Re: can't turn off font-lock

[Richard Stallman]

    Because grep relies on compilation-mode, which uses font-lock to do its
    work, so it forcefully enables font-lock.

It seems like a bug for it to work this way.

What it ought to do is enable Font Lock in an internal way, so it will
put on font-lock-face properties.  These properties should be created
regardless of whether Font Lock mode is enabled, but they should
only affect display when Font Lock mode is enabled.