Re: Question about copy-region-as-kill

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Colin Walters <walters@verbum.org> writes:
> Indeed.  But extents provide these same advantages.  And it should not
> be difficult to write a text properties API on top of an extents
> mechanism.

What I'm arguing for is to keep the current interfaces, because I think
they're both useful.  Whether or not they use the same underlying
mechanism is an implementation detail (about which others are more
knowledgable than I).

> So extents give you the best of all possible worlds, AFAICS.

We've already got an implementation that provides both; why change (but
see below)?

> Since I have the feeling that we are at this point arguing by repeated
> assertion, let me paste here the description of the problem I ran into
> using overlays for ibuffer, when RMS originally asked me why I thought
> overlays had a poor interface:

From your description, it sounds like you would be happy if [certain]
text-properties could be optionally suppressed from being copied by a
user; true?

I think that would be a useful extension to text-properties.

What I'm not sure of why you seem to have come to the conclusion that a
whole-sale reworking of the way text-properties and overlays work is
required.

Cheers,

-Miles
-- 
Suburbia: where they tear out the trees and then name streets after them.