Xref: utzoo comp.lang.lisp:1816 comp.sys.xerox:447
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!idec!prlhp1!gupta
From: gupta@prlhp1.prl.philips.co.uk (gupta)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.sys.xerox
Subject: Changing fonts to differentiate comments from code
Keywords: Lucid-Lisp, read-macros, fonts, readtables, visualization
Message-ID: <889@prlhp1.prl.philips.co.uk>
Date: 23 May 89 09:15:31 GMT
Organization: Philips Research Laboratories, Redhill, UK
Lines: 18


I'd like to implement a facility (on an Apollo running Lucid Lisp 2.10) that    I've seen on the Xerox Lisp machines, but am having *considerable* trouble !

What I want is for comments to appear in a different font to code.
Therefore  typing #| or ; must change the font and typing |# or hitting <CR>
must reset the font.  (Of course hitting <CR> after having typed #| should not 
reset the font).

I've tried to set traces on some low-level read and write routines so as to
determine which routines could be advised to set/reset the font.

I can change the font but I haven't been able to figure out which routine needs to be advised to do this (and undo it). A few "nasty recursive error in editor" and "fatal stack overflow"s have convinced me that I need to get some clues from*out there*.

Any help - from the people at Lucid would be sincerely appreciated. Perhaps the people at Xerox could give me some clues ...

Thanks

Ashok Gupta