Re: Fwd: Flymake and the 'face' property

[Stefan Monnier]

> A 'face' property is documented for general use only for text, not for
> symbol plists.

But the `category` text-property uses as text-properties the properties
of a symbol, so there is a real conflict in our current design.

I think it might be worth taking a look at how hard/easy it would be to
change the place where we store the face-id.  IOW I wonder how much code out
there depends on it.  I have a vague recollection that many years ago
there might have been code that used (get <foo> 'face) in order to test
if `foo` is a face (because `facep` wasn't available yet, or only in
XEmacs or something like that), but I don't know if my memory is right,
nor do I know how much of that code might have survived until now.
Outside of this I can't remember ever seeing 3rd-party Elisp code
that depends on those internal details of our face system.

Also, even if there is code out there that looks at this `face`
property, maybe we change the property without breaking those packages
(e.g. by storing the face-id in both properties, but only looking them
up in the new property).


        Stefan