Is there a built-in function that does this? Can you point me to it?
Emacs, of course, knows how to do this when rendering. Even face-attribute knows that, as seen in multiple ways below[1]. It just doesn't expose this to the user.
Here's the pseodo-code. I implemented it locally, but I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel, and face-attribute already does it without exposing it properly.
(defun chase (faces att)
(let* ((f1 (car faces))
;; notice the merge!
(faces2 (append (parents f1) (cdr faces)))
(att1 (face-attribute faces att)))
(if (found att1)
att1
(chase faces2 att))))
Where:
a. (parents ..) returns the parent(s) of f1, always as a list.
b. (found ..) is false if argument is 'unspecified. True otherwise. Thus, nil is a valid attribute.
c. The last item in faces is always assumed to be 'default.
d. faces is a always list of faces. A single face is treated as a list.
e. Notice how in the algo the parents of (parents (car faces)) are on the same footing as (cdr faces), and the two are simply merged for the purpose of the chase.
f. Special case for :fg and :bg. In that the final rendering also depends on the (chased) value of :inverse-video.
[1] face-attribute basically already knows how to chase a list, it just doesn't expose it. Suppose mylist = (f1 f2 f3) and you want to see what it would render attribute :height as. You construct a new, otherwise empty face 'newface, which :inherits-from (mylist). And, call (face-attribute 'newface <attribute> t 'default) which chases mylist. Thus, face-attribute already knows how to chase mylist.