advice needed for font-lock-syntactic-face-function

[Gian Uberto Lauri]

I'm trying  to borrow the  function from tex-mode.el (CVS  version) to
mark.  html tags and JSP/ASP/PHP blocks,  and I took the piece of code
that matches \verb+ + blocks as example.

(defun html-helper-font-lock-last-char-helper ()
  (when (eq (char-syntax (preceding-char)) ?/)
    (put-text-property (1- (point)) (point) 'syntax-table '(1)))
  (unless (eobp)
    (put-text-property (point) (1+ (point)) 'syntax-table '(7))))


(defun html-helper-font-lock-syntactic-face-function (state)
  (let ((char (nth 3 state)))
    (cond
     ;; char ,bh(B nil
     ((not char) font-lock-comment-face)
     (t
        (cond ((string-match "[a-zA-Z]" (char-to-string char))
               ;; This is an HTML tag
               (save-excursion
                 (unless (search-forward-regexp "[^%?]>" nil t)
                   (goto-char (point-max)))
                 (html-helper-font-lock-last-char-helper))
               html-helper-tag-face)
              ((string-match "[%?]"  (char-to-string char))
               ;; This is a server script block
               (save-excursion
                 (unless (search-forward-regexp "[%?]>" nil t)
                   (goto-char (point-max)))
                 (html-helper-font-lock-last-char-helper))
               html-helper-server-script-face)
              ((eq ? char)
               ;; This is a server script block
               (unless (search-forwardd "-->" nil t)
                 (save-excursion
                   (goto-char (point-max))))
               font-lock-comment-face))))))

Executing my function step by  step i verified that I successfully set
up  font-lock-syntactic-keywords,  I successfully  matched  a tag  but
after leaving the  save-excursion block I see that  the program enters
this sexp

(set-syntax-table old-syntax-table)

and after some more steps (about 8) I get stuck in the

(mode-line-mode-name) 

sexp.

I fear that there's something weird in the put-text-property sexps in
html-helper-font-lock-last-char-helper function.

Is there anybody who can (and wants) to give me some advice ?

The tex-mode original works fine, of course :).

TIA

 /\            ___
/___/\__|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_____________________
  //--\ | | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamico e fancazzista 
\/