Re: VHDL and Emacs (My experience)

[Andy]

On May 10, 6:33 am, Marcus Harnisch <marcus.harni...@gmx.net> wrote:
> "mans" <(myname_here)_123...@yahoo.com> writes:
> > Emacs has a very good editor for VHDL editing. It has several good features
> > such as auto indentation and syntax highlighting. Over all it is very good
> > if you can use it (I could not!)
>
> This sounds like a good start. Don't let yourself get discouraged.
>
> > 1-      Its keyboard shortcuts are not windows based. I tried to configure
> > wmacsw32 without any success.
>
> Personally, I use XEmacs (Linux, Win32 native) which might be a little
> different. Here, the old-school windows shortcuts for copy/paste do work
> (C-Insert, S-Insert, etc.). The others, C-c in particular won't and I
> would not recommend changing the mappings. pc-select mode gives you
> the selection behavior using S-right/left/up/down (cursor keys).
>
> > 2-      It is very slow to start ( I didn't use emacs clinets)
>
> Depends on what your config file looks like. I'd consider using the
> clients.
>
> > 3-      I read that you can see a hierarchy of your VHDL code, but I can not
> > turn it on (I don't know how to turn it on!).
>
> You will have to load a package called "speedbar". If that has not
> been installed already you can get it from
>    http://cedet.sourceforge.net/
>
> > 4-      I can not find any documentation on facilities which are available
> > in VHDL mode.
>
> In VHDL mode type: C-c C-h
>
> > 5-      Some times when I try to click on VHDL menu, this menu item
> > disappears!
>
> Dunno.
>
> Regards
> -- Marcus
>
> note that "property" can also be used as syntaxtic sugar to reference
> a property, breaking the clean design of verilog; [...]
>
>              (seen onhttp://www.veripool.com/verilog-mode_news.html)

I use xemacs with cua mode and it handles most of the windows
shortcuts (including C-c, C-x and C-v). I had to set another couple of
options to get it to treat the selected text as "pending delete" too.
I just wish there was a handy way to select a word or phrase in the
code and then search for other occurrences of it, with minimal
additional typing. There probably is, but I just don't know it yet!

If you really cannot stomach the rest of the emacs wizardy, try jGrasp
(free) from University of Auburn. It has very good highlighting and
indentation (it does not autocapitalize). It also can insert Control
Structure Diagram (CSD) graphics in the left margin/whitespace
including buttons for collapsing/expanding code segments, etc. Mousing
over the appropriate CSD graphic then shows you the top of that
control structure (process/loop/if-then/case, etc), and if it was off
screen, it temporarily shows it on the top row. It uses java and is
portable between unix/linux and windows, but it is not slow like some
other java based editors.

Andy