Emacs Language Sensitive Editing

[Stephen Leake <stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov>]

For those who might have missed it, here is the announcement of a
version release for Else, which has excellent support for Ada. It was
posted on comp.emacs.sources.


Emacs Language Sensitive Editing (ELSE). Access to the package can be
obtained from http://www.zipworld.com.au/~peterm

keywords: template, skeleton, abbreviation

ELSE is a minor mode for Emacs that provides code
templates/skeletons/abbreviations for whatever language major mode is in
force in the current buffer (assumes that you have a set of ELSE template
definitions for that language, of course! :-)). Very similar in concept to
the template, skeleton and others but more powerful and (hopefully) easier
to understand for people who are not Elisp experts because:

a. ELSE template definitions are written in an ASCII format rather than
Elisp style (with all those "gotchas" of missing closing braces etc :-));
and

b. comes with extensive documentation (40+ page manual).

ELSE comes with language templates for C, Python, Ada (83 and 95), Emacs
Lisp, C++ and Java. These template files are in varying degrees of
"completeness" and "usability" so choosing just one to trial ELSE may not
necessarily be fair to the mode :-). For instance, the C++ and Java
templates are in a very primitive state. I don't program in either of these
languages so they are pretty much first passes from a program I have written
that generates ELSE templates from EBNF. I am only publishing these language
templates in the hopes that they can give someone a starting point for
further development :-) I know of one developer who has started to use the
C++ templates and his changes are available on the web site (in
C++-cust.lse).

I consider the Python and Ada templates the most complete sets. The C
templates are from a very early era when I first started coding with ELSE
and thus reflect a fairly primitive set of templates. I am back into a C
environment now but in a maintenance role, so they don't get much of a
chance to get a work out :-).

This version has been a very long time in gestation. Users of ELSE will
appreciates some of the small, but significent changes that have been made
to the package.

As always, if there are any questions, comments, suggestions or requests for
help, feel free to contact me at peter.milliken@gtech.com :-) I am more than
happy to help people understand and use the package.

Peter



-- 
-- Stephe