Re: Bug #25608 and the comment-cache branch

[Juanma Barranquero <lekktu@gmail.com>]

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On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 1:05 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:

> The question of "widening" is not difficult.  Narrowing a buffer should
> not change the syntax of the characters in it.  Doing so leads to
> inconsistencies.
>
> If I understand correctly, the problem is that multiple-major-mode modes
> are trying to use narrowing to get a null syntactic context.  They are
> trying this because we don't provide anything better.  We should provide
> something better.  I suggested such a something last spring ("islands").
> If each buffer position has an unambiguous syntactic context the
> question of "widening" simply evaporates.

I have no opinion on this thread's issue, so no personal attachment to
either side.

But I find curious that you complain that people refuses (so to speak) to
judge comment-cache based on its technical merits, and yet you refuse to
acknowledge that the narrow/widen issue is not technical but social.
There's not a technical reason to prefer that narrowing doesn't change the
syntax of characters, and it's not clear at all that it is what the users
prefer. Indeed, as Eli and Stefan already pointed out, narrowing has been
used in both senses inside and outside Emacs proper. Perhaps you're right
and both behaviors should be separated and clearly defined as two different
facilities, but insisting that your view is the right one is not, per se,
an argument for comment-cache.

Just my 0,00002€.

   Juanma

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