A new recipe. This is a strange one. I hope it works for you as well. emacs -Q M-x tool-bar-mode resize the frame to be height 56 (according to the window manager) Load the included file M-x c-toggle-parse-state-debug C-s FIXME C-s Move cursor to the "o" on the next line (1175). Type: PyTYPE( C-f ) I get errors at the first open paren, and the close paren. Resizing the fame is important! I think it's due to caching that happens during font locking.