Re: "Font-lock is limited to text matching" is a myth

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Lennart Borgman writes:

 > I consider this a bug.

Why?  It is the *defining* characteristic of a *text* property that it
is part of the text, and gets copied with its associated text.

 > Pasting should by default be done after
 > removing the text properties. There should IMO be a separate command
 > paste-with-text-properties for the current behaviour (if deemed
 > needed).

IMO (and O is all it is), based on experience with XEmacs, the world
would be a much better place if overlays were used in a lot of places
where text-properties are currently used, because they have better
behavior by default.  (In XEmacs, in programs it doesn't matter
because extents can be overlay-like or text-property-like along about
5 dimensions which can be chosen independently.  However, although
there is a fair amount of need for variations that don't match either
exactly, the bundles of behaviors called "text property" and
"overlay", respectively, do seem to be the most useful by far.  So
these are the variants supported by interactive commands and
convenience functions.)

OTOH, as Miles points out, it is often the case that it is useful to
construct a string complete with text properties, and then paste it
repeatedly.  Yes, I *do* want "e.g." to be italicized every time I
paste it.