was it charles waldman who complained about this? i see what's going on, in that it's trying to highlight lines showing program execution but not highlight error messages, entering/leaving messages, and the like. the latter two messages have colons in them, and program execution lines have -'s in them because of options beginning with -. So you could at least eliminate some problems by looking only for places with a - beginning a word [i.e. preceded by spaces]. -- Ben In order to save my hands, I am cutting back on my mail. I also write as succinctly as possible -- please don't be offended. If you send me mail, you _will_ get a response, but please be patient, especially for XEmacs-related mail. If you need an immediate response and it is not apparent in your message, please say so. Thanks for your understanding. See also http://www.666.com/ben/chronic-pain/