Re: How to avoid put-text-property setting buffer modified flag, and messing with the undo history?

[Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 01:12, Wojciech Meyer
<wojciech.meyer@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to dynamically color the buffer using text properties. It
> works as follows:
>
> 1. I send modified buffer contents to the inferior process
>
> 2. Along with the contents I send the location information, what portion
> of the buffer has been modified, e.g. for the first time I send whole
> buffer and notify the inferior process that whole buffer shall be
> invalidated.
>
> 3. After that inferior process sends back, syntax information in form of
> pair range of characters and type of associated token.
>
> 4. Since the inferior process uses specials way of parsing (packrat) it
> is efficient way of extracting it, and there is no real latency.
>
> 5. The language I am writing mode for allows complete redefinition of
> syntax, and modifying it on the fly, so I can't use any of the
> conventional ways, or even LALR parsing provided by CEDET is not enough
> as it can only can approximate the base syntax, and it will not cope
> well with this language.
>
> 6. For coloring I use text properties, but they change buffer marking it
> as modified and altering undo information, and I don't want that.
>
> How would you implement desired behaviour? How to efficiently workaround
> this problem? Is there any other way to change faces of the buffer?
> Would overlays be a solution?

Please see with-silent-modifications.