Text editor or framework for SKILL...

Hi ToM,

Personally I use "gvim" and am pretty happy with it, but it only performs syntax hilighting.  I believe that the emacs-based SKILL mode can also give indication of the function arguments (possibly also indicating data types?) but this is a pretty old extension and I don't know if it is being maintained or updated.

The SKILL mode in gvim seems to recognise most SKILL syntax that I work with right out-of-the-box, and the syntax files are customizable by the user, so you can always write your own or modify the existing to further meet your needs.  Another good thing about gvim is that you can use it on Unix/Linux as well as PCs.

There is a group within Cadence that has written a SKILL development environment (using Eclipse, I believe, though I'm fuzzy on the details), and this would be available as part of a services deal.

Otherwise, in my opinion, your best bets for an editor would be, in order, gvim, xemacs, nedit.

YMMV

Regards,

Lawrence.

 In Windows, I use Notepad++ from notepad-plus.sf.net and it recognizes SKILL as LISP code with many programming oriented features including folding and highlighting all occurances of a selected word.

 In Linux, I use Scite which isn't as good as Notepad++ but almost up there. It also color codes as LISP code.

I use NEdit which has syntax highlighting and the ability to setup calltips and tags (ctags) files. You can find a Skill syntax highlighting setup file on the web. If you are not familiar with tags and calltips, here is what they do and how we use them.

Tags or ctags files are essentially index files that list the names of functions and the corresponding file where these functions can be found. You can get more details by doing a man on ctags in Unix or reading about them in the NEdit documentation. We have a cronjob that builds a tags file for all of our Skill code and we load the tags file when we start NEdit. When we come across a function call in some code, we can highlight the function name and run the "Find Definition" command from the NEdit menus or a bindkey and it will either jump within your code to the function definition, or open a separate file containing the function and jump to the definition. Very handy. We even make it work with Cadence functions by jumping to the entry in the skill finder reference file.

Sample tags entries:
cad.tags:dbGetTrueOverlaps      /cad/ic/5141_500.4.66/doc/finder/SKILL/DFII_SKILL/skdfref.fnd   /^("dbGetTrueOverlaps"$/;"      r
cad.tags:MTdbGetTrueOverlaps  /home/dmay/sw/df2/skill/db/MTdbTransform.il     /^procedure(MTdbGetTrueOverlaps($/;"    r

Calltips are those pop-up bubbles that tell you what the arguments are for a function. In NEdit, these work off the tags file and when you show a calltip, it will use the tag to find the function and then display the first few lines of the function in the pop-up bubble.

Derek

We had to build our ctags with our own script. That is why I included the syntax. Basically, you need the command name, the path to the file that includes the function definition and the search string for finding the definition within the file. You'll need to write your own script to build this. It is not that difficult if your skill coding format is consistent.

Derek

Thank you Derek,

Do you have any manual about writing ctags? An maybe you would be so kind and put your ctags files for SKILL here or send it via mail…

Thanks,

ToM

Here is a perl script that will create two tags files.

1. /tmp/cds.tags - This is created from the cdsFinder files in $CDS_HOME/doc/finder/SKILL

2. /tmp/my.tags - This is created from all *.il files in /tmp/myskill

Our Skill files have procedure definition with a first line that look like this:
procedure(myProc1(data @optional curTree headers lvl (pfx "") used)
procedure( anotherProcName()
procedure(yetAnotherProc(form prefix)

The regular expression defined in the ctags call in the Perl script is written to assume this format. If your procedures follow a different convention, then you'll need to adjust the regular expression to get it to work.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

system("rm /tmp/my.tags /tmp/cds.tags");

my $home = $ENV{CDS_HOME} . "/doc/finder/SKILL";
my $cmd = "find $home/* -name '*.fnd' | ";
$cmd .= "ctags -R -f /tmp/cds.tags --langdef=finder --langmap=finder:.fnd --regex-finder=\'/^\\(\"(\\w+)/\\1/\' --languages=finder -L -";
system( $cmd );

my $home = "/tmp/myskill";
my $cmd = "find $home -name '*.il' | ";
$cmd .= "ctags -R -af /tmp/my.tags --langdef=skill --langmap=skill:.il --regex-skill=\"/^\\s*[nml]*procedure\\(\\s*(\\w+)/\\1/\" --languages=skill -L -";
system( $cmd );

Derek

 Hi Andrew,

I am wondering if it is possible for me to have a copy of the skillMode for emacs?

Thank you for your help.

Jerry