On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:

> Not what you asked, but as a suggestion, you might want to use the CC
> Mode macros which deal with text properties on single characters.  For
> example, you could have used `c-put-char-property' instead of
> `put-text-property'.
>
> This has the following pros/cons: (i) these macros are slightly less
> cumbersome to use, since they take only a single position parameter; (ii)
> They also work in XEmacs; (iii) there is some effort involved in learning
> about them and how they work.
>
> If you're interested, search cc-defs.el for
>
>     Macros/functions to handle so-called "char properties",
>
> and read the definitions in that page.
>

Thanks for the tip. I will check that out.