GNU bug report logs - #16413
24.3.50; Inconsistent behavior of text property functions in narrowed buffer

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From: Nathan Trapuzzano <nbtrap <at> nbtrap.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: dancol <at> dancol.org, 16413 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#16413: 24.3.50; Inconsistent behavior of text property functions in narrowed buffer
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 14:43:11 -0500

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

>> char-after is a primitive, and it behaves intuitively at (point-max) on
>> narrowed buffers.  Why shouldn't other functions behave consistently?
>
> I don't know.  One reason could be that we might need a primitive that
> can report properties of characters that are not reachable.  But I
> don't have any evidence to that effect.

Even if there were such a need, it could always be achieved with
`save-restriction', etc.  On the other hand, users should be able to
expect that functions behave consistently with respect to narrowing, and
these clearly don't

>> Nevermind about the search functions.  I was confused about the behavior
>> of previous-single-property-change.  The problem lies in the functions
>> that fetch the properties.
>
> The usual paradigm is to search for a possible place where the you
> might have the property, then examine the properties at that point.
> With this paradigm, if you never look at the properties when the
> search hits the limit of the search, you will never have this problem.

I was confused by how `previous-single-property-change' actually
doesn't look at the property at POSITION.  It starts looking at (1-
position) and then find the first difference from that point.  It's not
intuitive, but it makes sense if you think about it.

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