Bug or missing feature: Prevent font-lock from changing text properties on text that has property `font-lock-ignore'. See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-08/msg00540.html Patch attached. ChangeLog entry: 2014-08-30 Drew Adams * font-lock.el: Respect text property `font-lock-ignore'. (put-text-property-unless-ignore): New function. (font-lock-default-unfontify-region): Do not unfontify if text has property `font-lock-ignore'. (font-lock-prepend-text-property, font-lock-append-text-property) (font-lock-fillin-text-property, font-lock-apply-syntactic-highlight) (font-lock-fontify-syntactically-region, font-lock-apply-highlight) (font-lock-fontify-anchored-keywords) (font-lock-fontify-keywords-region): Use put-text-property-unless-ignore, not put-text-property. In GNU Emacs 24.4.50.1 (i686-pc-mingw32) of 2014-08-15 on LEG570 Bzr revision: 117706 rgm@gnu.org-20140815043406-p5hbu97cbm7pulcn Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.1.7601 Configured using: `configure --enable-checking 'CFLAGS=-O0 -g3' CPPFLAGS=-DGLYPH_DEBUG=1'