Re: HELP, PLEASE! Syntax problem!

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Stephen!

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 12:48:33AM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie writes:

>  > Just as a matter of interest (ha!) Stephen, does XEmacs have an
>  > equivalent to the 'category text property?

> No.

That's a shame.

> I'm not sure how much farther you can push that kind of thing, but
> clearly it works for you now.

Well, for one thing, rather than just having the 'category property, you
could allow any property to be made "categorical".  Then you could
introduce all sorts of rules as to which "categorical" property prevails
when several have conflicting settings of a particular property. ... ;-)

But, as RMS would undoubtedly say, there doesn't seem to be any need for
such an "advanced" feature.

> Eventually I guess we'll have to match the Emacs API, but we don't have
> it now.

It's more than an API: it's a fundamental feature.  Without it, the only
way to change a text property on ALL characters of some class is to scan
through the buffer, which would be unacceptably slow for what I need to
do.

So, yes, please feel free to get it implemented in XEmacs!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).