Re: new text property

[Colin Walters <walters@gnu.org>]

On Tue, 2002-06-11 at 07:40, Hrvoje Niksic wrote:

> Other highlighting mechanims have speed issues as well.  For example,
> Gnus prefers not to highlight huge messages because that would take
> too long.  If I controled that with `M-x font-lock-mode' (which would
> buy me nothing in turns of convenience; Gnus has variables to
> fine-tune its highlighting), 

It would be convenient because it is the same interface that one uses to
enable and disable fontification in many prominent Emacs modes;
specifically, I'm thinking of C and Lisp mode buffers, although there
are plenty of other examples.

Otherwise, to disable/enable highlighting, you have to track down one of
those variables, change it, and then recreate the buffer somehow so the
change in the variable takes effect.  Just typing 'M-x font-lock-mode'
is tons easier.

> I would expect things like
> `font-lock-maximum-size' to keep working.

Why?  There is no slowdown when using `font-lock-face'.  For what other
possible reason would you set `font-lock-maximum-size' other than speed?

> Plus, font-lock-maximum-decoration is not only about speed.  Some
> people don't *like* too much decoration.

Well, that's a hard problem to solve.  Note that even not all modes
which use "traditional" font-lock supply multiple levels of keywords,
which `font-lock-maximum-decoration' needs.