[ESS] Near-lockup when fontifying large buffer

[Jeremy Semeiks]

Hello,

I'm using ESS 5.2.8 with XEmacs 21.4, although I've encountered this
problem ever since I started using ESS several versions ago. It often
happens that I (usually by accident) try to print an R object with
thousands of rows or more. Sometimes I try to cancel the huge output
stream with C-c C-c, and sometimes I let it complete
printing. Regardless, if font lock mode is on (which I generally
desire), XEmacs attempts to fontify the new output. This fontification
often takes a very long time --- say, 10 minutes or more --- and I
rarely even wanted to see the huge output in the first place, let
alone see it fontified. XEmacs does display a "cancel" button at the
bottom of the buffer, but pressing it doesn't seem to have any
effect. XEmacs is completely unresponsive while the fontification is
going on, and generally I just end up killing the entire xemacs
process and restarting, losing any unsaved work.

I've searched the archives of this list and Googled a bit, and
although I can't find anything on this problem I can't believe that
I'm the only one who's ever encountered it. Any suggestions? Am I
missing something obvious?

Thanks,
Jeremy