I'd like to request some useful additions to rosemacs.el: ;; Add ROS *.launch, *.urdf, and *.xacro files to xml mode (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.launch\\'" . xml-mode)) (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.urdf\\'" . xml-mode)) (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.xacro\\'" . xml-mode)) ;; Add ROS message files to gdb-script mode for syntax highlighting (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.msg\\'" . gdb-script-mode)) (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.srv\\'" . gdb-script-mode)) (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.action\\'" . gdb-script-mode)) These enable useful syntax highlighting in ros specific files. I found that gdb-script-mode colors message files very nicely. (Comments are red, field types are purple, field names are black.) Ideally, I guess there should be a ros-message-mode with its own font-lock rules. But this seems to be sufficient for now. To make gdb-script-mode even more ros-centric, you can add ros's standard message types to a different font-lock font face. This will make standard field types like "bool" and "int8" pink instead of purple: ;; Add ROS standard message types to gdb-script-mode for different highlighting (font-lock-add-keywords 'gdb-script-mode '(("\\<\\(bool\\|int8\\|uint8\\|int16\\|uint16\\|int32\\|uint32\\|int64\ \|uint64\\|float32\\|float64\\|string\\|time\\|duration\\)\\>" . font-lock-builtin-face))) Enjoy, -Ben Ben Axelrod Research Scientist iRobot Corporation 8 Crosby Drive, Mail Stop 8-1 Bedford, MA 01730 (781) 430-3315 (Tel) (781) 960-2628 (Fax) baxelrod@irobot.com