General ⇒ getting emacs to recognize new commands

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I use emacs to edit .tex files and use user defined macros like \beq instead of \begin{equation} along with various other \newcommand macros that take arguments (such as \newcommand{\figref}[1]{\figurename~#1}).

emacs knows about the standard latex commands and uses pretty colours for their arguments. For environments, it leaves them on a separate line if you use Alt-Q to neaten up the text before or after. Emacs obviously doesn't realize that \beq is an environment and it doesn't use pretty colours for the arguments of user newcommands.

Does anyone know what I would need to put in my .emacs file to make emacs treat \beq it in the same way as \begin{equation} and put the argument of \figref in pretty colours?

Many thanks in advance,

Mike