how to attach properties to a piece of text?

[Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com>]

how to write a function that colors particular words matching regex
inside a region?

I was thinking using font-lock-add-keywords, but that does to the
whole buffer.

i haven't studied emacs's face, display property etc systems. But
could anyone give me a rough guide on what function i should use or
lookup?

Here's a bit detail on what i need to do. I'm writing a mode for
Linden scripting language (LSL). Colors are specified using lsl's
vector type, like this:

vector red = <1,0,0>;
vector green = <0,1,0>;
vector blue = <0,0,1>;
vector black = <0,0,0>;
vector white = <1,1,1>;
vector pink = <1,0.07843,0.5765>;
vector orange = <1,0.6471,0>;
vector brown = <0.5451,0.1373,0.1373>;
vector purple = <0.3333,0.102,0.5451>;
vector gold = <1,0.8431,0>;

I want to be able write a function, something named color-vectors-
region, so that any <r,g,b>'s background is colored using the rgb
value. (each is a float from 0 to 1.) The part i don't know how, is
how to attach a text color property to a piece of text.

Thanks.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄