Re: Text Properties And Buffer Modification

[Joost Kremers]

On Wed, Dec 05 2018, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: "T.V Raman" <address@hidden>
> > Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2018 15:39:31 -0800
> >
> > At present, modifying text properties (adding, removing or 
> > changing
> > properties) markes the buffer as  modified.
> > Since property changes are mostly cosmetic, is there a good 
> > reason why
> > this is so?
>
> Because text properties are part of the buffer text: if you copy 
> some
> of the text into another place, the properties go there as well.

But isn't that at least somewhat counter-intuitive, given that 
they are usually not saved to the file the buffer is visiting? Up 
until now I've always understood the modified status of a buffer 
to mean that there is a discrepancy between what is on disk and 
what would be on disk if the buffer were saved in its current 
from. The Emacs Manual indeed seems to say so: "If a buffer 
contains changes that have not been saved, we say the buffer is 
'modified'" (info "(emacs) Visiting").

Granted, buffers that are not visiting a file can also be 
modified, but they are essentially *always* modified, so their 
modification status is largely irrelevant. (Isn't it?)



--
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments