Giacomo Grasso

The editing of input files for MCNP represents a complex task as long as the description of real systems implies the definition of a huge number of cells and materials. The navigation of such input files in common text editors is therefore complicated by the poor readibility due to the huge amount of undistinguished keywords among the number of source lines.

The imcnp descriptor file is intended to compensate this lack of readibility by introducing in the most common editors for UNIX-like systems the syntax highlighting feature for MCNP input files. The most common keywords are therefore recognized and coloured according to several categories they refer to: geometric descriptors, tally specificators, mode definitors, etc. It is also included a search pattern to highlight integers (used as labels for cells, surfaces and materials), floating point numbers (parameters) and comments.

Two versions of the imcnp descriptor file are distributed, either for the Vim command line editor or the Kate-like (all the ones using the common katepart engine) visual editors for Linux under KDE.

A complete and exhaustive documentation of the imcnp descriptor files, including the install procedure and the complete user reference guide can be found in the imcnp documents page.

The standard jezebel benchmark case has been modeled for MCNP to collect a small set of different keywords, in order to provide an output example of the highlighting introduced by the imcnp descriptor files, as can be found in the imcnp screenshots page.

The present version of the imcnp descriptor files is 0.13. The most common MCNP5 features have been included in this version, which could be exhaustive for the common user. A more extended list of keywords is going to be added and organized in the descriptor files, and that's why the version number still refers to the 0 major version.

Both the Kate and Vim imcnp descriptor files, together with the installation instructions and a short reference guide can be retrieved from the apposite download page. This tool is intended as free software, distributed under the GNU Public Licence v.3.