Highlighting latex code

[baranas]

I am using Emacs+Auctex. I need additional highlighting in math mode. How can I force Emacs to highlight braces and some commands (like \quad) inside math mode with different color?

[stackman]

For parens or braces highlighting, I suggest paren-mode or mic-paren-mode.
Highlighting specific words is done with font-lock-add-keywords.
The following snippet in your init file should color \quad in red in tex or latex buffers.

Code: Select all

(add-hook 'TeX-mode-hook
    (lambda ()
        (font-lock-add-keywords nil
            '(("\\\\quad" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))))


[baranas]

Thanks, seems that it works. First time I tried similar method it messed up conditional highlighting. Can you explain to me what means 0 and t.

[baranas]

Still it messes up conditional Auctex highlighting when i add more complicated highlighting expressions. One of the examples would be when i change 0 to nil. I still don't know what it means , but that is an example.

[stackman]

The 0 means "highlight the whole match".
A positive number means "highlight the nth group in the regexp". For example,
the following code italicizes the word between braces in expressions of the form \begin{***}.

Code: Select all

(add-hook 'TeX-mode-hook
       (lambda () (font-lock-add-keywords nil
               '(("\\\\begin{\\([^}\\s-]*\\)}" 1 'italic t)))))


t means override any previous fontifications.
See the documentation of the functions font-lock-add-keywords and font-lock-keywords for more details.
There are some infos in the emacs manual about what is called "font lock". You can access the relevant part by evaluating (info "(emacs) Font Lock").