The emphasize statement emphasizes text in a textual region by reversing the foreground and background colors. For example, if a textual region has a red foreground and a black background, its emphasized text is displayed in black against red. Note that this statement differs from the highlight action statement, which highlights the entire textual region when it is selected.

 

The emphasize statement affects only the appearance of text as it is displayed in the textual region. The internally stored background and foreground color attributes of the characters are not changed.

 

The emphasize action statement always uses a segment specification; for example:

 

response to NewText

    emphasize segment column 3 line 1

        thru column 3 line 5 in Reader

 

emphasizes the string of text from column 3, line 1 through column 3, line 5 in NewText as soon as NewText is selected.

 

You must specify this statement for each textual region you would like to emphasize; you cannot emphasize segments for a class of textual regions. Also, each textual region can have only one segment of emphasized text at any one time. When a second emphasize statement is executed for a particular textual region, the first segment will become de-emphasized.

 

To explicitly remove the emphasis from a segment, use the deemphasize action statement. You can use this statement for a single textual region or for a class of textual regions. In this statement, you need not specify the segment; simply provide the name of the textual region; for example:

 

response to Undo

    deemphasize NewText

 

Text blocks cannot be emphasized with this statement; you will need to use a colored textual region instead. (See Working with Colored Textual Regions.) When colored text is emphasized, the foreground and background colors of each of the characters within the emphasized segments are reversed.