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Font Lock Basics

There are several variables that control how Font Lock mode highlights text. But major modes should not set any of these variables directly. Instead, it 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.

Variable: font-lock-defaults
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 list to use for font-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 by font-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 section Syntax Table Functions). The resulting syntax table is stored in font-lock-syntax-table.

The fifth element, syntax-begin, specifies the value of font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function (see below).

Any further elements other-vars are have form (variable . value). This kind of element means to make variable buffer-local and then set it to value. This is used to set other variables that affect fontification.


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