31. Advanced Highlighting of Matching Parentheses

Load this file, activate it and Emacs will display highlighting on whatever parenthesis (and paired delimiter if you like this) matches the one before or after point. This is an extension to the paren.el file distributed with Emacs. The default behaviour is similar to paren.el but more sophisticated. Normally you can try all default settings to enjoy mic-paren.

Or - if you are a LaTeX writer like the current maintainer - try the following additional setup in your initialization file:

  ;; In LaTeX-mode we want this
  (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook
            (function (lambda ()
                        (paren-toggle-matching-quoted-paren 1)
                        (paren-toggle-matching-paired-delimiter 1))))

Or - if you are programming in C like languages - try also:

  (add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook
            (function (lambda ()
                         (paren-toggle-open-paren-context 1))))

‘mic-paren.el’ is an extension and replacement to the packages ‘paren.el’ and ‘stig-paren.el’ for Emacs. When mic-paren is active Emacs normal parenthesis matching is deactivated. Instead parenthesis matching will be performed as soon as the cursor is positioned at a parenthesis. The matching parenthesis (or the entire expression between the parentheses) is highlighted until the cursor is moved away from the parenthesis.

Features include:

• Both forward and backward parenthesis matching (simultaneously if cursor is between two expressions).
• Indication of mismatched parentheses.
• Recognition of "escaped" (also often called "quoted") parentheses.
• Option to match "escaped" parens too, especially in (La)TeX-mode (e.g. matches expressions like "\(foo bar\)" properly).
• Offers two functions as replacement for forward-sexp and backward-sexp which handle properly quoted parens (s.a.). These new functions can automatically be bounded to the original binding of the standard forward-sexp and backward-sexp functions.
• Option to activate matching of paired delimiter (i.e. characters with syntax ’$’). This is useful for writing in LaTeX-mode for example.
• Option to select in which situations (always, never, if match, if mismatch) the entire expression should be highlighted or only the matching parenthesis.
• Message describing the match when the matching parenthesis is off-screen (vertical and/or horizontal). Message contains either the linenumber or the number of lines between the two matching parens. Option to select in which cases this message should be displayed.
• Optional delayed highlighting (useful on slow systems),
• Functions to activate/deactivate ‘mic-paren.el’ are provided.
• Numerous options to control the behaviour and appearance of ‘mic-paren.el’.

To configure this package, type:

  M-x customize-group RET mic-paren-matching RET

This document was generated by Aidan Kehoe on December 27, 2016 using texi2html 1.82.