Re: [NonGNU ELPA] New package proposal: highlight-parentheses.el

[Tassilo Horn <tsdh@gnu.org>]

Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net> writes:

Hi Adam,

>> I'm maintaining highlight-parentheses.el [1] and would like to push
>> it to NonGNU ELPA.
>
> This looks very useful.  

It is! :-)

> I think I've seen the package's name before, but I'm not sure I ever
> looked at it.  That may be partially due to its somewhat ambiguous
> name, that seems to resemble similar packages.  For example, I'm
> pretty sure I've conflated it with the built-in show-paren-mode.  And
> I guess users could generally think it does something like
> rainbow-delimiters.el or prism.el, even though it serves a different
> purpose.

Yes, they are all similar but have a different focus.

  - show-paren-mode flashes "the other" paren, i.e., the opening when
    you are on the closing one.
  - rainbow-delimiters colorizes all parens (and brackets, braces) in a
    different color based on their depth.
  - highlight-parentheses is basically like rainbow-delimiters, i.e., it
    also colorizes parentheses (and brackets, braces) based on their
    depth but only the ones surrounding/containing point.

So you could view highlight-parentheses as a cross-breed of
rainbow-delimiters and show-paren-mode.  Just that it's actually a bit
older than rainbow-delimiters.

> If I may engage in a little bikeshedding, would you consider giving it
> a more descriptive name?  Maybe something like highlight-surrounding,
> or highlight-enclosing?  That would help distinguish it from other
> parens-highlighting packages and better describe what it does.

Indeed, but one doesn't change names after more than 13 years of
existence and establishing a user-base.  But I hope that it's
description "Highlight surrounding parentheses" describes it pretty
clear in the `list-packages' listing.

Bye,
Tassilo