From: Jim Menard <jimm@...>
Date: 2005-08-11T03:42:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Need some help setting up ruby mode

francisrammeloo@hotmail.com wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm an emacs newbie but would like to use the editor for ruby coding.
> 
> I have downloaded "ruby-mode.el" and I don't know what to do with it!
> 
> I worked my way through the emacs built-in tutorial. I know how to use
> modes, but I can't find any information about how to ADD modes to
> emacs.
> 
> I understand that this may be difficult to explain on the newsgroup.
> Any link to helpful information is welcome too!

Put ruby-mode.el somewhere where Emacs can find it. I have a directory where 
I put that kind of thing, "~/lib/elisp". In my .emacs file I added

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/lib/elisp")

so it can find all of my .el files. Next, add

(autoload 'ruby-mode "ruby-mode" "Ruby mode" t nil)
(autoload 'inf-ruby "inf-ruby" "Ruby inferior process (irb)" t nil)
(setq interpreter-mode-alist (append '(("ruby" . ruby-mode))
				     interpreter-mode-alist))
(setq auto-mode-alist
       (append '(("\\.rbw?$" . ruby-mode)
  		("\\.rhtml$" . html-mode)
		("\\.gem\\(spec\\)?$" . ruby-mode)
		("[Rr]akefile" . ruby-mode))
  	      auto-mode-alist))

and optionally a ruby-mode-hook for yourself. Here is a subset of mine:

(setq ruby-mode-hook
       (lambda ()
	(define-key ruby-mode-map "\r" 'newline-and-indent)
	(define-key ruby-mode-map "\M-\C-h" 'backward-kill-word)
	(setq c-tab-always-indent nil)
	(abbrev-mode t)
	(font-lock-mode 1)))

Jim
-- 
Jim Menard, jimm@io.com, http://www.io.com/~jimm
"I am sure that like Java, [C#] will be a 'no pointer' language, where the
most common runtime error will be a 'NULL pointer exception'."
    -- Jerry Kott, in comp.lang.smalltalk