Re: help-default-arg-highlight

[Juri Linkov]

Glenn Morris <address@hidden> writes:
> The new help-default-arg-highlight is broken for me: now arguments are
> not highlighted at all.
>
> My display is capable of showing italics, hence
> (display-supports-face-attributes-p '(:slant italic)) returns non-nil.
> The font I use for the `default' face, however, does not have an
> italic form. Therefore trying to make something italic through text
> properties has no effect. I use a different font for the `italic'
> face.
>
> When this feature was being discussed on emacs-devel, it was
> predicted that this would happen.

I have exactly the same problem, and I solved it by redefining the
function in .emacs:

(defun help-default-arg-highlight (arg)
  (propertize (downcase arg) 'face '(:foreground "SkyBlue4")))

But I don't understand why not to use a special `help-argument-name'
face like it was already added to help-fns.el but eventually removed.
Redefining a function is too ugly way to customize a face.  It makes
sense to redefine the function only when the user don't want to
downcase the arguments.  Otherwise, if the function can't guess
reliably if the used font has an italic form (maybe it is possible to
get this information from the font?), then it at least it should allow
easy customization of the help argument face defined by `defface'.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/