Re: face-remapping patch

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:

>>> To improve on this, I think we'd have to move to something more like
>>> XEmacs's specifiers.  But I haven't even seen any proposal for such
>>> a thing yet.
>
>> Proposal: allow a third argument for make-local-variable.
>
> That's for variables, not faces.

Yes, quite so.  I was trying to brainstorm about one mechanism at a
time.  I am not convinced that it is a good idea to treat faces
completely differently.

> But, yes, maybe we should rethink face-settings along similar lines:
>
>   (set-face-attribute FACE LOCUS &rest ARGS)
>
> The first difficulty is to figure out how to integrate such a thing
> with the settings coming from X resources, from defface specs, from
> frame parameters (font & back/foreground colors, IIRC), ...
>
> Note that it would be a good opportunity to try and make this whole
> code more efficient as well, so that all face settings don't get
> redundantly recomputed everytime we create a new frame.
>
> I guess the defface spec and the X resources could be turned into
> terminal-local settings computed everytime a new terminal is created
> (and everytime a new face is created, of course).

Something like that.  We already have too many different mechanisms at
work for similar things.  Unifying the approaches (even if we find out
that unifying the underlying internals is not feasible) would, I think,
in general be helpful for application programmers.

-- 
David Kastrup