EmacsWiki: Highlight Temporarily (original) (raw)

You can use these libraries to highlight text in a buffer:

• Highlight library – highlight and unhighlight the region or regular expressions
• HiLock – highlight phrases or regular expressions
• Icicles – highlight regexps: ` C-.’ during Icicles search toggles leaving search highlighting on. Highlight multiple-regexp matches in multiple buffers, files,…
• MarkerPens – highlight and unhighlight the region
• OnScreen – Highlight the last visible screenful when scrolling

Comparison

• Library HiLock is part of GnuEmacs (starting with version 21). Libraries Highlight and MarkerPens are not.
• Libraries Highlight and HiLock, and Icicles search can highlight a regexp (or remove highlighting) throughout a buffer.
• Libraries Highlight and MarkerPens can highlight (or unhighlight) the region.
• Library Highlight and Icicles search can highlight a regexp throughout the region.
• Library Highlight can apply a face as property ‘mouse-face’, instead of as property ‘face’. (A mouse face becomes visible only when the pointer is over it.)
• HiLock uses text properties, MarkerPens and Icicles search use overlays, and library Highlight can use either one (option ‘highlight-use-overlays-flag’). When overlays are used, copying and pasting buffer text will not also paste the highlighting. When text properties are used, you can save your highlighting permanently, using enriched mode (see Permanent Highlighting and Requesting Formatted Text).
• HiLock uses font-lock mode: its highlighting is visible only when ‘font-lock-mode’ is turned on. Libraries Highlight and MarkerPens, and Icicles search are independent of font-lock mode.
• Library Highlight can replace highlighting in a given face by another face, throughout the region or buffer.
• Library Highlight can unhighlight a given highlighting face (only), throughout the region or buffer.
• Libraries Highlight and MarkerPens let you use the mouse as a highlighter (marker pen). Library Highlight shows the highlighting as you drag the mouse. For MarkerPens, you must first define the region (possibly by dragging).
• Libraries Highlight and MarkerPens let you combine faces. That is, you can apply more than one highlighting face to the same text.
• You can use any number of faces to highlight with libraries Highlight and HiLock. MarkerPens is limited to using 10 faces (“pens”), of which 6 are customizable.
• Library Highlight lets you navigate among the highlights of a given face.
• Library Highlight lets you highlight new text as you type it, a la facemenu (see also Facemenu+).
• Library Highlight lets you hide and show text according to its faces (conditional text)
• Library Highlight and Icicles search work with Emacs 20, in addition to more recent Emacs versions. MarkerPens and HiLock work only with Emacs 21 and later.

See Also:

• CrosshairHighlighting – highlight current line and column
• FaceMenuPlus
• HighlightCurrentColumn
• HighlightCurrentLine
• HighlightParentheses – highlight the parentheses surrounding point
• HighlightSexp, HighlightSexps – highlight sexps at point
• HighlightSymbol – highlight the current symbol throughout the buffer
• PulseRegion – Gently blink the background color around a region of text
• TextMarker – uses XRefMode

CategoryFaces CategoryModes CategoryRegexp CategoryRegion CategoryProgramming