syntax-table text properties

Greetings, My apologies if this is not the proper forum for this; it seemed the most appropiate at first glance. I've been using XEmacs for some time, having transitioned from FSF Emacs about a year ago. While I very much prefer it overall, the one thing I've missed is correct handling of Perl code. As far as I've been able to make out, the primary feature preventing XEmacs from correctly dealing with Perl code (due to its general hairyness) is the concept of attaching overriding syntax-tables to specific characters in a buffer. This functionality was introduced in FSF Emacs between v19.33 and v20.2. I've been told that some effort was made to introduce this feature to the XEmacs folks, but that there was little interest. I'm willing to do the work required to incorporate this functionality, but I wanted to be sure that my changes would be accepted, and would be in line with the general philosophies of XEmacs development (which seem to differ from FSF's in a number of ways). The changes I'm proposing (as taken from FSF Emacs) are essentially: 1. A new text property 'syntax-table, which is one of: - a syntax table Used instead of the buffer's to determine the syntax for this character - (syntax-code . matching-char) Specifies the syntax for this occurence of the character I'm assuming 'matching-char' would be the balancing character, although I haven't been able to determine whether this is the case from the FSF code/documentation - nil Equivalent to the property not existing: default to the buffer's syntax table 2. Two new syntax classes: - generic comment delimiter Starts or ends a special kind of comment. Any generic comment delimiter matches any other comment delimiter, but not a comment starter or comment ender. Intended for use in the syntax-table text property. - generic string delimiter Analagous to the generic comment delimiter, for strings. These are the classes added in FSF Emacs, presumably to account for the case where the language could allow one type of comment embedded within another type. One would not want the embedded comment to end the enclosing one. But it also seems like 'generic-*-starter' and 'generic-*-ender' would be required to avoid ambiguity. An example of this sort of situation in Perl would be the string: qq(This string shouldn't be terminated by the apostrophe.); 3. Modifications to the syntax handling routines to honor occurrences of the syntax-table property for characters which have it set. Any code which currently requests the syntax type for a given character would have to first examine that character's 'syntax-table property before defaulting to the buffer's table. FSF Emacs uses the concept of a 'global syntax state' which is maintained and updated as the pointer is moved through the buffer by the syntax handling routines. This seems overkill to me, since the correct syntax type could simply be determined for any given character position on demand. I would appreciate any comments anyone might have on this. Please CC me, as I'm not subscribed to the list.