Insufficient functionality of yank-excluded-properties

Insufficient functionality of yank-excluded-properties

[Kim F. Storm]

Try the following: 

Do C-h f help RET and copy the contents of the *Help* buffer to
another buffer.  The mouse highlight of the help buttons is still
active, i.e. the mouse-face property hasn't been removed.

The reason is that the `category' text property is copied.
In this specific case, the category is `help-function-def-button'
which has a mouse-face property.

One option is to add `category' to yank-excluded-properties, but
that's probably too dramatic.

A better solution might be for remove-list-of-text-properties
to remove a `category' text property if that category specifies
one of the excluded text properties in the list.

Re: Insufficient functionality of yank-excluded-properties

[Robert J. Chassell]

   Try the following: 

   Do C-h f help RET and copy the contents of the *Help* buffer to
   another buffer.  The mouse highlight of the help buttons is still
   active, i.e. the mouse-face property hasn't been removed.

When Emacs started using text properties, I defined the following
`remove-window-text-properties' function and added it to my .emacs
file.  I have found it very useful -- so useful I put the command on a
function key.

I use it when doing the kind of copying you give as an example.

    ;;; Remove text properties

    ;; I like to remove text properties that facemenu added to region.
    ;; This provides a keybinding to remove all text properties
    ;; in the region visible in a window.

    (defun remove-window-text-properties ()
      "Remove text properties in the region visible in a window."
      (interactive)
      (facemenu-remove-all (window-start) (window-end)))

    (global-set-key [f4] 'remove-window-text-properties)

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                  bob@rattlesnake.com
    Rattlesnake Enterprises             http://www.rattlesnake.com

Re: Insufficient functionality of yank-excluded-properties

[Richard Stallman]

    The reason is that the `category' text property is copied.
    In this specific case, the category is `help-function-def-button'
    which has a mouse-face property.

This is a hard case to see how to handle correctly.

    A better solution might be for remove-list-of-text-properties
    to remove a `category' text property if that category specifies
    one of the excluded text properties in the list.

That might be the right thing to do.  In addition, perhaps we should
avoid puttin on a `mouse-face' property via `category'.  We could change
the Help mode code to put on the `mouse-face' property separately.
Should we do that?

Re: Insufficient functionality of yank-excluded-properties

[Miles Bader]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> That might be the right thing to do.  In addition, perhaps we should
> avoid puttin on a `mouse-face' property via `category'.  We could change
> the Help mode code to put on the `mouse-face' property separately.
> Should we do that?

Well, the reason it uses `category' is because it makes the code simpler.
Going through and ensuring that button-face is only ever used as a
direct property would be kind of annoying, I think.

If you remove the `category' property entirely for buttons (it's
buttons that use it), I suspect that the only interesting thing that
would be lost would the face the button uses.

-Miles
-- 
Occam's razor split hairs so well, I bought the whole argument!