Standard ML Mode for Emacs

First install Emacs and install Standard ML of New Jersey:

• For Linux users, use your favorite package system. The packages will be named something like: emacs and smlnj.

• For Windows users, use these locally mirrored installers (or find newer versions on the project web-sites ^{1 2}).

Now download sml-mode-color.el and inferior-setup.sml to a permanent location on your disk (location to be used later).

Some generic setup for Emacs to put in your “~/.emacs” file ³.

(setq inhibit-startup-message t)        ; dont show the GNU splash screen
(transient-mark-mode t)                 ; show selection from mark
(setq visible-bell 1)                   ; turn off bip warnings
(show-paren-mode t)                     ; turn on highlight paren mode
(fset 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p)           ; use y and n for questions
(global-font-lock-mode t)               ; enable syntax highlighting
(iswitchb-mode 1)                       ; better buffer switching

To setup Standard ML mode, paste the following into your “~/.emacs” file and update the two lines below the *** marks with the correct paths for your system. Paths should use UNIX-style separators (forward slash), so the Windows path to Standard ML would look like:

"C:/Program Files/SMLNJ/bin/sml.bat"

;; *** set this path to the directory containing "sml-mode-color.el"
(setq sml-mode-dir "/path/to/sml-mode-directory")

;; *** set this path to the sml executable (sml.bat on Windows)
(setq sml-prog-name "/usr/bin/sml")

(add-to-list 'load-path sml-mode-dir)
(autoload 'sml-mode "sml-mode-color" () t)
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.sml$" . sml-mode))
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.sig$" . sml-mode))

(add-hook 'sml-mode-hook
   (lambda ()
     (setq indent-tabs-mode nil)
     (setq sml-indent-args 2)
     (local-set-key (kbd "M-SPC") 'just-one-space)))

(add-hook 'sml-shell-hook
   (lambda ()
     (send-string sml-process-name
       (concat "use \""
               sml-mode-dir
               "/inferior-setup.sml\";\n"))))

If you would like more help on using Emacs, you might like this Getting started with GNU Emacs tutorial used as part of dProgSprog.