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NCL Emacs Mode

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

Note: this script is unsupported by the NCL development team.