With some encouragement from Andrew and because I need it for an external xml project, I have tried out emacs for the first time and really like it. Part of that liking is due to the fact that I was using my previous jed editor in emacs emulation/edt emulation mode for all these years and all the basic commands turn out to be the same once I load the edt emulation mode for emacs. (Yep, that's the vax edt editor from the 70's which had a lot of rabid fans including me.)
For PLplot the first thing I tried with emacs was cleaning up the indentation in api.xml. With nxml mode (which recognized the DocBook schema automagically), that consisted of selecting the whole document and then running the "C-M-\" command to indent it consistently. There were a large number of whitespace changes (and I checked there were _only_ whitespace changes). The result continues to validate with "make validate" and the raw xml looks really good now and much easier to edit as a result. I also put an identifying string at the top of the document to select nxml mode and dropped the sgml (!) mode emacs instructions from the bottom of the file. Currently, I am only scratching the surface of the powerful nxml-mode capabilities, but from what I see so far it is looking pretty good. If nobody has any serious objections to this indentation style cleanup and dropping sgml mode emacs support from our DocBook files (which apparently nobody has used since the indentation was so messed up), I will continue (and probably finish) the work tomorrow on our remaining DocBook files. I also plan to append nxml/DocBook "cookbook" instructions to README.emacs (which currently just contains cookbook instructions for the cmake-mode of emacs for our CMake files). I hope as a result of those planned nxml/DocBook instructions that those who have access to emacs should be able to use the nxml mode with no problems on our DocBook files. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
