/usr/share/mc/syntax/* would be beneficial to have system-wide tunable. Concretely I would like on my systems to recognize oddly-named make snippets and use this: file (.\*[Mm]akefile[\\\.A-Za-z0-9]\*|..\*\\.mk|..\*\\.mak(\\.in)?|Kbuild)$ Makefile ^#!.\*([\s/]make|/usr/bin/make) ^#\s-\\\*-\smode:\smakefile(;.\*)?\s-\\\*- include makefile.syntax Likely the Emacs-style "-*- mode: .* -*-" style hinting is relevant for upstream to adopt, but really I think there is only a universal _default_ for which files should use which syntax - i.e. it should be configurable. If unsuitable/difficult to have mc code lookup below /etc for override syntax files, Debian packaging could have /usr/share/mc/syntax be a symlink to e.g. /etc/mc/syntax where the actual files are installed. - Jonas