Re: font-lock-keywords uses only facename

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

>> If I were writing it today, I'd just do an `eval' as did Simon Marshall:
>> it's simpler and there is no loss of generality.  And adding a quote is
>> really not that difficult.

> Does anyone ever use the eval feature, except old code that has `face'
> variables (a practice which seems out of favor these days)?

Well, the "eval feature" is used extensively at many places, yes.

If you mean "use `eval' even for trivial expressions composed of nothing
more than a symbol", I've used it as a poor man's buffer-local faces
a few times.  But admittedly, it's only rarely used.

> What's certainly the case is that it often causes confusion, although
> admittedly some of this is due to font-lock's `standard' faces using
> variables and faces with exactly the same name.

Right, I think if variables had names like `font-lock-foo-face' while their
content was `font-lock-foo' it would have helped a bit.

Another way to avoid the confusion would have been to introduce a whole new
self-evaluating datatype for faces rather than use symbols.


        Stefan