MicroEmacs / Introduction-Features

Syntax highlighting

ME provides very nice syntax-hilighting for each possible programming-language. You can also switch between different syntax-modes in one language. See the following example for writing latex-documents.

With an double-shortcut (C-c C-h) you can switch to an other hilighting-scheme providing more control to the final latex-output.

This allows you to read your text without being disturb by special latex-commands what is very important for correcting your manuscript. Par example words like are converted to `Archaeopterix' green coloured (= italic). So you can easy control what your are writing. However you can customise every thing here.

You can also highlight simple text files just by inserting on line of code at the beginning. The following figure shows a hilighted Text-document which is also folded by numbers. The header is yellow, special words are green.

Folding

The last figure already showed an other important feature of ME, folding. You can fold a document by specific symbols or by numbers at the beginning of a line. The following figure shows a folded latex document

MicroEmacs in Folding Mode

You can jump with the cursor to a specific header an unfold this region by pressing `F2' for editing. See the follwing Figure.

A specific latex chapter unfolded

Toolbar

Together with the new release of MicroEmacs in december 2002 there was a new toolbar coming. This toolbar allows easy navigating in the source code or text via the item-list. Switching between Files using Favoorites or Bufferlist. You dont neeed to remmber all those abbreviations because a collapsable abbreviation list can be used and also the tools are just on click away. See the following figure.

The new toolbar

Nested hilighting

There is also an other great feature of ME if you are including source-code inside other documents (like in literate programming). You can not only the hilight code in the HTML-pages, but also during edition inside ME. See the following example, which hilights emf-code inside html-documents.

;  Created By    : Dr. Detlef Groth 
;  Created       : Wed Oct 16 05:53:08 2002 
;  Last Modified : <071122.1126> 
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; 
define-macro hilight-emf-inside-html 
    execute-file "hkemf" 
    0 hilight  .hilight.emf 2 50             $global-scheme 
    hilight .hilight.html 0xc0 "<pre>" "</pre>" .hilight.emf $global-scheme 
    execute-file "hkemf" 
    hilight .hilight.emf 0xc0 "</pre>" "</pre>" .hilight.html $global-scheme 
    screen-update 
!emacro 

This is a really great feature, hilight C-code inside latex, Java-code inside HTML and so on. No problems with that. For some other example see also in the the file macros/docmacro.emf.