On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 1:05 PM, Alan Mackenzie <
address@hidden> wrote:
> The question of "widening" is not difficult. Narrowing a buffer should
> not change the syntax of the characters in it. Doing so leads to
> inconsistencies.
>
> If I understand correctly, the problem is that multiple-major-mode modes
> are trying to use narrowing to get a null syntactic context. They are
> trying this because we don't provide anything better. We should provide
> something better. I suggested such a something last spring ("islands").
> If each buffer position has an unambiguous syntactic context the
> question of "widening" simply evaporates.
I have no opinion on this thread's issue, so no personal attachment to either side.
But I find curious that you complain that people refuses (so to speak) to judge comment-cache based on its technical merits, and yet you refuse to acknowledge that the narrow/widen issue is not technical but social. There's not a technical reason to prefer that narrowing doesn't change the syntax of characters, and it's not clear at all that it is what the users prefer. Indeed, as Eli and Stefan already pointed out, narrowing has been used in both senses inside and outside Emacs proper. Perhaps you're right and both behaviors should be separated and clearly defined as two different facilities, but insisting that your view is the right one is not, per se, an argument for comment-cache.
Just my 0,00002€.
Juanma