Re: font-locking of sexpr form broken

[martin rudalics]

> The font-locking gets messed up on the second format because I have a
> s-expr within the double quotes

This is a known limitation (aka "Left Margin Convention") described in
section 31.2.1 of the Emacs manual.  You have two choices:

(1) Set the option `open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start' to nil.

(2) Escape the offending paren with a backslash like

      (format t "
\(make-frame :length  ~A
             :shape   ~A

Observe that with option (1) the paren will be still displayed with
`font-lock-warning-face' and the "help-echo" telling you

"Looks like a toplevel defun: escape the parenthesis"

is not removed.  Hence, in general (and in particular in Elisp mode
where the backslash hardly ever matters) option (2) is preferable.