Re: modes not doing much

[robert . thorpe]

YAD wrote:
> So far I've used Ruby mode and HTML mode.
> No colors, no auto-indent on <rtrn>.
>
> So what are the modes doing?  Vim and even the
> Firefox source viewer have syntax-based colors.
> Isn't Emacs supposed to do that too?
>
> Also, Lisp .cl files and Python .py files are coming up in
> Fundamental mode, while OCaml .ml files come up in Lisp mode.
> What the heck is going on? :(

In addition to what others have said :

* Common Lisp files normally end in .lsp or .lisp this is what Emacs
expects

* You're probably using an old Emacs with no Python support.  This will
be fixed in the v22.  Until then you can install python mode from the
python distribution.

* Indentation in Emacs is via tab, hit tab and it will auto indent the
current like to whatever the mode considers the right indentation.  You
can get the same behaviour by ending lines with M-j.  It doesn't do it
automatically so the user has the choice to ignore what the mode thinks
is right easily.