Emacs related posts are now being syndicated on Planet Emacsen!
You may find this helpful if you should find yourself using Erlang on OS X and you’ve installed it using Macports. After a default installation you’ll need to manually configure your .emacs file for erlang-mode and set your $MANPATH variable correctly, here’s how.
If you’ve installed Erlang with Macports then you may have noticed that when you edit .erl files you’re not entering into erlang-mode, nor is it available to enter into. Here’s how I got erlang-mode working on my system.
Macports will install Erlang into /opt/local/lib/erlang by default. The paths to put in your .emacs file provided in the erlang-mode documentation only need to be tweaked a slight bit to function properly. Here’s what I put in mine:
(setq load-path (cons "/opt/local/lib/erlang/lib/tools-2.6.4/emacs/" load-path))
(setq erlang-root-dir "/opt/local/lib/erlang")
(setq exec-path (cons "/opt/local/bin" exec-path))
(require 'erlang-start)
Note that you may require setting “tools-2.6.4” to something else if Macports has upgraded it’s distribution of Erlang.
Setting up your $MANPATH variable is fairly simple as well. Just put the string “/opt/local/lib/erlang/man” in a file called ‘erlang’ in /etc/manpaths.d/ and make sure it ends with an empty line. Test this by opening a new terminal and running: echo $MANPATH | grep erlang. If it doesn’t come back empty then you’ve done it right.
I started reading Writing GNU Emacs Extensions by Bob Glickstein. The first real meaty example you work through in it is making an ‘other-buffer’ like key command that works in reverse. So here I present to the internet, my version of previous-window.
(defun previous-window ()
"As other-buffer, except in the other-direction"
(interactive)
(other-window -1))
(global-set-key "\C-c\o" 'previous-window)
Put in your .emacs file and activate with C-c o when you have multiple frames open at once.
I do a lot of DocBook XML editing, either at my job or at home. Because of that I’ve built up a pretty customized .emacs file. Every so often I meet another person whose also found themselves having to edit a bunch of XML. The most fantastic thing about nXML mode I think is the automatic slash completion feature. It works like this: If I have an open element, say I’ve started an <xref>, you can configure nXML mode such that upon typing the closing </ characters it will complete that sequence for you. I can just never remember how to set that option in emacs. So today I’m taking the time to finally document that procedure.
For even more fun, use the C-c C-f macro which will auto complete your current block, regardless of your position inside of it. For additional references, I invite you to check out the docs NM Tech has posted on nXML-Mode.