Re: any emacs gurus out there?

["J. M. Brenner" <doom kzsu stanford edu>]

William Warren <domino billhorne homelinux org> wrote: 

> J. M. Brenner wrote: 

> Right. Emacs calls syntax high-lighting "font-lock-mode"
> 
> You can try entering this command manually: 
> 
>   ESC x font-lock-mode

I don't see any highlighting when I do that, although emacs
says it's entering font-lock mode. 

Highlighting is different for different major modes.
E.g. if you're looking at some perl code *and* you're in
perl-mode (or better, cperl-mode) you should see syntax
highlighting.  

If this *isn't* happening for you, then you may have done
something strange to you're defaults, and you might want 
to play with "emacs -q" (to start-up without reading your
.emacs).  Also, let us know what version of emacs you're using.

> Please post the .emacs file when the issue is solved. TIA.

Here's the relevant potions of my .emacs file, including my
color customizations (I'm a light-on-dark kind of guy).  
Let me know if you really want to see the whole thing:

;;;
;;; color scheme

; Provides a (base?) color scheme for additional frames:
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(foreground-color . "Thistle"))
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(background-color . "Black"))
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(cursor-color . "Orchid"))
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(mouse-color . "GreenYellow"))
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(border-color . "DarkOliveGreen"))
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(border-color . "Thistle"))


;Highlighting the region
(transient-mark-mode t)
(set-face-foreground 'region "Black")
(set-face-background 'region "DarkOliveGreen")

;hacking the rest of the color scheme:
(set-foreground-color "Thistle")
(set-background-color "Black")
(set-cursor-color "Orchid")
(set-mouse-color "GreenYellow")

(set-face-foreground 'modeline "Black")
(set-face-background 'modeline "DarkSlateBlue")

; Does this do anything?
(set-border-color "DarkOliveGreen")

; This sets the text color for highlighted text (e.g. when running ispell)
(set-face-foreground 'highlight "PaleGreen")
(set-face-background 'highlight "BlueViolet")

(show-paren-mode)

(set-face-foreground 'show-paren-match-face "PaleGreen")
(set-face-background 'show-paren-match-face "BlueViolet")

(set-face-foreground 'show-paren-mismatch-face "yellow")
(set-face-background 'show-paren-mismatch-face "firebrick")

; Experimenting with just turning on font-lock everywhere
(global-font-lock-mode 1)