Re: visible-whitespace-mode

[Miles Bader]

Using the corrected URL, I just looked at blank-space.el.

I think the big difference is that blank-mode works by adding overlays
and text-properties to the buffer (yes, both; I'm not exactly sure why),
whereas visible-whitespace-mode works by modifying the display-table.

The former method is clearly more powerful, but brings with it the
various problems you'd expect from such an approach (for instance, emacs
seems significantly slower when I scroll around or modify a buffer with
blank-mode on).

visible-whitespace-mode, on the other hand, is basically a quick hack
(if you look at the source, you'll see that the guts are only about 25
lines long!), but one which works quite well for the common case.

Another difference is that visible-whitespace-mode uses (appropriately
colored) characters to indicate whitespace, which I think is more
expressive and natural than only using faces as blank-mode does.

[If anything, I wonder if blank-mode could be integrated with hi-lock.el
since their basic operation seems quite similar...]

-Miles
-- 
"Most attacks seem to take place at night, during a rainstorm, uphill,
 where four map sheets join."   -- Anon. British Officer in WW I