Use of display properties as a caching mechanism

Use of display properties as a caching mechanism

[Nicolas Girard]

When hacking the org-icons stuff, I came to realize that emacs allows
to attach any set or property/value to any part of a buffer.

It seems to me like org-mode could perfectly use this as a caching mechanism.
What bout storing time-expensive informations as special properties
attached to the first '*' of a heading ?
The price to pay would be to enforce the consistency of this cache --
as with any cache, after all; as a benefit, this may boost org-mode's
performances.
What do you think ?

Nicolas

Re: Use of display properties as a caching mechanism

[Carsten Dominik]

On Jun 24, 2009, at 12:19 PM, Nicolas Girard wrote:

> When hacking the org-icons stuff, I came to realize that emacs allows
> to attach any set or property/value to any part of a buffer.
>
> It seems to me like org-mode could perfectly use this as a caching  
> mechanism.
> What bout storing time-expensive informations as special properties
> attached to the first '*' of a heading ?
> The price to pay would be to enforce the consistency of this cache --
> as with any cache, after all; as a benefit, this may boost org-mode's
> performances.
> What do you think ?

I have been there, and I am using stuff like that for column view.

However, Org-mode's commitment to plain text makes it possible
that text is being changed behind its back, so most of the
time, complete rescans are appropriate.  Keeping a cache consistent
would be a huge problem.

- Carsten