-modes package must be installed.

This older C mode is known simply as the “Old C Mode”. It supports only the C language and it lacks many of the features of CC Mode. However the old C mode offers modest space requirements and very fast operation. Old C Mode might be useful in space constrained environments, on slow machines, or for editing very large files. This old C mode is available in the old-c-mode library. See old-c-mode in The Programming Modes Package Manual.

The old AWK mode exists for similar reasons. It is available in the awk-mode library. See awk-mode in The Programming Modes Package Manual.

Note that the prog-modes package will never automatically invoke these older modes for a user. However installing the cc-mode package will make CC Mode’s versions available automatically. As a result a user who wants to use these older modes must explicitly load the old libraries to use them.