Re: kill ring menu

[Miles Bader]

Colin Walters <address@hidden> writes:
> > Perhaps in this case people see a distinction between
> > fontifying existing `text files' (like program source) and buffers that
> > are created by emacs to display some information.
> 
> I think that distinction is arbitrary; I don't see it at all. 

Perhaps so, but others do.

There (apparently) are people who (1) don't want font-locking in the
`traditional' sense, but (2) do want special buffers fontified.  I think
if you want your proposal to fly, you have to at least try to cater to
this group, in some way more convenient than making them stick calls to
`font-lock-mode' in all of their mode hooks.

> This is *exactly* the way things already work.  font-lock in this case
> just calls the `font-lock-fontify-region' function to do the
> fontification.  Thus, font-lock becomes the "user interface", as you
> say, and the mode author implements the mechanism.

Ok, then I was mistaken about how things worked -- I read Richard's
comment to mean that you were adding non-face properties to the text,
and then using the normal font-lock engine to convert these into face
properties (this the inefficiency I alluded to, not the cost of loading
font-lock.el).

> But this is a digression.  Again, my point is very simple: I think we
> should move towards making M-x font-lock-mode, as much as possible, the
> standard *interface* for enabling and disabling fontification.

Agreed, this is the major issue.

-Miles
-- 
o The existentialist, not having a pillow, goes everywhere with the book by
  Sullivan, _I am going to spit on your graves_.