Re: text properties in tex mode

[harven <harven@free.fr>]

Kostas Oikonomou <k.oikonomou@att.net> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I use Emacs's plain TeX mode (i.e. not AucTeX), with font-lock
> deactivated. (And Emacs 22.3.)
>
> I'd like to be able to change the background color of a piece of text
> to, say, yellow, by selecting it with the mouse, and then doing Edit
> -> Text Properties -> Background Color.
>
> However this fails with a message "Face ((:background yellow)) not
> configured for latex mode".
> How do I get around this?

This is probably because font-lock-mode is enabled by default in latex-mode.
Thus any face you set is overwritten by the font-lock processing.
Disabling font-lock-mode (M-x font-lock-mode) brings back the menu
you are interested in, but you will lose the coloring provided by
latex-mode.

Another solution would be to use overlays instead of faces for 
region highlighting. That's what use the highlight-regexp command;
this command highlight words matching a regexp. I think there is
an extension called highlight.el, by Drew Adams, which provides 
easy access to overlays. Have a look at the wiki
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/HighLight

Hope that helps