Re: Implementation of :inherit parameter for faces

>>>>> "Ben" == Ben Wing <[email protected]> writes:

    Ben> The idea seems to be that faces under GNU Emacs are now
    Ben> specified through a series of attributes, the importance of
    Ben> which is that fonts have been exploded into a whole series of
    Ben> new properties -- slant, weight, height, family, etc.

In the medium term, this is the right way to handle this.  The main
question is whether fonts need to exist as a separate entity exposed
as a public API; I would say "no".  Lisp should specify properties of
faces, then the internals (which might also be an internal Lisp API,
of course) should dispatch out to platform facilities to get fonts,
colors, background pixmaps, theme songs (to be automagically played
when point enters the extent ;-), etc., and combine them into a face.

Note that we now (in various branches) support X "short names", XLFDs
(which have sucky abbreviation properties), fontconfig, MS Windows,
and Mac OS X font names.  AFAICT the last three are similar but subtly
different.

    Ben> I'd like to hear people's thoughts on [a] how important is
    Ben> this functionality,

Moderately so even in the short run, IMHO.  Must-have, eventually.

    Ben> [b] who would use it,

Lots of 3rd party maintainers are "working around" our deficiency
already.  I believe Gnus, ECB, and AUCTeX, at least.

    Ben> [c] how much of it needs to be implemented, and when

"Just put in a minimal hack to get font-lock minimally working, then
worry about it properly later." is my offhand preference because I
think there are design issues that deserve thought, even sleeping on,
because of the nuisance differences among MSW, fontconfig, and Carbon.


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