NOvA » NOvA-ART

h1. Syntax highlighting for emacs

Emacs should automatically highlight C++ files, makefiles etc. for you (you may need to activate global-font-lock-mode). But it needs to be taught about FHCIL files.

Copy and paste this onto the end of your .emacs file to get syntax highlighting of files with a .fcl extension.

<pre>

(setq fclKeywords

 '(

   ;; Unfortunately, the comment syntax takes precedence, so this doesn't work  

   ("#include" . font-lock-keyword-face)

   ("@local" . font-lock-keyword-face)

   ;; All these names are magic, I think                                        

   ("process_name:\\|services:\\|source:\\|outputs:\\|physics:\\|producers:\\|filters:\\|analyzers:||\trigger_paths:||\end-paths:" . font-lock-builtin-face)

   ("true\\|false" . font-lock-builtin-face)

   ;; Variable definitions are followed by colons                               

   ("[a-zA-Z0-9_]*:" . font-lock-variable-name-face)

  )

)

;; Python mode gets us comment handling and indentation at colons               

(define-derived-mode fcl-mode python-mode

  (setq mode-name "FHICL")

  (setq font-lock-defaults '(fclKeywords))

;;  (setq tab-width 2) ;; Doesn't seem to work                                  

)

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.fcl\\'" . fcl-mode))

</pre>

h2. Known bugs 

* The comment syntax takes precedence, so #include gets incorrectly coloured as a comment

* The mode defaults to 4-space tabs, 2 seems to be our standard

* The mode thinks that blocks start at : not :{ , so the auto-indenting is a little off (but better than nothing).

* This doesn't help vi users

Emacs/lisp experts are welcome to attempt to fix the first three.