Re: how to prevent font-lock from messing with a portion of text?

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Drew Adams wrote:

> Wrt Lennart's suggestion, BTW: I want to be able to also remove the
> highlighting and then have font-lock treat that text normally again. So,
> nothing that permanently prevents font-lock from fontifying the text would
> be useful here.

I understand that my suggestion does not fit your needs now, but it is 
quite easy to let font-lock take over the fontifying again.


> As a simple example, imagine that you want to be able to use `M-o o'
> (facemenu-set-face) on some text in a font-locked buffer. Currently, `M-o o'
> just tells you that "Font-lock mode will override any faces you set in this
> buffer" - IOW, you're SOL. If you want to see your highlighting, you must
> turn off font-lock. Instead of punting this way, `M-o o' could do what's
> needed to prevent font-lock from interfering - that is, from changing the
> facemenu highlighting.

To do that kind of thing you want you have to change 
font-lock-fontify-region function. However that will not work for all 
modes, only those that uses this. So at the moment you really can not do it.

To temporary set a face like you want to do I think you need to use 
overlays.


> BTW, the doc does not explain anywhere (that I've found) just how the
> activation of `font-lock-face' is controlled by `font-lock-mode'. It says
> only that the mode toggles the activation of the property.

It seems to me that there are indeed things missing in the manual.