Re: Default font 'default have no corresponding variable

["Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> Why should there be a "corresponding variable"?
> 
>> Maybe I got this wrong, I thought that there usually were a variable with
>> the same name as the face and that the variable value was the face
>> symbol. But maybe that is just used for faces defined specific uses in
>> Emacs libraries?
> 
> No.  The only there is w.r.t vars and faces is that font-lock's author
> originally decided to provide both font-lock-FOO-face faces and
> font-lock-FOO-face variables where the variable's value points to the
> face, so that you can use
> 
>       font-lock-FOO-face
> or
>       'font-lock-FOO-face
> 
> and get the same result.  Basically it makes the font-lock-FOO-face
> symbol (used to refer to the face) self-quoting.  And since most
> font-lock rules use the first form rather than the second, you get the
> added benefit that the extra-indirection through the variable can be
> made buffer-local so you can "change faces" on a buffer-by-buffer basis
> (which is usually not possible in Emacs where faces can only be changed
> on a frame-by-frame basis).
> 
> In any case, buffer-local faces should be added to Emacs (there are
> plans to do that, although they don't seem to be going anywhere, sadly),
> and variables pointing to faces are generally deprecated unless maybe
> they're used in font-lock rules where avoiding the ' can be
> marginally convenient.


Thanks Stefan and Jason,

It seems like I have been misunderstanding this a bit more than I 
usually do ;-)

Unfortunately I have been spreading my unwisdom a bit so I have to clear 
that out.

>> But anyway, as I wrote, libraries written for XEmacs often tends to assume
>> that the variable default exist (and points to a face symbol I believe).
> 
> `xemacs -q' tells me that `default' indeed exists but has value "void".
> Not sure what that means.  It seems not to have any equivalent in Emacs.
> I'd never heard of it until now, so it can't be that used "often".
> 
> 
>         Stefan
>