Re: Ruby-mode in emacs

[Phil Hagelberg <phil@hagelb.org>]

Paul R <paul.r.ml@gmail.com> writes:

> It is probably a more natural place for an emacs mode than in the ruby
> svn, and it would maybe help casual contributors to find their way.

Actually, the Ruby developers have already offered it to be included in
Emacs: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-06/msg00051.html
It looks like there are a few things that still need to be done
according to Richard:

> > To make this program understandable and maintainable, please give
> > every defconst and every defun a doc string that explains what jobs
> > they do.  Large functions such as ruby-calculate-indent need a comment
> > to explain every group of lines.  Maintaining Emacs is hard already,
> > and if we don't want to make it harder, we need to ensure that new
> > files are really clear.
> >
> > It would also be good to add comments at the top of the file
> > decribing the features that the mode provides.
> >
> >     (cond
> >      ((featurep 'font-lock)
> >       (or (boundp 'font-lock-variable-name-face)
> >           (setq font-lock-variable-name-face font-lock-type-face))
> >
> >       (setq ruby-font-lock-syntactic-keywords
> >
> > Please delete that cond, and put all the contents at top level.

I'll see what I can do about documentation. I suppose I should start by
submitting patches to the ruby repository until it's ready to go into
Emacs. It would make me very happy to get this in by the release of 23.

-Phil