efaq: Turning on syntax highlighting
5.44 How do I turn on syntax highlighting?
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‘font-lock-mode’ is the standard way to have Emacs perform syntax
highlighting in the current buffer. It is enabled by default in Emacs
22.1 and later.
With ‘font-lock-mode’ turned on, different types of text will appear
in different colors. For instance, in a programming mode, variables
will appear in one face, keywords in a second, and comments in a third.
To turn ‘font-lock-mode’ off within an existing buffer, use ‘M-x
font-lock-mode <RET>’.
In Emacs 21 and earlier versions, you could use the following code in
your ‘.emacs’ file to turn on ‘font-lock-mode’ globally:
(global-font-lock-mode 1)
Highlighting a buffer with ‘font-lock-mode’ can take quite a while,
and cause an annoying delay in display, so several features exist to
work around this.
In Emacs 21 and later, turning on ‘font-lock-mode’ automatically
activates the new “Just-In-Time fontification” provided by
‘jit-lock-mode’. ‘jit-lock-mode’ defers the fontification of portions
of buffer until you actually need to see them, and can also fontify
while Emacs is idle. This makes display of the visible portion of a
buffer almost instantaneous. For details about customizing
‘jit-lock-mode’, type ‘C-h f jit-lock-mode <RET>’.
In versions of Emacs before 21, different levels of decoration are
available, from slight to gaudy. More decoration means you need to wait
more time for a buffer to be fontified (or a faster machine). To
control how decorated your buffers should become, set the value of
‘font-lock-maximum-decoration’ in your ‘.emacs’ file, with a ‘nil’ value
indicating default (usually minimum) decoration, and a ‘t’ value
indicating the maximum decoration. For the gaudiest possible look,
then, include the line
(setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)
in your ‘.emacs’ file. You can also set this variable such that
different modes are highlighted in a different ways; for more
information, see the documentation for ‘font-lock-maximum-decoration’
with ‘C-h v’ (or ‘M-x describe-variable <RET>’).
Also see the documentation for the function ‘font-lock-mode’,
available by typing ‘C-h f font-lock-mode’ (‘M-x describe-function <RET>
font-lock-mode <RET>’).
To print buffers with the faces (i.e., colors and fonts) intact, use
‘M-x ps-print-buffer-with-faces’ or ‘M-x ps-print-region-with-faces’.
You will need a way to send text to a PostScript printer, or a
PostScript interpreter such as Ghostscript; consult the documentation of
the variables ‘ps-printer-name’, ‘ps-lpr-command’, and ‘ps-lpr-switches’
for more details.
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