Re: Default of jit-lock-stealth-time

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

> While I agree with all of David's arguments (and even add the one that
> a buffer tail is stealthily refontified after every single buffer change
> followed by 16 secs idleness) I'm afraid that setting this to nil won't
> remove any support burden.  Many major modes still work better when they
> are allowed to fontify a buffer from beginning to end.

Stealth fontification doesn't do that anyway.

> Also, when a mode uses font-lock to assign `syntax-table' properties,
> there's a slight chance that an editing sequence that worked with
> stealth fontification turned on will not work any more when stealth
> fontification is turned off.  Having fontification assign syntax-table
> properties is certainly flawed by design but at the moment there's no
> other way to do that automatically.

When there are such bugs, stealth fontification doesn't prevent them.
It may hide them occasionally (non-deterministically), depending on the
specific editing steps.

> With other words, setting this to nil may cause some obscure bugs get
> reported (and hopefully fixed) earlier ...

Indeed, and with a recipe that may be slightly easier to reproduce.


        Stefan