Highlighting unsupported syntax

[Jakub Moskal <jakub.moskal@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I'm writing some code in Specware (www.specware.org), language that
doesn't have much IDE support. Working with lengthy files without
syntax highlighting is extremely difficult. Specware packages come
with support for Windows version of XEmacs (among other features, they
enable syntax highlighting). Now, I'm working on a Mac (10.5.1)
machine and I can run Specware, but I can't get the syntax
highlighting to work, there's no XEmacs for Mac.

I tried adding syntax highlighting to Aquamacs by using provided
XEmacs extensions, but without much success. I don't have much
experience with emacs, but I'm guessing there should be some
relatively easy way to extend it's support for highlighting. Can
anyone help me out? Should I try to convert XEmacs packages to
Aquamacs (how)? Use different distribution of Aquamacs (like Carbon
Emacs)? Or write my own highlighting extension - and if so - how?

I had an impression that most new languages use emacs as their first
IDE, but perhaps emacs isn't the way to go?

Thanks a lot for any help!

Jakub