Subject: bug#13915: 24.3.50; `font-lock-syntactic-keywords' - really obsolete?

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 08:26:44 -0700

NEWS says that the variable is obsolete, and font-lock.el says that this
is so since 24.1:
 
(make-obsolete-variable 'font-lock-syntactic-keywords
                        'syntax-propertize-function "24.1")
 
But font-lock.el uses it, with no apparent attempt to do without it.
 
If the very file that declares it obsolete cannot be updated to reflect
that, why tell users they should consider it obsolete?
 
The description in NEWS does not make clear, to me at least, how use of
the variable should be replaced.  If I see how that gets done in
font-lock.el then perhaps I will understand better.  If not, it sounds
like not practicing what you preach.  Or perhaps making the change is
not so simple?
 
There are only a few lines in font-lock.el that involve
`font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.  If these were not changed when it was
declared obsolete, and still have not been, 2 or 3 releases later, is
that a sign that something is not quite right?
 
Seems like those few lines would have been fixed immediately.  Now,
presumably some of them are there for backward compatibility.  But I
don't get the impression that they all are, or even that most of them
are.  Seems like the switchover to the new was simply not finished.
 
It would be helpful too if the NEWS description provided more guidance
wrt replacing use of the obsolete variable with use of the new.

In GNU Emacs 24.3.50.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2013-03-04 on ODIEONE
Bzr revision: 111935 [email-masked]
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.1.2600
Configured using:
 `configure --with-gcc (4.7) --no-opt --enable-checking --cflags
 -IC:/Devel/emacs/build/include --ldflags -LC:/Devel/emacs/build/lib'