Re: Bold by moving pixels problem

[Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> It might also make sense to use gensyms or other uninterned symbols as
> anonymous faces.  That way, they could have informal names that would
> help humans understand what's going on when they're in use.

Doing that would make them a lot more expensive, I think -- right now in
places such as the face-realization-filter code that was being talked
about, you've already got the face in the form of a vector, so all
you've got to do is box it and pass it on.

Requiring them to be named would require you to crank up all the rest of
the face creation machinery; currently it would also prevent the face
from ever being GCed (since emacs keeps a permanent list of all named
faces).

My idea, at least in this case, is something that can be used as a
temporary `in between' face, e.g., to represent the result of face
manipulation in the same way that the C code currently uses face
vectors.  Such faces are almost always going to be very short-lived so
it's arguable whether such anymous names would even be useful in
debugging.

-Miles
-- 
Fast, small, soon; pick any 2.