Emacs hl-line: change color locally

Question

I normally let hl-line take a slightly darker shade of current background. This works nice in editing buffers. However, in some buffers, such as Org agenda and the Gnus group buffer, I would like to use a more spiffy color (in place of the cursor). To be specific I would like to change the color of hl-line in the gnus-hl-line without affecting the color of hl-line in other buffers. ``` (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-hl-line) (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-hl-line) (defun gnus-hl-line () (hl-line-mode 1) (set (make-local-variable 'line-move-visual) nil) (setq cursor-type nil)) ``` Thanks, Final solution using Phil's suggestion. It uses a neutral hl line most of the time, but sometimes a bold hl-line is appreciable, e.g. in Gnus and Org agenda ``` ;; From emacs-wiki: (defun shade-color (intensity) "print the #rgb color of the background, dimmed according to intensity" (interactive "nIntensity of the shade : ") (apply 'format "#%02x%02x%02x" (mapcar (lambda (x) (if (> (ls…

Accepted Answer

`hl-line-face` is a variable containing the face to use for `hl-line-mode`, so we can make that variable buffer-local in these modes, and assign it a new custom face.

You can create a new face like this:

```
(defface gnus-hl-line
  '((t :inherit hl-line))
  "Face for highlighting the current line with `gnus-hl-line'."
  :group 'hl-line)
```

and customize it with M-x `customize-face` RET `gnus-hl-line` RET

Then add this in your `gnus-hl-line` function (before calling `hl-line-mode` would seem most sensible).

```
(set (make-local-variable 'hl-line-face) 'gnus-hl-line)
```

Emacs hl-line: change color locally

Solution

Problem