Next: Search-based Fontification, Up: Font Lock Mode
There are several variables that control how Font Lock mode highlights
text. But major modes should not set any of these variables directly.
Instead, they should set font-lock-defaults
as a buffer-local
variable. The value assigned to this variable is used, if and when Font
Lock mode is enabled, to set all the other variables.
This variable is set by major modes, as a buffer-local variable, to specify how to fontify text in that mode. The value should look like this:
(keywords keywords-only case-fold syntax-alist syntax-begin other-vars...)The first element, keywords, indirectly specifies the value of
font-lock-keywords
. It can be a symbol, a variable whose value is the list to use forfont-lock-keywords
. It can also be a list of several such symbols, one for each possible level of fontification. The first symbol specifies how to do level 1 fontification, the second symbol how to do level 2, and so on.The second element, keywords-only, specifies the value of the variable
font-lock-keywords-only
. If this is non-nil
, syntactic fontification (of strings and comments) is not performed.The third element, case-fold, specifies the value of
font-lock-case-fold-search
. If it is non-nil
, Font Lock mode ignores case when searching as directed byfont-lock-keywords
.If the fourth element, syntax-alist, is non-
nil
, it should be a list of cons cells of the form(
char-or-string.
string)
. These are used to set up a syntax table for fontification (see Syntax Table Functions). The resulting syntax table is stored infont-lock-syntax-table
.The fifth element, syntax-begin, specifies the value of
font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function
(see below).All the remaining elements (if any) are collectively called other-vars. Each of these elements should have the form
(
variable.
value)
—which means, make variable buffer-local and then set it to value. You can use these other-vars to set other variables that affect fontification, aside from those you can control with the first five elements.