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.