i now modified highlightext.cpp to expand macros before highlighting
(instead of skipping macro names/arguments) which seems to solve the
described problem completely - yet still the question: might this
expanding-before-highlighting cause any trouble?

anyway, here's what i did (in the highlighttext function):

// expand macros _before_ highlighting
text_t exptext = "";
disp.expandstring(text, exptext);

+ substituted the two following occurences of 'text' with 'exptext'

(hope this is proper c++ ;-)

if there aren't any objections against doing this i consider it the
final solution :-)

cheers
jens