Dear developers,

I`m attaching a patch on hi-lock.el which provides an extension.  From
the README:


,----
| This is an extension to hi-lock mode (of bzr revno 116727):
| 
| You can use the buffer-local variable `hi-lock-patterns-file' to
| specify a file to write the higlighting-patterns to.  When this
| variable is set, the highlighting-patterns will be kept in a dedicated
| buffer instead of being written into the very file you`re editing.
| 
| This is particularly useful --- and intended --- for highlighting
| source code: You might have multiple source files of a project that
| share a number of highlighting patterns.  Rather than putting (a
| lengthy list of) all the patterns into every file, you can set
| `hi-lock-patterns-file' for these files to point to a single file and
| have the patterns applied to them.  This is like a '#include
| "highlighting.patterns"'.
| 
| Some functions and faces are provided to highlight constants, global
| variables and function-like indentifiers.  Key bindings are provided:
| 
| 
| |-----------------+-------------|
| | type            | key binding |
| |-----------------+-------------|
| | constant        | C-x w c     |
| | global variable | C-x w g     |
| | function-like   | C-x w f     |
| |-----------------+-------------|
| 
| You can revert to the highlighting-patterns in the dedicated buffer
| with 'C-x w !'.
| 
| 
| The buffer is transparently maintained and saved when you use these
| key bindings.
| 
| Besides using a separate file to store the highlighting-patterns, you
| can store the patters in the same file they apply to the same as the
| unmodified hi-lock-mode does.  In case both patterns from a file and
| patterns in the same buffer are used, both types of patterns
| apply. This allows you to have a file with patterns used with multiple
| files and also per-file patterns ("local patterns") at the same time.
| The local patterns useful for instances when you want to highlight
| something in one particular file but not in others while all the files
| are using a separate file with common patterns.
`----


The patch can be applied to hi-lock.el as it is in the git repository
from a few hours ago.  I`m hoping it can be taken in.