Editor Enhancements

Functionality includes:

• Indents two spaces between "begin" and "end" statments
• Indents two spaces within "do" loops and "if" statments
• Highlighting (chose your colors)
• NCL Reserved words
• gsn_csm plot templates
• Select NCL built-in functions
• Select Contributed fucntions
• Shea_util functions
• Comments

Issues that remain

• If you don't like the colors, choose your own.
• Not all built-in functions are included

Controlling your emacs window:
Add and modify the following to your .Xdefaults if desired:

    Emacs.geometry:         80x38+250+10
    Emacs*background:       antique white
    Emacs*foreground:       black
    Emacs.pane.menubar.background: peachpuff
    Emacs.menu*.background: peachpuff
    Emacs.cursorColor:      red3
    Emacs.font:             10x20
    Emacs.pane.menubar.font: 10x20
    

Steps

• Download the ncl.el file and put it on your system.
• Put the following text in your .emacs file: (note, if you do not want my colors, you can change them here or not include this portion in your .emacs file)

    (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\.ncl$" . ncl-mode) auto-mode-alist))

    ; this line associates ncl-mode with the lisp package that defines it.
    (autoload 'ncl-mode "~murphys/bin/ncl.el")  

    ; a hook is a list of functions that get executed under certain 
    ; conditions. 
    (add-hook 'ncl-mode-hook
       (lambda ()  ; lambda is an anonymous function. e.g. has no name.
         ;;setup display colors for font-lock
         (set-face-foreground font-lock-comment-face "FireBrick")
         (set-face-foreground font-lock-string-face  "Salmon")
         (set-face-foreground font-lock-keyword-face "Purple")
    ; select built-in functions
         (set-face-foreground font-lock-function-name-face "Blue") 
    ; gsn* functions
         (set-face-foreground font-lock-variable-name-face "SteelBlue")
    ; shea_util and contributed functions
         (set-face-foreground font-lock-reference-face  "CadetBlue")
         )
    )
    

• Change ~murphys/bin/ncl.el to the location of YOUR ncl.el file
• Modify the ncl.el code as necessary to include functions or keywords not specifically listed

The following scripts enable NCL syntax highlighting in nedit versions 5.1.0 and higher. The scripts range from a minimalistic approach with few highlighting schemes and few colors, to a more thorough highlighting scheme with many colors. The scripts can be downloaded and, if desired, edited and tested. When ready you can import the file into nedit by typing, for example:

    nedit -import ncl.edit

• ncl.nedit -a minimalistic approach, keywords and flow constructs are in bold-black, comments are plain-red and symbols are highlighted in bold-blue (courtesy of Dennis Shea)

• ncl2.nedit - a more moderate highlighting scheme that highlights attributes, I/O functions (among others) (courtesy of Adam Phillips)

• ncl3.nedit - an intensive syntax highlighting approach that highlights most NCL functions (courtesy of Paul Thomas Quelet). Updated periodically by volunteers to reflect new syntax or functions.

Steps

• Download the desired .vim file [naming it ncl.vim] and put it in your .vim/syntax directory
• Put the following text in your .vimrc file

    au BufRead,BufNewFile *.ncl set filetype=ncl
    au! Syntax newlang source $VIM/ncl.vim 

• ncl1.vim -a simple approach (courtesy of Kevin Mueller [UIUC])

• ncl2.vim - extensive highlighting of functions through v5.0.0 with some v5.1.0 functions included. (courtesy of Arindam Chakraborty [Indian Institute of Science])

I experimented a bit with the VIM to include an auto-completion option for NCL commands. I think I have some good news for those who do not want to remember all the commands or consult the website often while writing a script! I find it particularly useful! Here is what you have to do.

1. save ncl.dic to ~/.vim/dictionary/

   (I took the commands from the ncl syntax file compiled by Arindam Chakraborty. I am not sure how complete this list is, but one can always add entries to this file.)

2. make the following entries to your .gvimrc

   "Show autocomplete menus.
   set complete-=k complete+=k " Add dictionary search (as per dictionary option)
   set wildmode=list:full
   set wildmenu
   au BufRead,BufNewFile *.ncl set dictionary=~/.vim/dictionary/ncl.dic
   

3. open your .ncl file and start typing the first letter of the command/resource/function name and press 'control+n' and choose your option.

   Here is a screenshot of my editor that works great!

This script was contributed by TJ Olney of Western Washington University, for use with John E Davis's JED editor.

JED is a freely available text editor for Unix, VMS, MSDOS, OS/2, BeOS, QNX, and win9X/NT platforms. Although it is a powerful editor designed for use by programmers, its drop-down menu facility make it one of the friendliest text editors around. Hence it is ideal for composing simple email messages as well as editing complex programs in a variety of computer languages.

JED makes extensive use of the S-Lang library, which endows it with a powerful S-Lang macro language. This and other features of the library are discussed on the features page.

To incorporate this syntax in your JED environment, add the lines from the ncl.sl to your "defaults.sl" or "jed.rc" (.jedrc) file. The instructions are also in the file.