bug#2630: most keywords in emacs-lisp-mode has no syntax highlight

[xah lee]

the syntax highlighting in emacs-lisp-mode only support the very  
minimum of highlighting.

for example, these keywords would be colored purple by default:

 defun, lambda, while, if, progn, save-restriction

while the following built-in keywords are uncolored (black):
narrow-to-region, mapc, goto-char, point-min, search-forward, car,
nil, replace-match ... etc.

it appears that this is because only proper elisp “special forms”  
are are colored, while all the others are not (macros, functions,  
commands, variables ...). (thanks to Nikolaj Schumacher & Tassilo Horn)

but in summary, i think the way it is is rather odd. It is rather  
strange and difficult to understand unless the user has expert elisp  
knowledge, and it is somewhat not typical with how most other major  
mode for languages syntax color the lang's keywords.

(emacs-lisp-mode doesn't seem to support customize-group and font- 
lock-maximum-decoration)

i think the current behavior is severe enough to be considered a bug.

This is emacs 22.x.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄