Highlighting parentheses

Highlighting parentheses

[Richard M Stallman]

http://nschum.de/src/emacs/highlight-parentheses/highlight-parentheses-0.9.1.el

That program seems to implement the feature that was suggested,
so maybe it would be a good thing to add to Emacs.

Re: Highlighting parentheses

[Óscar Fuentes]

Richard M Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> http://nschum.de/src/emacs/highlight-parentheses/highlight-parentheses-0.9.1.el
>
> That program seems to implement the feature that was suggested,
> so maybe it would be a good thing to add to Emacs.

I like the feature but there is one caveat: parentheses are narrow and
colorizing is not the most effective way of making them highly
visible. I was experimenting a bit and setting on the bold attribute for
the colorized parentheses makes things a bit better, imho, although a
better solution would be desirable.

-- 
Oscar

RE: Highlighting parentheses

[Drew Adams]

>
http://nschum.de/src/emacs/highlight-parentheses/highlight-parentheses-0.9.1.el
> 
> That program seems to implement the feature that was suggested,
> so maybe it would be a good thing to add to Emacs.

Some minor suggestions for the defcustom of `hl-paren-colors':

* It would be better to use faces, not just (foreground) colors.

* The default value should provide for both light and dark backgrounds.

* The default value should have more colors (faces). Five or six would be good.

* The default colors should be brighter (very different from black). They should
stand out from both the default background (white) and the default foreground
(black).

* Adjacent default colors in the list should be of very different hue, not
almost indistinguishable.

Re: Highlighting parentheses

[Stefan Monnier]

> I like the feature but there is one caveat: parentheses are narrow and
> colorizing is not the most effective way of making them
> highly visible.

Which makes me wonder: in which context is this coloring
useful/desirable?  In Lisp at least, we usually don't want to make
parentheses highly visible: learning Lisp is (to a large extent)
teaching your eyes to ignore parentheses.


        Stefan

Re: Highlighting parentheses

[Will Farrington]

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On Feb 2, 2009, at 11:43 AM, Richard M Stallman wrote:

> http://nschum.de/src/emacs/highlight-parentheses/highlight-parentheses-0.9.1.el
>
> That program seems to implement the feature that was suggested,
> so maybe it would be a good thing to add to Emacs.


Would it perhaps be better to just add this feature to paren.el rather  
than including two packages which do fairly similar things?

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Re: Highlighting parentheses

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Richard M Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

  > http://nschum.de/src/emacs/highlight-parentheses/highlight-parentheses-0.9.1.el
  > 
  > That program seems to implement the feature that was suggested,
  > so maybe it would be a good thing to add to Emacs.

M-x show-paren-mode is not as fancy, but it highlights parentheses well
enough, IMHO we should have it turned on by default.

Re: Highlighting parentheses

[Will Farrington]

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On Feb 2, 2009, at 2:54 PM, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:

> Richard M Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> http://nschum.de/src/emacs/highlight-parentheses/highlight-parentheses-0.9.1.el
>>
>> That program seems to implement the feature that was suggested,
>> so maybe it would be a good thing to add to Emacs.
>
> M-x show-paren-mode is not as fancy, but it highlights parentheses  
> well
> enough, IMHO we should have it turned on by default.

Unless I am mistaken, M-x show-paren-mode only highlights the sexp at  
hand when the mark is after a paren (it highlights the preceding  
sexp), whereas the highlight-parentheses package above currently shows  
the user all the various matching parentheses for the s expressions  
around where the mark is (whether or not it is next to a paren).

I would still support adding this functionality to M-x show-paren-mode  
though, and enabling it by default.

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Re: Highlighting parentheses

[Óscar Fuentes]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> I like the feature but there is one caveat: parentheses are narrow and
>> colorizing is not the most effective way of making them
>> highly visible.
>
> Which makes me wonder: in which context is this coloring
> useful/desirable?

On some contexts where people use show-paren-mode. It is better because
you don't need to put the cursor on a parentheses to see the matching
delimiter.

> In Lisp at least, we usually don't want to make
> parentheses highly visible: learning Lisp is (to a large extent)
> teaching your eyes to ignore parentheses.

We need to see *some* parentheses: indentation level is not enough when
you put a non-trivial expression on a single line (which is a similar
scenario as for other languages, like C).

Finally, highlighting matching parentheses is something that adds to
indentation level when perceiving code structure.

IMO, this is not a killer feature, just nice.

-- 
Oscar

Re: Highlighting parentheses

[Richard M Stallman]

    > That program seems to implement the feature that was suggested,
    > so maybe it would be a good thing to add to Emacs.


    Would it perhaps be better to just add this feature to paren.el rather  
    than including two packages which do fairly similar things?

That might be a good idea.