RE: setnu.el / setnu+.el

[Drew Adams]

           Is there a way to have line numbers
           go unaffected by highlighting?

       Could you elaborate? Do you see highlighted line numbers?

    Yes, my line numbers have the same highlighting as
    the adjacent code.

I just checked in Emacs 22, and you're right. However, in Emacs 20, the line
numbers are not highlighted. I wrote setnu+.el, which is a only minor tweak
of setnu.el, but I don't know enough to help you here. I believe that this
is the code, in setnu.el, that is in question:

(defun setnu-set-glyph-face (g face)
   (put-text-property 0 (length g) 'face face g))

This code is intended to impose the given face (just bold, by default) on
the line-number overlay text. It does that correctly, but I guess it does
not also remove other text properties that might be on the same overlay
(imposed by font-locking).

It appears that if the newline at the end of a line is fontified (matches a
regexp that imposes fontification), then the line-number overlay is
fontified in the same way.

At first I thought it might be the new `font-lock-face' property that is
supplying the fontification, because that wouldn't be cancelled just by
adding a `face' property. So I tried adding this to the code above:

(put-text-property 0 (length g) 'font-lock-face nil g)

But that had no visible effect. I think that someone who knows either the
setnu.el code or the font-lock mechanisms or overlays better than I will
have to help you. Sorry.