Re: Better parse-partial-sexp; multiple major modes

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Such a thing would have to live on the C side of things, right? (With the
> proliferation of with-this and inhibit-that options available to Lisp,
> I don't see how one can easily and robustly catch all buffer
> modification.  Not to mention that no matter which of before-change-
> functions and after-change-functions you used, you could still race against
> other functions using the same facility.)

In theory, that might be true, but it's not been that big of a deal
for now.  And of course moving it to C would help some but it won't
solve all those problems magically.

> Anyway, this scheme is:

> 1) Robust - no messing around with variables, no tweaking fontification
> 2) Backwards compatible - a major-mode doesn't need to know it's being used
> this way
> 3) Versatile - you can compose arbitrary modes this way, even recursively
> 4) Conceptually simple (I hope)

I don't think it's possible to get 1 and 2 together, really.


        Stefan