Re: Selective font-locking?

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> (defun python-shell-multiline--apply-font-lock (limit)
>   (if-let ((process (get-buffer-process (current-buffer)))
> 	   (pmark (process-mark)))
>       (if (> limit pmark)
> 	  (let ((font-lock-keywords python-shell-multiline-font-lock-keywords)
> 		(font-lock-syntactic-face-function
> 		 #'python-font-lock-syntactic-face-function)
> 		(start (max pmark (point))))
> 	    (with-syntax-table python-mode-syntax-table
> 	      (font-lock-flush start limit)
> 	      (font-lock-ensure start limit))))))

Calling `font-lock-flush` or `font-lock-ensure` from font-lock-keywords
is quite odd.  I'd call something like `font-lock-fontify-region` instead.

> It seems to me this general technique could be useful for lots of
> different “mixed fontification buffers”, simply rebinding
> font-lock-keywords/syntax table/etc. as needed for the region under
> consideration. It’s much simpler than the round-trip copy + full
> buffer re-fontify that many modes use, with no extra buffers to
> manage, post-command-hooks, etc.

Indeed that matches my intuition.
There's one thing with which you might want to be careful, tho, which is
the `syntax-ppss` state.  You might want to `narrow-to-region` around
the call to `font-lock-fontify-region` (maybe narrow to pmark...(point-max)?).

This is because in a shell buffer, some of the past interactions may
have been truncated (e.g. by `comint-truncate-buffer`), so you may end
up with (point-min) being in the middle of a string or something.
[ Similar problems can occur if the prompt itself contains funny characters
  like unmatched quotes.  or if past interactions include output which
  is not lexically valid Python code.  ]


        Stefan