emacs python-mode quote in triple quote font-lock problem

[Alfred Morgan]

I have been looking into the font-lock problem where quotes in triple 
quotes confuses font-lock.  I feel that I am getting somewhere close to 
a solution but I need a push in the right direction.  I got the strings 
to highlight correctly but only because I changed the quotes from being 
string quote syntax "\"" and set them to punctuation syntax "." and then 
added a keyword rule to highlight python strings in string-face.  The 
problem is that when editing inside such a string, i.e. on line "Say 
ni.", font-lock doesn't know it is editing inside a string so it 
re-fontifies from that line on starting in regular face which then 
messes up the highlighting for the rest of the document's strings.  You 
can get proper highlighting back only until you edit the line that 
started the problem "'''Don't say nu," or (font-lock-fontify-buffer) the 
whole buffer.

Python font-lock text sample:
def ni():
     '''Don't say nu,
     Say ni.
'''
     print r'''Python'''
     return



The following lisp code gets the python strings highlighted properly but 
with bad side effects.
Lisp code:
(modify-syntax-entry ?' "." py-mode-syntax-table)
(modify-syntax-entry ?\" "." py-mode-syntax-table)
(font-lock-add-keywords 'python-mode (list (cons py-stringlit-re 
font-lock-string-face)))
(python-mode)
(font-lock-fontify-buffer)




-alfred