Hi everyone,

I am in the process of becoming maintainer for the GNU Emacs mode for
IDL and WAVE CL files.  I am planning to rename the mode and would
like to discuss this here.

idl-mode currently does not work well on X/Emacs 20 when any C files
are being edited at the same time.  The reason for this is a name
clash with the "other" IDL Mode.  cc-mode.el, which is part of the
Emacs and XEmacs distributions defines a mode `idl-mode' for the
`Interface Definition Language' as part of the Common Object Request
Broker Architecture (CORBA).  This messes up the keymaps and
font-lock-keywords when both C and IDL .pro files are being edited.

The only clean solution for this problem is to rename "our" idl mode.
This is unfortunate since it requires every user of the mode to
update his/her customization related to the IDL mode.  However, there
is no other clean solution.

I therefore propose to change the prefix of all idl-mode and
idl-shell-mode related variables and functions from `idl' to
`idlwave'.

Any comments/vetos/better-name-suggestions?

- Carsten

Subject: IDLWAVE - editing mode for GNU Emacs

I am releasing IDLWAVE, the GNU Emacs modes for Editing IDL files and
running IDL as an inferior shell.

These modes are directly derived from idl.el and idl-shell.el by Chris
Chase.  The files, functions and variables had to be renamed in order
to evade a name clash with another (completely unrelated) "idl-mode"
defined in cc-mode.el, a file distributed with Emacs 20 and XEmacs 20.
The new modes use `idlwave' instead of `idl' as their prefix.  This
name changes means that in order to upgrade, the corresponding stuff
in .emacs will have to be updated.  The README and INSTALL files of
the distribution explain this in detail.

I have used the opportunity to make significant changes to the code,
both cleaning up and adding features.  See below for a list of
changes.  Is is not impossible that a bug or two have been introduced
in the process.  If you have problems with IDLWAVE, let me know so
that the problems can be fixed.

IDLWAVE is available at

    http://strw.leidenuniv.nl/~dominik/Tools/idlwave/

Please send comments, suggestions, and bug reports to the new maintainer

    Carsten Dominik <dominik@strw.leidenuniv.nl>

Thanks to Kevin Ivory <Kevin.Ivory@linmpi.mpg.de> for hosting the
modes on his web page while they had no maintainer.



Recent changes to idlwave-mode
==============================
    - Renamed the mode to evade a name conflict with another IDL mode
      distributed in the Emacs cc-mode.el file.  The "other" IDL mode
      is for the Interface Definition Language of CORBA, completely
      unrelated to the Interactive Data Language supported by IDLWAVE.

    - Version number increased to 3.0 in order to synchronize
      idlwave.el and idlwave-shell.el.  Both files are closely related
      and will from now on be distributed together.

    - Customize support added. 

    - Menu reorganized and extended. 

    - Support for both Imenu (Emacs) and func-menu (XEmacs). 

    - Multilevel font-locking, depending upon the value of
      font-lock-maximum-decoration.

    - Documentation string shortened and rewritten.  It should now
      introduce quickly to the main features of the mode.  Additional
      information about how to customize the mode was moved to the
      file commentary, which is accessible from the menu.

    - New functions to go to the begin and end of the current block,
      bound to `C-c {' and `C-c }'.

    - The type of END at the end of a block is checked.  You can set
      the mode up to expand any generic END statements to the specific
      ENDIF, ENDELSE, ENDREP etc.  There is also a command to close
      the current block `C-c ]'.

    - No longer supported: hilit19.el, Emacs 18, and an ancient
      version of imenu.el.


Recent changes to idlwave-shell-mode
====================================
    - Renamed all functions and variables, for consistency with
      idlwave.el.

    - Version number increased to 3.0. 

    - Rewrote Parser for IDL error messages in order to be more robust
      for IDL5.  Parsing IDL5 error messages is now the default.

    - To get a dedicated frame for the IDL shell, set the variable
      idlwave-shell-use-dedicated-frame or give a prefix arg to
      idlwave-shell.

    - Showing the stop line uses an highlight overlay now also on
      XEmacs.

    - Breakpoints are indicated in the source file with a glyph or a
      special face.

    - Debugging Toolbar (XEmacs only).

    - IDLWAVE no longer visits files twice under different names.

    - Menu reorganized and extended. More debugging commands added.