Re: new text property

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

>>>>> "Colin" == Colin Walters <walters@gnu.org> writes:

    Colin> Emacs 21.4 will have a new text property `font-lock-face'.

    Colin> The rationale for this change is that it easily allows
    Colin> "special" modes to have their fontification controlled by
    Colin> M-x font-lock-mode, rather than having to set a variable
    Colin> like `cvs-highlight', `Info-fontify', or tracking down a
    Colin> -face variable and setting it to `default'.

Er, as I understood that thread, the rationale is that font-lock is
too heavy (aka "slow and broken") to be used by modes that just want
some "light-weight" highlighting.  Is that not so?  Are there other
advantages to not using font-lock to do font-locking?<wink>

I think we should look into allowing all highlighting to be done by
font-lock by making font-lock performance better.  I don't mean I
oppose `font-lock-face' as such, but we should be careful to not put
obstacles in the way of a high-performance font-lock (even though it's
vaporware now, several people including Martin Buchholz and Matt
Tucker have made plausible proposals).



-- 
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 My nostalgia for Icon makes me forget about any of the bad things.  I don't
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