RE: [External] : Re: Could the current font-lock mechanism support font locking code in comments?

[Drew Adams]

> > Vanilla Emacs might not have dimming, but Emacs has it.
> > Library `doremi-frm.el' provides commands that let
> > you incrementally dim or strengthen a face or frame
> > foreground or background.
> 
> What I meant is that there is no way to define a face that dims
> other faces.

Was that requested?

> What you point to is what I was referring to as the hard way: you have
> to come up with a list of faces used by the font-lock rules 

You can do what I described in a blanket way to
all faces.  Or to any faces.  And any faces can
be used by font-lock (rules).

> then pass it to a function (like the ones in
> `doremi-frm`) which returns a new face
> (since you can't modify the actual font-lock faces

Why do you say that you can't change the actual
font-lock faces?  With what I described you do
exactly that (to any faces, whether used for
font-locking or not).  Do you mean something
different, by "modify the actual faces" from
changing their attribute values (e.g. foreground
and background colors)?

> which are still being needed in their non-dimmed form)

I don't follow you.  Why is that?  Was that part of
the request - that the same face have two different
appearances, and at the same time no less?  I don't
even know what that means.

> and then arrange to run the existing rules in such
> a way that they actually use your newly defined faces.

In what I described face colors are changed; that's
all.  Font-locking still does what it does.  It uses
the same faces - they just change color; that's all.

In what I described the colors change as you watch,
i.e., as you change them incrementally.  There's no
change to anything in font-lock (rules, face names,
whatever).

> It's cumbersome and tricky to do it in a reliable way.

I guess we're talking about completely different things.
Perhaps I misunderstood the request.  I thought it was
just to dim some (or all) faces.  That, you can do with
what I described - dim, desaturate, the opposite, or
whatever.

> Instead, what we'd need is a face whose effect is to modify the
> underlying face (e.g. by dimming it).  I guess alpha-blending could be
> used for that.

Sorry, you've lost me.  I don't know what the need is
to have a face whose effect is to modify another,
"underlying" face (dimming it).  What's an "underlying"
face - are you perhaps talking about face attribute
inheritance?

Anyway, it's not important that I follow you.  What I
described is, I hope, clear.  If it doesn't correspond
to the request, so be it.  Sorry for the noise, in that
case.