Subject: bug#16413: 24.3.50; Inconsistent behavior of text property functions in narrowed buffer

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 10:12:57 +0200

> Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 00:03:42 -0800
> From: Daniel Colascione <[email-masked]>
> CC: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> 
> Narrowing *is* generally useful for treating part of a buffer as a 
> consistent unit, though, especially when that part is syntactically 
> different from the rest of the buffer.

Not sure what you mean by "consistent unit".

>From the ELisp manual:

  30.4 Narrowing
  ==============

  "Narrowing" means limiting the text addressable by Emacs editing
  commands to a limited range of characters in a buffer.  The text that
  remains addressable is called the "accessible portion" of the buffer.

Perceiving and treating narrowing as something beyond that can,
indeed, cause conceptual and practical difficulties.  For example,
narrowing the buffer in the middle of bidirectional context will most
of the time completely screw up the text on display.