Re: Should overlays evaporate by default?

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     Perhaps it would be better for overlays to evaporate by default.
>
> I tend to agree this would make things better in most cases, and only
> be wrong in a few.  However, it is an incompatible change, and in some
> places it WILL break code.

And so, we shouldn't do ANYTHING about it in 22.x

>
> It occur to me that we could make it easier to find those places.
> Suppose that by default the `evaporate' property is set to `display-warning'.
> Suppose that in this case, when the overlay becomes empty, it evaporates
> and displays a warning using `display-warning'.

We can do that immediately AFTER the release.

>
> On seeing the warningm programmers would adapt their programs to set
> `evaporate' either to t or nil and thus prevent the warning.
>
> In Emacs 23, we could change the default to t.

Eventually, just before the 23.x release, yes.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <address@hidden> http://www.cua.dk