Re: Text highlighter functiontionality

[Teemu Likonen]

On 2009-07-23 04:44 (-0700), stephan zimmer wrote:

> Is anyone aware of a text highlighter functionality in emacs? I would
> like to highlight (possibly non-connected) portions of text in a
> buffer in such a way, that the highlighting persists within one emacs
> session (i.e., when I change the buffer and return to it again, the
> highlighting should still be there).

Sounds pretty much like "M-s h r" (highlight-regexp) to me.

But if you want to mark a region and highlight it you could use a simple
function to create an overlay. Here's an example function which
highlights current active region. You can remove the highlighting by
just editing text inside it.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(defun my-overlay (beg end)
  "Create an overlay between BEG and END.
If called interactively BEG and END are the region."
  (interactive "r")
  (require 'hi-lock)
  (let ((ol (make-overlay beg end)))
    (dolist (prop '((modification-hooks (lambda (ol after &rest ignore)
                                          (when after
                                            (delete-overlay ol))))
                    (face . hi-yellow)
                    (evaporate . t)))
      (overlay-put ol (car prop) (cdr prop)))))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---