NEDIT 5.0 March 11, 1998
NEdit is a GUI (Graphical User Interface) style text editor for programs and
plain-text files. Users of Macintosh and MS Windows based text editors will
find NEdit a familiar and comfortable environment. NEdit provides all of the
standard menu, dialog, editing, and mouse support, as well as all of the
standard shortcuts to which the users of modern GUI based environments are
accustomed. For users of older style Unix editors, welcome to the world of
mouse-based editing!
NEdit is free, available in source and binary form for Silicon Graphics, HP,
DEC, IBM, Sun, and Linux systems, as well as for VAX and Alpha VMS. Executables
for non-supported systems are also available. Porting to other Motif platforms
has generally been easy.
INSTALLING NEDIT
NEdit is a single stand-alone executable file which can be installed by simply
copying the appropriate executable "nedit" for your system. Both sources
and executables are available via anonymous ftp to ftp.fnal.gov in the
/pub/nedit directory. The optional "nc" (NEdit Client) program is also
available for users who want to run nedit in client/server mode.
GETTING STARTED
If you are new to X windows, you may need some help setting up your X
environment or using X across a network. If you have used other Motif
programs before, you can probably use NEdit without much instruction.
Start NEdit by typing nedit. You can specify a file or several files to edit
on the command line, but you can also open them from inside of NEdit. If you
don't specify a file name to edit, NEdit will open a window titled "Untitled".
You can create a new file by typing into this window and choosing Save or
Save As... from the File menu. There is no "main window" in NEdit, all
editor windows are equivalent, and NEdit remains running as long as at least
one window is open.
Most editor commands are available from the pulldown menus (File, Edit, Search,
etc.). If you make a mistake, any editing operation can be undone by
selecting Undo from the Edit menu. Online help is also available through the
Help menu on the right-hand side of the menu bar.
To open an existing file once nedit is running, choose Open... from the File
menu. Select the file that you want to open in the pop-up dialog that
appears, and click on OK. You may have any number of files open at the same
time. Each file will appear in its own editor window. Using Open..., rather
than re-typing the nedit command and running additional copies of NEdit, is
both more memory-efficient, and allows NEdit to better manage your files.
As you become more familiar with NEdit, you can use the control and function
keys shown on the right side of the pull-down menus, as a substitute for
selecting items with the mouse.
Dialogs are also streamlined so you can enter information quickly and without
using the mouse. Keyboard focus is automatically directed to the first field
in a dialog when the dialog pops up. To move the keyboard focus around a
dialog, use the tab and arrow keys. One of the buttons in a dialog is usually
drawn with a thick, indented, outline. This button can be activated by
pressing return or enter. For example, to replace the string "thing" with
"things" type:
thingthings
To open a file named "whole_earth.c", type:
who
(how much of the filename you need to type depends on the other files in the
directory). See the section titled KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS for more information.
SELECTING TEXT
NEdit has two general types of selections, primary (highlighted text), and
secondary (underlined text). Selections can cover either a simple range of text
between two points in the file, or they can cover a rectangular area of the
file. Rectangular selections are only useful with non-proportional (fixed
spacing) fonts.
To select text for copying, deleting, or replacing, press the left mouse button
with the pointer at one end of the text you want to select, and drag it to the
other end. The text will become highlighted. To select a whole word, double
click (click twice quickly in succession). Double clicking and then dragging
the mouse will select a number of words. Similarly, you can select a whole line
or a number of lines by triple clicking or triple clicking and dragging.
Quadruple clicking selects the whole file. After releasing the mouse button,
you can still adjust a selection by holding down the shift key and dragging on
either end of the selection. To delete the selected text, press delete or
backspace. To replace it, begin typing.
To select a rectangle or column of text, hold the Ctrl key while dragging the
mouse. Rectangular selections can be used in any context that normal selections
can be used, including cutting and pasting, filling, shifting, dragging, and
searching. Operations on rectangular selections automatically fill in tabs and
spaces to maintain alignment of text within and to the right of the selection.
Note that the interpretation of rectangular selections by Fill Paragraph is
slightly different from that of other commands, the section titled "Shifting and
Filling" has details.
The middle mouse button can be used to make an additional selection (called the
secondary selection). As soon as the button is released, the contents of this
selection will be copied to the insert position of the window where the mouse
was last clicked (the destination window). This position is marked by a caret
shaped cursor when the mouse is outside of the destination window. If there is
a (primary) selection, adjacent to the cursor in the window, the new text will
replace the selected text. Holding the shift key while making the secondary
selection will move the text, deleting it at the site of the secondary
selection, rather than copying it.
Selected text can also be dragged to a new location in the file using the middle
mouse button. Holding the shift key while dragging the text will copy the
selected text, leaving the original text in place. Holding the control key will
drag the text in overlay mode.
Normally, dragging moves text by removing it from the selected position at the
start of the drag, and inserting it at a new position relative to to the mouse.
Dragging a block of text over existing characters, displaces the characters to
the end of the selection. In overlay mode, characters which are occluded by
blocks of text being dragged are simply removed. When dragging non-rectangular
selections, overlay mode also converts the selection to rectangular form,
allowing it to be dragged outside of the bounds of the existing text.
The section "Using the Mouse" sumarizes the mouse commands for making primary
and secondary selections. Primary selections can also be made via keyboard
commands, see "Keyboard Shortcuts".
CUTTING and PASTING
The easiest way to copy and move text around in your file or between windows, is
to use the clipboard, an imaginary area that temporarily stores text and data.
The Cut command removes the selected text (see SELECTING TEXT) from your file
and places it in the clipboard. Once text is in the clipboard, the Paste
command will copy it to the insert position in the current window. For example,
to move some text from one place to another, select it by dragging the mouse
over it, choose Cut to remove it, click the pointer to move the insert point
where you want the text inserted, then choose Paste to insert it. Copy copies
text to the clipboard without deleting it from your file. You can also use the
clipboard to transfer text to and from other Motif programs and X programs which
make proper use of the clipboard.
There are many other methods for copying and moving text within NEdit windows
and between NEdit and other programs. The most common such method is clicking
the middle mouse button to copy the primary selection (to the clicked
position). Copying the selection by clicking the middle mouse button in many
cases is the only way to transfer data to and from many X programs. Holding
the Shift key while clicking the middle mouse button moves the text, deleting
it from its original position, rather than copying it. Other methods for
transferring text include secondary selections, primary selection dragging,
keyboard-based selection copying, and drag and drop. These are described in
detail in the sections: Selecting Text, Using the Mouse, and Keyboard
Shortcuts.
FINDING AND REPLACING TEXT
The Search menu contains a number of commands for finding and replacing text.
The Find... and Replace... commands present dialogs for entering text for
searching and replacing. These dialogs also allow you to choose whether you
want the search to be sensitive to upper and lower case, or whether to use the
standard Unix pattern matching characters (regular expressions). Searches
begin at the current text insertion position.
Find Again and Replace Again repeat the last find or replace command without
prompting for search strings. To selectively replace text, use the two
commands in combination: Find Again, then Replace Again if the highlighted
string should be replaced, or Find Again again to go to the next string.
Find Selection searches for the text contained in the current primary
selection (see SELECTING TEXT). The selected text does not have to be in the
current editor window, it may even be in another program. For example, if the
word dog appears somewhere in a window on your screen, and you want to find it
in the file you are editing, select the word dog by dragging the mouse across
it, switch to your NEdit window and choose Find Selection from the Search
menu.
Searching Backwards
Holding down the shift key while choosing any of the search or replace
commands from the menu (or using the keyboard shortcut), will search in the
reverse direction. Users who have set the search direction using the buttons
in the search dialog, may find it a bit confusing that Find Again and Replace
Again don't continue in the same direction as the original search (for
experienced users, consistency of the direction implied by the shift key is
more important).
Selective Replacement
To replace only some occurrences of a string within a file, choose Replace...
from the Search menu, enter the string to search for and the string to
substitute, and finish by pressing the Find button. When the first occurrence
is highlighted, use either Replace Again (^T) to replace it, or Find Again
(^G) to move to the next occurrence without replacing it, and continue in such
a manner through all occurrences of interest.
To replace all occurrences of a string within some range of text, select the
range (see SELECTING TEXT), choose Replace... from the Search menu, type the
string to search for and the string to substitute, and press the "R. in
Selection" button in the dialog. Note that selecting text in the Replace...
dialog will unselect the text in the window.
Regular Expressions
egular expressions are available in the Find... and Replace... dialogs as a way
to match inexact sequences of characters. Regular expression substitution can
also be used to program automatic editing operations. For example, the
following are search and replace strings to find occurrences of the subroutine
get_x, reverse the first and second parameters, add a third parameter of NULL,
and change the name to new_get_x":
Search string: get_x\(([^ ,]*), ([^\)]*)\)
Replace string: new_get_x(\2, \1, NULL)
To use regular expressions, click on the Regular Expression button in the
Find... or Replace... dialogs before doing a search or replacement.
Regular Expression Syntax
The components of a regular expression are: branches, pieces, atoms, and
ranges. A regular expression consists of zero or more branches, separated by
`|'. It matches anything that matches one of the branches.
A branch is zero or more pieces, concatenated. It matches a match for the
first, followed by a match for the second, etc.
A piece is an atom possibly followed by `*', `+', or `?'. An atom followed by
`*' matches a sequence of 0 or more matches of the atom. An atom followed by
`+' matches a sequence of 1 or more matches of the atom. An atom followed by
`?' matches a match of the atom, or the null string.
An atom is a regular expression in parentheses (matching a match for the
regular expression), a range (see below), `.' (matching any single character),
`^' (matching the null string at the beginning of a line string), `$' (matching
the null string at the end of a line), `<' or `>' (matching the null string at
a word boundary), a `\' followed by a single character (matching that
character), or a single character with no other significance (matching that
character). \t, \n, \b, \r, and \f represent the characters tab newline,
backspace, carriage return, and form feed.
A range is a sequence of characters enclosed in `[]'. It normally matches any
single character from the sequence. If the sequence begins with `^', it
matches any single character not from the rest of the sequence. If two
characters in the sequence are separated by `-', this is shorthand for the full
list of ASCII characters between them (e.g. `[0-9]' matches any decimal digit).
To include a literal `]' in the sequence, make it the first character
(following a possible `^'). To include a literal `-', make it the first or
last character. A backslash `\' followed by a single character includes that
character, however backslashes are not necessary for most special characters,
since inside a range, only the `]', `-', and '\' characters are treated
specially.
Substitution
Wherever the substitution string contains the character `&', NEdit will
substitute the the entire string that was matched in the Find operation. Up to
nine sub-expressions of the match string can also be inserted into the
replacement string, using `\' followed by a digit. \1 through \9 represent the
strings that matched parenthesized expressions within the regular expression,
numbered left-to-right in order of their opening parentheses. Preceding & or
\1-9 with \U, \u, \L, or \l adjusts the case of the inserted text. \u and \l
change only the first character, while \U and \L change the entire string to
upper or lower case. \t, \n, \b, \r, and \f represent the characters tab
newline, backspace, carriage return, and form feed in a substitution string
represent the tab and newline characters as they do in match strings.
Ambiguity
If a regular expression could match two different parts of the text, it will
match the one which begins earliest. If both begin in the same place but match
different lengths, or match the same length in different ways, life gets
messier, as follows.
In general, the possibilities in a list of branches are considered in
left-to-right order, the possibilities for `*', `+', and `?' are considered
longest-first, nested constructs are considered from the outermost in, and
concatenated constructs are considered leftmost-first. The match that will be
chosen is the one that uses the earliest possibility in the first choice that
has to be made. If there is more than one choice, the next will be made in the
same manner (earliest possibility) subject to the decision on the first choice.
And so forth.
For example, `(ab|a)b*c' could match `abc' in one of two ways. The first
choice is between `ab' and `a'; since `ab' is earlier, and does lead to a
successful overall match, it is chosen. Since the `b' is already spoken for,
the `b*' must match its last possibility-the empty string-since it must respect
the earlier choice.
In the particular case where no `|'s are present and there is only one `*',
`+', or `?', the net effect is that the longest possible match will be chosen.
So `ab*', presented with `xabbbby', will match `abbbb'. Note that if `ab*' is
tried against `xabyabbbz', it will match `ab' just after `x', due to the
begins-earliest rule. (In effect, the decision on where to start the match is
the first choice to be made, hence subsequent choices must respect it even if
this leads them to less-preferred alternatives.)
USING THE MOUSE
NEdit is one of the most mouse interactive text editors around, but you don't
need to know all of the details below to be productive. You can get by with
just the left mouse button, clicking to move the cursor, and dragging to make a
selection.
This section will make more sense if you also read the sections, SELECTING,
and CUTTING, and PASTING, which explain the terminology of selections, i.e.
what is meant by primary, secondary, rectangular, etc.
The general meaning of mouse buttons and modifier keys is as follows:
Buttons
Button 1 (left) Cursor position and primary selection
Button 2 (middle) Secondary selections, and dragging and
copying primary selection
Button 3 (right) Quick-access programmable menu and pan
scrolling
Modifier keys
Shift On primary selections, (left mouse button):
Extends selection to the mouse pointer
On secondary and copy operations, (middle):
Toggles between move and copy
Ctrl Makes selection rectangular or insertion
columnar
Alt* (on release) Exchange primary and secondary
selections.
Left Mouse Button
The left mouse button is used to position the cursor and to make primary
selections.
Click Moves the cursor
Double Click Selects a whole word
Triple Click Selects a whole line
Quadruple Click Selects the whole file
Shift Click Adjusts (extends or shrinks) the selection,
or if there is no existing selection, begins a
new selection between the cursor and the mouse.
Ctrl+Shift+Click Adjusts (extends or shrinks) the selection
rectangularly.
Drag Selects text between where the mouse was pressed
and where it was released.
Ctrl+Drag Selects rectangle between where the mouse was
pressed and where it was released.
Right Mouse Button
The right mouse button posts a programmable menu for frequently used
commands.
Click/Drag Pops up the background menu (programmed from
Preferences -> Default Settings -> Customize
Menus -> Window Background).
Ctrl+Drag Pan scrolling. Scrolls the window both
vertically and horizontally, as if you had
grabbed it with your mouse.
Middle Mouse Button
The middle mouse button is for making secondary selections, and copying
and dragging the primary selection
Click Copies the primary selection to the clicked position.
Shift+Click Moves the primary selection to the clicked position,
deleting it from its original position.
Drag 1) Outside of the primary selection:
Begins a secondary selection.
2) Inside of the primary selection:
Moves the entire selection by dragging.
Ctrl+Drag 1) Outside of the primary selection:
Begins a rectangular secondary selection.
2) Inside of the primary selection:
Drags the selection in overlay mode (see below).
When the mouse button is released after creating a secondary selection:
No Modifiers If there is a primary selection, replaces it with the
secondary selection. Otherwise, inserts the secondary
selection at the cursor position.
Shift Move the secondary selection, deleting it from its
original position. If there is a primary selection,
the move will replace the primary selection with the
secondary selection. Otherwise, moves the secondary
selection to to the cursor position.
Alt* Exchange the primary and secondary selections.
While moving the primary selection by dragging with the middle mouse button:
Shift Leaves a copy of the original selection in place rather than
removing it or blanking the area.
Ctrl Changes from insert mode to overlay mode (see below).
Escape Cancels drag in progress.
Overlay Mode: Normally, dragging moves text by removing it from the selected
position at the start of the drag, and inserting it at a new position relative
to to the mouse. When you drag a block of text over existing characters, the
existing characters are displaced to the end of the selection. In overlay
mode, characters which are occluded by blocks of text being dragged are simply
removed. When dragging non-rectangular selections, overlay mode also converts
the selection to rectangular form, allowing it to be dragged outside of the
bounds of the existing text.
* The Alt key may be labeled Meta or Compose-Character on some keyboards. Some
window managers, including default configurations of mwm, bind combinations of
the Alt key and mouse buttons to window manager operations. In NEdit, Alt is
only used on button release, so regardless of the window manager bindings for
Alt-modified mouse buttons, you can still do the corresponding NEdit operation
by using the Alt key AFTER the initial mouse press, so that Alt is held while
you release the mouse button. If you find this difficult or annoying, you can
re-configure most window managers to skip this binding, or you can re-configure
NEdit to use a different key combination.
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
Most of the keyboard shortcuts in NEdit are shown on the right hand sides of
the pull-down menus. However, there are more which are not as obvious. These
include; dialog button shortcuts; menu and dialog mnemonics; labeled keyboard
keys, such as the arrows, page-up, page-down, and home; and optional Shift
modifiers on accelerator keys, like [Shift]Ctrl+F.
Menu Accelerators
Pressing the key combinations shown on the right of the menu items is a
shortcut for selecting the menu item with the mouse. Some items have the shift
key enclosed in brackets, such as [Shift]Ctrl+F. This indicates that the shift
key is optional. In search commands, including the shift key reverses the
direction of the search. In Shift commands, it makes the command shift the
selected text by a whole tab stop rather than by single characters.
Menu Mnemonics
Pressing the Alt key in combination with one of the underlined characters in
the menu bar pulls down that menu. Once the menu is pulled down, typing the
underlined characters in a menu item (without the Alt key) activates that
item. With a menu pulled down, you can also use the arrow keys to select menu
items, and the space or enter keys to activate them.
Keyboard Shortcuts within Dialogs
One button in a dialog is usually marked with a thick indented outline.
Pressing the Return or Enter key activates this button.
All dialogs have either a Cancel or Dismiss button. This button can be
activated by pressing the Escape (or Esc) key.
Pressing the tab key moves the keyboard focus to the next item in a dialog.
Within an associated group of buttons, the arrow keys move the focus among the
buttons. Shift+Tab moves backward through the items.
Most items in dialogs have an underline under one character in their name.
Pressing the Alt key along with this character, activates a button as if you
had pressed it with the mouse, or moves the keyboard focus to the associated
text field or list.
You can select items from a list by using the arrow keys to move the selection
and space to select.
In file selection dialogs, you can type the beginning characters of the file
name or directory in the list to select files
Labeled Function Keys
The labeled function keys on standard workstation and PC keyboards, like the
arrows, and page-up and page-down, are active in NEdit, though not shown in the
pull-down menus.
Holding down the control key while pressing a named key extends the scope of
the action that it performs. For example, Home normally moves the insert
cursor the beginning of a line. Ctrl+Home moves it to the beginning of the
file. Backspace deletes one character, Ctrl+Backspace deletes one word.
Holding down the shift key while pressing a named key begins or extends a
selection. Combining the shift and control keys combines their actions. For
example, to select a word without using the mouse, position the cursor at the
beginning of the word and press Ctrl+Shift+RightArrow. The Alt key modifies
selection commands to make the selection rectangular.
Under X and Motif, there are several levels of translation between keyboard
keys and the actions they perform in a program. The "KEY BINDING", and "X
RESOURCES" sections below have more information on this subject. Because of
all of this configurability, and since keyboards and standards for the meaning
of some keys vary from machine to machine, the mappings may be changed from the
defaults listed below.
Modifier Keys (in general)
Ctrl Extends the scope of the action that the key would otherwise
perform. For example, Home normally moves the insert cursor the
beginning of a line. Ctrl+Home moves it to the beginning of the
file. Backspace deletes one character, Ctrl+ Backspace deletes
one word.
Shift Extends the selection to the cursor position. If there's no
selection, begins one between the old and new cursor positions.
Alt When modifying a selection, makes the selection rectangular.
(For the effects of modifier keys on mouse button presses, see the section
titled "Using the Mouse")
All Keyboards
Escape Cancels operation in progress: menu selection, drag,
selection, etc. Also equivalent to cancel button in
dialogs.
Backspace Delete the character before the cursor
Ctrl+BS Delete the word before the cursor
Arrows
Left Move the cursor to the left one character
Ctrl+Left Move the cursor backward one word (Word delimiters
are settable, see CUSTOMIZATION)
Right Move the cursor to the right one character
Ctrl+Right Move the cursor forward one word
Up Move the cursor up one line
Ctrl+Up Move the cursor up one paragraph. (Paragraphs are
delimited by blank lines.)
Down Move the cursor down one line.
Ctrl+Down Move the cursor down one paragraph.
Ctrl+Return Return with automatic indent, regardless of the setting
of Auto Indent.
Shift+Return Return without automatic indent, regardless of the
setting of Auto Indent.
Ctrl+Tab Insert an ascii tab character, without processing
emulated tabs.
Alt+Ctrl+ Insert the control-code equivalent of a key
Ctrl+/ Select everything (same as Select All menu item or ^A)
Ctrl+\ Unselect
Ctrl+U Delete to start of line
PC Standard Keyboard
Ctrl+Insert Copy the primary selection to the clipboard (same as
Copy menu item or ^C) for compatibility with Motif
standard key binding
Shift+Ctrl+
Insert Copy the primary selection to the cursor location.
Delete Delete the character before the cursor. (Can be
configured to delete the character after the cursor,
see CUSTOMIZATION, and X RESOURCES)
Ctrl+Delete Delete to end of line.
Shift+Delete Cut, remove the currently selected text and place it
in the clipboard. (same as Cut menu item or ^X) for
compatibility with Motif standard key binding.
Shift+Ctrl+
Delete Cut the primary selection to the cursor location.
Home Move the cursor to the beginning of the line.
Ctrl+Home Move the cursor to the beginning of the file.
End Move the cursor to the end of the line.
Ctrl+End Move the cursor to the end of the file.
PageUp Scroll and move the cursor up by one page.
Ctrl+PageUp Scroll and move the cursor left by one page.
PageDown Scroll and move the cursor down by one page.
Ctrl+PageDown Scroll and move the cursor right by one page.
F10 Make the menu bar active for keyboard input (Arrow
Keys, Return, Escape, and the Space Bar)
Specialty Keyboards
On machines with different styles of keyboards, generally, text editing actions
are properly matched to the labeled keys, such as Remove, Next-screen, etc..
If you prefer different key bindings, see the heading titled "Binding Keys to
Actions" in the X RESOURCES section below.
TEXT FILLING
Text filling using the Fill Paragraph command in the Edit menu is one of the
most important concepts in NEdit. And it will be well worth your while to
understand how to use it properly.
In plain text files, unlike word-processor files, there is no way to tell which
lines are continuations of other lines, and which lines are meant to be
separate, because there is no distinction in meaning between newline characters
which separate lines in a paragraph, and ones which separate paragraphs from
other text. This makes it impossible for a text editor like NEdit to tell
parts of the text which belong together as a paragraph from carefully arranged
individual lines.
In continuous wrap mode, lines automatically wrap and unwrap themselves to
line up properly at the right margin. In this mode, you simply omit the
newlines within paragraphs and let NEdit make the line breaks as needed.
Unfortunately, continuous wrap mode is not appropriate in the majority of
situations, because files with extremely long lines are not common under Unix
and may not be compatible with all tools, and because you can't achieve
effects like indented sections, columns, or program comments, and still take
advantage of the automatic wrapping.
Without continuous wrapping, paragraph filling is not entirely automatic.
Auto-Newline wrapping keeps paragraphs lined up as you type, but once entered,
NEdit can no longer distinguish newlines which join wrapped text, and newlines
which must be preserved. Therefore, editing in the middle of a paragraph will
often leave the right margin messy and uneven.
Since NEdit can't act automatically to keep your text lined up, you need to
tell it explicitly where to operate, and that is what Fill Paragraph is for.
It arranges lines to fill the space between two margins, wrapping the lines
neatly at word boundaries. Normally, the left margin for filling is inferred
from the text being filled. The first line of each paragraph is considered
special, and its left indentation is maintained separately from the remaining
lines (for leading indents, bullet points, numbered paragraphs, etc.).
Otherwise, the left margin is determined by the furthest left non-whitespace
character. The right margin is either the Wrap Margin, set in the preferences
menu (by default, the right edge of the window), or can also be chosen on the
fly by using a rectangular selection (see below).
There are three ways to use Fill Paragraph. The simplest is, while you are
typing text, and there is no selection, simply select Fill Paragraph (or type
Ctrl+J), and NEdit will arrange the text in the paragraph adjacent to the
cursor. A paragraph, in this case, means an area of text delimited by blank
lines.
The second way to use Fill Paragraph is with a selection. If you select a
range of text and then chose Fill Paragraph, all of the text in the selection
will be filled. Again, continuous text between blank lines is interpreted as
paragraphs and filled individually, respecting leading indents and blank lines.
The third, and most versitile, way to use Fill Paragraph is with a rectangular
selection. Fill Paragraph treats rectangular selections differently from other
commands. Instead of simply filling the text inside the rectangular selection,
NEdit interprets the right edge of the selection as the requested wrap margin.
Text to the left of the selection is not disturbed (the usual interpretation of
a rectangular selection), but text to the right of the selection is included in
the operation and is pulled in to the selected region. This method enables you
to fill text to an arbitrary right margin, without going back and forth to the
wrap-margin dialog, as well as to exclude text to the left of the selection
such as comment bars or other text columns.
SHIFT LEFT, SHIFT RIGHT
While shifting blocks of text is most important for programmers (See FEATURES
FOR PROGRAMMING), it is also useful for other tasks, such as creating indented
paragraphs.
To shift a block of text one tab stop to the right, select the text, then
choose Shift Right from the Edit menu. Note that the accelerator keys for
these menu items are Ctrl+9 and Ctrl+0, which correspond to the right and left
parenthesis on most keyboards. Remember them as adjusting the text in the
direction pointed to by the parenthesis character. Holding the Shift key while
selecting either Shift Left or Shift Right will shift the text by one character.
It is also possible to shift blocks of text by selecting the text
rectangularly, and dragging it left or right (and up or down as well). Using
a rectangular selection also causes tabs within the selection to be
recalculated and substituted, such that the non-whitespace characters remain
stationary with respect to the selection.
FEATURES FOR PROGRAMMERS
Though general in appearance, NEdit has many features intended specifically
for programmers. Programming-related topics are listed here, and in the next
four sections: TABS AND TAB EMULATION, AUTOMATIC INDENT, SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING,
and FINDING SUBROUTINE AND DATA DECLARATIONS (CTAGS).
Language Modes
When nedit initially reads a file, it attempts to determine whether the file is
in one of the computer languages that it knows about. Knowing what language a
file is written in allows NEdit to assign highlight patterns and smart indent
macros, and to set language specific preferences like word delimiters, tab
emulation, and auto-indent. Language mode can be recognized from both the file
name and from the first 200 characters of content. Language mode recognition
and language-specific preferences are configured in: Preferences -> Default
Settings -> Language Modes....
You can set the language mode manually for a window, by selecting it from the
menu: Preferences -> Language Modes.
Line Numbers
To find a particular line in a source file by line number, choose Goto Line
#... from the Search menu. You can also directly select the line number text
in the compiler message in the terminal emulator window (xterm, decterm,
winterm, etc.) where you ran the compiler, and choose Goto Selected from the
Search menu.
To find out the line number of a particular line in your file, turn on
Statistics Line in the Preferences menu and position the insertion point
anywhere on the line. The statistics line continuously updates the line number
of the line containing the cursor.
Matching Parentheses
To help you inspect nested parentheses, brackets, braces, quotes, and other
characters, NEdit has both an automatic parenthesis matching mode, and a Find
Matching command. Automatic parenthesis matching is activated when you type,
or move the insertion cursor after a parenthesis, bracket, or brace. It
momentarily highlights the matching character if that character is visible in
the window. To find a matching character anywhere in the file, select it or
position the cursor after it, and choose Find Matching from the Search menu.
If the character matches itself, such as a quote or slash, select the first
character of the pair. NEdit will match {, (, [, <, ", ', `, /, and \.
Opening Included Files
The Open Selected command in the File menu understands the C preprocessor's
#include syntax, so selecting an #include line and invoking Open Selected will
generally find the file referred to, unless doing so depends on the settings of
compiler switches or other information not available to NEdit.
Interface to Programming Tools
Integrated software development environments such as SGI's CaseVision and
Centerline Software's Code Center, can be interfaced directly with NEdit via
the client server interface. These tools allow you to click directly on
compiler and runtime error messages and request NEdit to open files, and select
lines of interest. The easiest method is usually to use the tool's interface
for character-based editors like vi, to invoke nc, but programatic interfaces
can also be derived using the source code for nc.
There are also some simple compile/review, grep, ctree, and ctags browsers
available in the NEdit contrib directory on ftp.fnal.gov.
TABS AND TAB EMULATION
Tabs are important for programming in languages which use indentation to show
nesting, as short-hand for producing white-space for leading indents. As a
programmer, you have to decide how to use indentation, and how or whether tab
characters map to your indentation scheme.
Ideally, tab characters map directly to the amount of indent that you use to
distinguish nesting levels in your code. Unfortunately, the Unix standard for
interpretation of tab characters is eight characters (probably dating back to
mechanical capabilities of the original teletype), which is usually too coarse
for a single indent.
Most text editors, NEdit included, allow you to change the interpretation of
the tab character, and many programmers take advantage of this, and set their
tabs to 3 or 4 characters to match their programming style. In NEdit you set
the hardware tab distance in Preferences -> Tabs... for the current window, or
Preferences -> Default Settings -> Tabs... (general), or Preferences -> Default
Settings -> Language Modes... (language-specific) to change the defaults for
future windows.
Changing the meaning of the tab character makes programming much easier while
you're in the editor, but can cause you headaches outside of the editor,
because there is no way to pass along the tab setting as part of a plain-text
file. All of the other tools which display, print, and otherwise process your
source code have to be made aware of how the tabs are set, and must be able to
handle the change. Non-standard tabs can also confuse other programmers, or
make editing your code difficult for them if their text editors don't support
changes in tab distance.
Emulated Tabs
An alternative to changing the interpretation of the tab character is tab
emulation. In the Tabs... dialog(s), turning on Emulated Tabs causes the Tab
key to insert the correct number of spaces and/or tabs to bring the cursor the
next emulated tab stop, as if tabs were set at the emulated tab distance rather
than the hardware tab distance. Backspacing immediately after entering an
emulated tab will delete the fictitious tab as a unit, but as soon as you move
the cursor away from the spot, NEdit will forget that the collection of spaces
and tabs is a tab, and will treat it as separate characters. To enter a real
tab character with "Emulate Tabs" turned on, use Ctrl+Tab.
It is also possible to tell NEdit not to insert ANY tab characters at all in
the course of processing emulated tabs, and in shifting and rectangular
insertion/deletion operations, for programmers who worry about the
misinterpretation of tab characters on other systems.
AUTOMATIC INDENT
Programmers who use structured languages usually require some form of automatic
indent, so that they don't have to continually re-type the sequences of tabs
and/or spaces needed to maintain lengthy running indents. Version 5.0 of NEdit
is the first release of NEdit to offer "smart" indent, at least experimentally,
in addition to the traditional automatic indent which simply lines up the
cursor position with the previous line.
Smart Indent
Smart Indent in this release must still be considered somewhat experimental.
Smart indent macros are only available by default for C and C++, and while
these can easily be configured for different default indentation distances,
they may not conform to everyone's exact C programming style. Smart indent is
programmed in terms of macros in the NEdit macro language which can be entered
in: Preferences -> Default Settings -> Indent -> Program Smart Indent. Hooks
are provided for intervening at the point that a newline is entered, either via
the user pressing the Enter key, or through auto-wrapping; and for arbitrary
type-in to act on specific characters typed.
To type a newline character without invoking smart-indent when operating in
smart-indent mode, hold the Ctrl key while pressing the Return or Enter key.
Auto-Indent
With Indent set to Auto (the default), NEdit keeps a running indent. When you
press the Return or Enter key, spaces and tabs are inserted to line up the
insert point under the start of the previous line. Ctrl+Return in auto-indent
mode acts like a normal return, With auto-indent turned off, Ctrl+Return does
indentation.
Block Indentation Adjustment
The Shift Left and Shift Right commands as well as rectangular dragging can be
used to adjust the indentation for several lines at once. To shift a block of
text one character to the right, select the text, then choose Shift Right from
the Edit menu. Note that the accelerator keys for these menu items are Ctrl+9
and Ctrl+0, which correspond to the right and left parenthesis on most
keyboards. Remember them as adjusting the text in the direction pointed to by
the parenthesis character. Holding the Shift key while selecting either Shift
Left or Shift Right will shift the text by one tab stop (or by one emulated tab
stop if tab emulation is turned on). The help section: "SHIFT LEFT, SHIFT
RIGHT" above has details.
SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING
Syntax Highlighting means using colors and fonts to help distinguish language
elements in programming languages and other types of structured files.
Programmers use syntax highlighting to understand code faster and better, and
to spot many kinds of syntax errors more quickly.
To use syntax highlighting in NEdit, select Highlight Syntax in the Preferences
menu. If NEdit recognizes the computer language that you are using, and
highlighting rules (patterns) are available for that language, it will
highlight your text, and maintain the highlighting, automatically, as you type.
If NEdit doesn't correctly recognize the type of the file you are editing, you
can manually select a language mode from Language Modes in the Preferences
menu. You can also program the method that NEdit uses to recognize language
modes in Preferences -> Default Settings -> Language Modes....
If no highlighting patterns are available for the language that you want to
use, you can create new patterns relatively quickly. The section below titled
"WRITING SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS", has details.
If you are satisfied with what NEdit is highlighting, but would like it to use
different colors or fonts, you can change these by selecting Preferences ->
Default Settings -> Syntax Highlighting -> Text Drawing Styles. Highlighting
patterns are connected with font and color information through a common set of
styles so that colorings defined for one language will be similar across
others, and patterns within the same language which are meant to appear
identical can be changed in the same place. To understand which styles are
used to highlight the language you are interested in, you may need to look at
"Patterns for Highlighting" section, as well.
Syntax highlighting is CPU intensive, and under some circumstances can affect
NEdit's responsiveness. If you have a particularly slow system, or work with
very large files, you may not want to use it all of the time. Syntax
highlighting introduces two kinds of delays. The first is an initial parsing
delay, proportional to the size of the file. This delay is also incurred when
pasting large sections of text, filtering text through shell commands, and
other circumstances involving changes to large amounts of text. The second
kind of delay happens when text which has not previously been visible is
scrolled in to view. Depending on your system, and the highlight patterns you
are using, this may or may not be noticeable. A typing delay is also possible,
but unlikely if you are only using the built-in patterns.
FINDING SUBROUTINE AND DATA DECLARATIONS (CTAGS)
NEdit can process tags files generated using the Unix ctags command. Ctags
creates index files correlating names of functions and declarations with their
locations in C, Fortran, or Pascal source code files. (See the ctags manual
page for more information). Ctags produces a file called "tags" which can be
loaded by NEdit. Once loaded, the information in the tags file enables NEdit
to go directly to the declaration of a highlighted function or data structure
name with a single command. To load a tags file, select "Load Tags File" from
the File menu and choose a tags file to load, or specify the name of the tags
file on the NEdit command line:
nedit -tags tags
NEdit can also be set to load a tags file automatically when it starts up.
Setting the X resource nedit.tagFile to the name of a tag file tells NEdit to
look for that file at startup time (see X RESOURCES). The file name can be
either a complete path name, in which case NEdit will always load the same tags
file, or a file name without a path or with a relative path, in which case
NEdit will load it starting from the current directory. The second option
allows you to have different tags files for different projects, each
automatically loaded depending on the directory you're in when you start
NEdit. Setting the name to "tags" is an obvious choice since this is the name
that ctags uses.
To find the definition of a function or data structure once a tags file is
loaded, select the name anywhere it appears in your program (see SELECTING,
CUTTING, and PASTING) and choose "Find Definition" from the Search menu.
SHELL COMMANDS AND FILTERS
The Shell menu (Unix versions only) allows you to execute Unix shell commands
from within NEdit. You can add items to the menu to extend NEdit's command set
or to incorporate custom automatic editing features using shell commands or
editing languages like awk and sed. To add items to the menu, select
Preferences -> Default Settings Customize Menus -> Shell Menu. NEdit comes
pre-configured with a few useful Unix commands like spell and sort, but we
encourage you to add your own custom extensions.
Filter Selection... prompts you for a Unix command to use to process the
currently selected text. The output from this command replaces the contents of
the selection.
Execute Command... prompts you for a Unix command and replaces the current
selection with the output of the command. If there is no selection, it
deposits the output at the current insertion point.
Execute Command Line uses the position of the cursor in the window to indicate
a line to execute as a shell command line. The cursor may be positioned
anywhere on the line. This command allows you to use an NEdit window as an
editable command window for saving output and saving commands for re-execution.
The X resource called nedit.shell (See X RESOURCES) determines which Unix
shell is used to execute commands. The default value for this resource is
/bin/csh.
LEARN/REPLAY
Selecting Learn Keystrokes from the Macro menu puts NEdit in learn mode. In
learn mode, keystrokes and menu commands are recorded, to be played back later,
using the Replay Keystrokes command, or pasted into a macro in the Macro
Commands dialog of the Default Settings menu in Preferences.
Note that only keyboard and menu commands are recorded, not mouse clicks or
mouse movements since these have no absolute point of reference, such as cursor
or selection position. When you do a mouse-based operation in learn mode,
NEdit will beep (repeatedly) to remind you that the operation was not recorded.
Learn mode is also the quickest and easiest method for writing macros. The
dialog for creating macro commands contains a button labeled "Paste Learn /
Replay Macro", which will deposit the last sequence learned into the body of
the macro.
REPEATING ACTIONS AND LEARN/REPLAY SEQUENCES
You can repeat the last (keyboard-based) command, or learn/replay sequence with
the Repeat... command in the Macro menu. To repeat an action, first do the
action (i.e. insert a character, do a search, move the cursor), then select
Repeat..., decide how or how many times you want it repeated, and click OK.
For example, to move down 30 lines through a file, you could type:
Ctrl+, 29 . To repeat a learn/replay sequence, first learn it, then
select Repeat..., click on Learn/Replay and how you want it repeated, then
click OK.
If the commands you are repeating advance the cursor through the file, you can
also repeat them within a range of characters, or from the current cursor
position to the end of the file. To iterate over a range of characters, use
the primary selection (drag the left mouse button over the text) to mark the
range you want to operate on, and select "In Selection" in the Repeat dialog.
When using In "Selection" or "To End" with a learned sequence, try to do cursor
movement as the last step in the sequence, since testing of the cursor position
is only done at the end of the sequence execution. If you do cursor movement
first, for example searching for a particular word then doing a modification,
the position of the cursor won't be checked until the sequence has potentially
gone far beyond the end of your desired range.
It's easy for a repeated command to get out of hand, and you can easily
generate an infinite loop by using range iteration on a command which doesn't
progress. To cancel a repeating command in progress, type Ctrl+. (period), or
select Cancel Macro from the Macro menu.
MACRO LANGUAGE
Macros can be called from Macro menu commands, window background menu commands,
within the smart-indent framework, and from the .neditmacro file. Macro menu
and window background menu commands are defined under Preferences -> Default
Settings -> Customize Menus. See the section below titled, "PREFERENCES," for
more information on creating items in these menus. The .neditmacro file is a
file of macro commands and definitions which you can create in your home
directory, and which NEdit will automatically load when it is first started.
NEdit's macro language is a simple interpreter with integer arithmetic, dynamic
strings, and C-style looping constructs (very similar to the procedural portion
of the Unix awk program). From the macro language, you can call the same
action routines which are bound to keyboard keys and menu items, as well
additional subroutines for accessing and manipulating editor data, which are
specific to the macro language (these are listed in the sections titled Macro
Subroutines, and Actions).
Syntax
An NEdit macro language program consists of a list of statements, each
terminated by a newline. Groups of statements which are executed together
conditionally, such as the body of a loop, are surrounded by curly braces "{}".
Blank lines and comments are also allowed. Comments begin with a "#" and end
with a newline, and can appear either on a line by themselves, or at the end of
a statement.
Statements which are too long to fit on a single line may be split across
several lines, by placing a backslash "\" character at the end of each line to
be continued.
Data Types
The NEdit macro language recognizes only two data types, dynamic character
strings, and integer values. In general strings and integers can be used
interchangeably. If a string represents an integer value, it can be used as an
integer. Integers can be compared and concatenated with strings.
Integer Constants:
Integers are non-fractional numbers in the range of -2147483647 to 2147483647.
Integer constants must be in decimal. For example:
a = -1
b = 1000
Character String Constants:
Character string constants are enclosed in double quotes. For example:
a = "a string"
dialog("Hi there!", "Dismiss")
Strings may also include C-language style escape sequences:
\\ Backslash \t Tab \f Form feed
\" Double quote \b Backspace \a Alert
\n Newline \r Carriage return \v Vertical tab
For example, to send output to the terminal from which nedit was started, a
newline character is neccessary because, like printf, t_print requires explicit
newlines, and also buffers its output on a per-line basis:
t_print("a = " a "\n")
Variables
Variable names must begin either with a letter (local variables), or a $
(global variables). Beyond the first character, variables may also contain
numbers and underscores `_'. Variables are called in to existence just by
setting them (no explicit declarations are necessary).
Local variables are limited in scope to the subroutine (or menu item
definition) in which they appear. Global variables are accessible from all
routines, and their values persist beyond the call which created them, until
reset.
Built-in Variables:
NEdit has a number of permanently defined variables, which are used to access
global editor information and information about the the window in which the
macro is executing. These are listed along with the built in functions in the
section titled Macro Subroutines.
Functions and Subroutines
The syntax of a function or subroutine call is:
function_name(arg1, arg2, ...)
where arg1, arg2, etc. represent up to 9 argument values which are passed to
the routine being called. A function or subroutine call can be on a line by
itself, as above, or if it returns a value, can be invoked within a character
or numeric expression:
a = fn1(b, c) + fn2(d)
dialog("fn3 says: " fn3())
Arguments are passed by value. This means that you can not return values via
the argument list, only through the function value or indirectly through
agreed-upon global variables.
Built-in Functions:
NEdit has a wide range of built in functions which can be called from the macro
language. These routines are divided into two classes, macro-language
functions, and editor action routines. Editor action routines are more
flexible, in that they may be called either from the macro language, or bound
directly to keys via translation tables. They are also limited, however, in
that they can not return values. Macro language routines can return values,
but can not be bound to keys in translation tables.
Nearly all of the built-in subroutines operate on an implied window, which is
initially the window from which the macro was started. To manipulate the
contents of other windows, use the focus_window subroutine to change the focus
to the ones you wish to modify. focus_window can also be used to iterate over
all of the currently open windows, using the special keyword names, "last" and
"next".
For backwards compatibility, hyphenated action routine names are allowed, and
most of the existing action routines names which contain underscores have an
equivalent version containing hyphens ('-') instead of underscores. Use of
these names is discouraged. The macro parser resolves the ambiguity between
'-' as the subtraction/negation operator, and - as part of an action routine
name by assuming subtraction unless the symbol specifically matches an action
routine name.
User Defined Functions:
Users can define their own macro subroutines, using the define keyword:
define subroutine_name {
< body of subroutine >
}
Macro definitions can not appear within other definitions, or within macro menu
item definitions (usually they are found in the .neditmacro file).
The arguments with which a user-defined subroutine or function was invoked, are
presented as $1, $2, ... , $9. The number of arguments can be read from
$n_args.
Operators and Expressions
Operators have the same meaning and precedence that they do in C, except for ^,
which raises a number to a power (y^x means y to the x power), rather than
bitwise exclusive OR. The table below lists operators in decreasing order of
precedence.
Operators Associativity
()
^ right to left
- ! ++ -- (unary)
* / % left to right
+ - left to right
> >= < <= == != left to right
& left to right
| left to right
&& left to right
|| left to right
(concatenation) left to right
= += -= *= /= %=, &= |= right to left
The order in which operands are evaluated in an expression is undefined, except
for && and ||, which like C, evaluate operands left to right, but stop when
further evaluation would no longer change the result.
Numerical Operators:
The numeric operators supported by the NEdit macro language are listed below:
+ addition
- subtraction or negation
* multiplication
/ division
% modulo
^ power
& bitwise and
| bitwise or
Increment (++) and decrement (--) operators can also be appended or prepended
to variables within an expression. Prepended increment/decrement operators act
before the variable is evaulated. Appended increment/decrement operators act
after the variable is evaluated.
Logical and Comparison Operators:
Logical operations produce a result of 0 (for false) or 1 (for true). In a
logical operation, any non-zero value is recognized to mean true. The logical
and comparison operators allowed in the NEdit macro language are listed below:
&& logical and
|| logical or
! not
> greater
< less
>= greater or equal
<= less or equal
== equal (integers and/or strings)
!= not equal (integers and/or strings)
Character String Operators:
The "operator" for concatenating two strings is the absence of an operator.
Adjoining character strings with no operator in between means concatenation:
d = a b "string" c
t_print("the value of a is: " a)
Comparison between character strings is done with the == and != operators, (as
with integers). There are a number of useful built-in routines for working
with character strings, which are listed in the section called Macro
Subroutines.
Looping and Conditionals
NEdit supports looping constructs: for and while, and conditional statements:
if and else, with essentially the same syntax as C:
for (, ...; ; , ...)
while ()
if ()
if () else
, as in C, can be a single statement, or a list of statements enclosed in
curly braces ({}). is an expression which must evaluate to true
for the statements in to be executed. for loops may also contain
initialization statements, , executed once at the beginning of the loop,
and increment/decrement statements (or any arbitrary statement), which are
executed at the end of the loop, before the condition is evaluated again.
Examples:
for (i=0; i<100; i++)
j = i * 2
for (i=0, j=20; i<20; i++, j--) {
k = i * j
t_print(i, j, k)
}
while (k > 0)
{
k = k - 1
t_print(k)
}
for (;;) {
if (i-- < 1)
break
}
Loops may contain break and continue statements. A break statement causes an
exit from the innermost loop, a continue statement transfers control to the end
of the loop.
BUILT IN VARIABLES
$cursor -- Position of the cursor in the current window.
$column -- Column number of the cursor position in the current window.
$em_tab_dist -- If tab emulation is turned on in the Tabs... dialog of the
Preferences menu, value is the distance between emulated tab stops. If
tab emulation is turned off, value is -1.
$file_name -- Name of the file being edited in the current window, stripped
of directory component.
$file_path -- Directory component of file being edited in the current
window.
$language_mode -- Name of language mode set in the current window.
$line -- Line number of the cursor position in the current window.
$modified -- True if the file in the current window has been modified and
the modifications have not yet been saved.
$selection_start, $selection_end -- Beginning and ending positions of the
primary selection in the current window, or -1 if there is no text
selected in the current window.
$selection_left, $selection_right -- Left and right character offsets of
the rectangular (primary) selection in the current window, or -1 if
there is no selection or it is not rectangular.
$tab_dist -- The distance between tab stops for a hardware tab character,
as set in the Tabs... dialog of the Preferences menu.
$text_length -- The length of the text in the current window.
$use_tabs -- Whether the user is allowing the NEdit to insert tab
characters to maintain spacing in tab emulation and rectangular dragging
operations. (The setting of the "Use tab characters in padding and
emulated tabs" button in the Tabs... dialog of the Preferences menu.)
$wrap_margin -- The right margin in the current window for text wrapping
and filling.
BUILT-IN SUBROUTINES
append_file(string, filename) -- Appends a string to a named file. Returns
1 on successful write, or 0 if unsuccessful.
beep() -- Ring the bell
clipboard_to_string() -- Returns the contents of the clipboard as a macro
string. Returns empty string on error.
dialog(message, btn_1_label, btn_2_label, ...) -- Pop up a dialog for
querying and presenting information to the user. First argument is a
string to show in the message area of the dialog. Up to nine additional
optional arguments represent labels for buttons to appear along the
bottom of the dialog. Returns the number of the button pressed (the
first button is number 1), or 0 if the user closed the dialog via the
window close box.
focus_window(window_name) -- Sets the window on which subsequent macro
commands operate. window_name can be either a fully qualified file name,
or one of "last" for the last window created, or "next" for the next
window in the chain from the currently focused window (the first window
being the one returned from calling focus_window("last"). Returns the
name of the newly-focused window, or an empty string if the requested
window was not found.
get_character(position) -- Returns the single character at the position
indicated by the first argument to the routine from the current window.
get_range(start, end) -- Returns the text between a starting and ending
position from the current window.
get_selection() -- Returns a string containing the text currently selected
by the primary selection either from the current window (no keyword), or
from anywhere on the screen (keyword "any").
length(string) -- Returns the length of a string
max(n1, n2, ...) -- Returns the maximum value of all of its arguments
min(n1, n2, ...) -- Returns the minimum value of all of its arguments
read_file(filename) -- Reads the contents of a text file into a string. On
success, returns 1 in $read_status, and the contents of the file as a
string in the subroutine return value. On failure, returns the empty
string "" and an 0 $read_status.
replace_in_string(string, search_for, replace_with, [type]) -- Replaces all
occurrences of a search string in a string with a replacement string.
Arguments are 1: string to search in, 2: string to search for, 3:
replacement string. Argument 4 is an optional search type, one of
"literal", "case" or "regex". The default search type is "literal".
Returns a new string with all of the replacements done, or an empty
string ("") if no occurrences were found.
replace_range(start, end, string) -- Replaces all of the text in the current
window between two positions.
replace_selection(string) -- Replaces the primary-selection selected text in
the current window.
replace_substring(string, start, end, replace_with) -- Replacing a substring
between two positions in a string within another string.
search(search_for, start, [search_type, wrap, direction]) -- Searches
silently in a window without dialogs, beeps, or changes to the
selection. Arguments are: 1: string to search for, 2: starting position.
Optional arguments may include the strings: "wrap" to make the search
wrap around the beginning or end of the string, "backward" or "forward"
to change the search direction ("forward" is the default), "literal",
"case" or "regex" to change the search type (default is "literal").
Returns the starting position of the match, or -1 if nothing matched.
also returns the ending position of the match in search_end
search_string(string, search_for, start, [search_type, direction]) --
Built-in macro subroutine for searching a string. Arguments are 1:
string to search in, 2: string to search for, 3: starting position.
Optional arguments may include the strings: "wrap" to make the search
wrap around the beginning or end of the string, "backward" or "forward"
to change the search direction ("forward" is the default), "literal",
"case" or "regex" to change the search type (default is "literal").
Returns the starting position of the match, or -1 if nothing matched.
Also returns the ending position of the match in $search_end
select(start, end) -- Selects (with the primary selection) text in the
current buffer between a starting and ending position.
select_rectangle(start, end, left, right) -- Selects a rectangular area of
text between a starting and ending position, and confined horizontally to
characters displayed between positions "left", and "right".
set_cursor_pos(pos) -- Set the cursor position for the current window.
shell_command(command, input_string) -- executes a shell command, feeding it
input from input_string. On completion, output from the command is
returned as the function value, and the command's exit status is returned
in the global variable $shell_cmd_status.
string_dialog(message, btn_1_label, btn_2_label, ...) -- Pop up a dialog for
prompting the user to enter information. The first argument is a string
to show in the message area of the dialog. Up to nine additional
optional arguments represent labels for buttons to appear along the
bottom of the dialog. Returns the string entered by the user as the
function value, and number of the button pressed (the first button is
number 1), in $string_dialog_button. If the user closes the dialog via
the window close box, the function returns the empty string, and
$string_dialog_button returns 0.
string_to_clipboard(string) -- Copy the contents of a macro string to the
clipboard.
substring(string, start, end) -- Returns the portion of a string between a
starting and ending position.
t_print(string1, string2, ...) -- Writes strings to the terminal (stdout)
from which NEdit was started.
tolower(string) -- Return an all lower-case version of string.
toupper(string) -- Return an all upper-case version of string.
write_file(string, filename) -- Writes a string (parameter 1) to a file
named in parameter 2. Returns 1 on successful write, or 0 if
unsuccessful.
ACTION ROUTINES
All of the editing capabilities of NEdit are represented as a special type of
subroutine, called an action routine, which can be invoked from both macros and
translation table entries (see KEY BINDING below).
Actions Representing Menu Commands:
File Menu Search Menu
--------------------- -----------------------
new() find()
open() find_dialog()
open_dialog() find_again()
open_selected() find_selection()
close() replace()
save() replace_dialog()
save_as() replace_all()
save_as_dialog() replace_in_selection()
revert_to_saved() replace_again()
include_file() goto_line_number()
include_file_dialog () goto_line_number_dialog()
load_tags_file() goto_selected()
load_tags_file_dialog() mark()
load_macro_file() mark_dialog()
load_macro_file_dialog() goto_mark()
print() goto_mark_dialog()
print_selection() match()
exit() find_definition()
split_window()
close_pane()
Edit Menu
--------------------- Shell Menu
undo() -----------------------
redo() filter_selection_dialog()
delete() filter_selection()
select_all() execute_command()
shift_left() execute_command_dialog()
shift_left_by_tab() execute_command_line()
shift_right() shell_menu_command()
shift_right_by_tab()
uppercase() Macro Menu
lowercase() -----------------------
fill_paragraph() macro_menu_command()
control_code_dialog() repeat_macro()
repeat_dialog()
The actions representing menu commands are named the same as the menu item with
punctuation removed, all lower case, and underscores replacing spaces. Without
the _dialog suffix, commands which normally prompt the user for information,
instead take the information from the routine's arguments (see below). To
present a dialog and ask the user for input, rather than supplying it in via
arguments, use the actions with the _dialog suffix.
Menu Action Routine Arguments:
Arguments are text strings enclosed in quotes. Below are the menu action
routines which take arguments. Optional arguments are inclosed in [].
open(filename)
save_as(filename)
include(filename)
load_tags_file(filename)
find_dialog([search_direction])
find(search_string [, search-direction], [search-type])
find_again([search-direction])
find_selection([search-direction])
replace_dialog([search-direction])
replace(search-string, replace-string,
[, search-direction] [, search-type])
replace_in_selection(search-string, replace-string
[, search-type])
replace_again([search-direction])
goto_line_number([line-number])
mark(mark-letter)
goto_mark(mark-letter)
filter_selection(shell-command)
execute_command(shell-command)
shell_menu_command(shell-menu-item-name)
macro_menu_command(macro-menu-item-name)
Some notes on argument types above:
filename Path names are interpreted relative
to the directory from which NEdit was
started, wildcards and ~ are not
expanded.
search-direction Either "forward" or "backward"
search-type Either "literal", "case", or "regex"
mark-letter The mark command limits users to
single letters. Inside of macros,
numeric marks are allowed, which won't
interfere with marks set by the user.
(macro or shell) Name of the command exactly as
-menu-item-name specified in the Shell Menu or
Macro Menu dialogs
Keyboard-Only Actions
backward_character() -- Moves the cursor one character to the left.
backward_paragraph() -- Moves the cursor to the beginning of the paragraph,
or if the cursor is already at the beginning of a paragraph, moves the
cursor to the beginning of the previous paragraph. Paragraphs are
defined as regions of text delimited by one or more blank lines.
backward_word() -- Moves the cursor to the beginning of a word, or, if the
cursor is already at the beginning of a word, moves the cursor to the
beginning of the previous word. Word delimiters are user-settable, and
defined by the X resource wordDelimiters.
beginning_of_file() -- Moves the cursor to the beginning of the file.
beginning_of_line() -- Moves the cursor to the beginning of the line.
beginning_of_selection() -- Moves the cursor to the beginning of the
selection without disturbing the selection.
copy_clipboard() -- Copies the current selection to the clipboard.
copy_primary() -- Copies the primary selection to the cursor.
copy_to() -- If a secondary selection exists, copies the secondary selection
to the cursor. If no secondary selection exists, copies the primary
selection to the pointer location.
copy_to_or_end_drag() -- Completes either a secondary selection operation,
or a primary drag. If the user is dragging the mouse to adjust a
secondary selection, the selection is copied and either inserted at the
cursor location, or, if pending-delete is on and a primary selection
exists in the window, replaces the primary selection. If the user is
dragging a block of text (primary selection), completes the drag
operation and leaves the text at it's current location.
cut_clipboard() -- Deletes the text in the primary selection and places it
in the clipboard.
cut_primary() -- Copies the primary selection to the cursor and deletes it
at its original location.
delete_selection() -- Deletes the contents of the primary selection.
delete_next_character() -- If a primary selection exists, deletes its
contents. Otherwise, deletes the character following the cursor.
delete_previous_character() -- If a primary selection exists, deletes its
contents. Otherwise, deletes the character before the cursor.
delete_next_word() -- If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents.
Otherwise, deletes the word following the cursor.
delete_previous_word() -- If a primary selection exists, deletes its
contents. Otherwise, deletes the word before the cursor.
delete_to_start_of_line() -- If a primary selection exists, deletes its
contents. Otherwise, deletes the characters between the cursor and the
start of the line.
delete_to_end_of_line() -- If a primary selection exists, deletes its
contents. Otherwise, deletes the characters between the cursor and the
end of the line.
deselect_all() -- De-selects the primary selection.
end_of_file() -- Moves the cursor to the end of the file.
end_of_line() -- Moves the cursor to the end of the line.
end_of_selection() -- Moves the cursor to the end of the selection without
disturbing the selection.
exchange() -- Exchange the primary and secondary selections.
extend_adjust() -- Attached mouse-movement events to begin a selection
between the cursor and the mouse, or extend the primary selection to the
mouse position.
extend_end() -- Completes a primary drag-selection operation.
extend_start() -- Begins a selection between the cursor and the mouse. A
drag-selection operation can be started with either extend_start or
grab_focus.
forward_character() -- Moves the cursor one character to the right.
forward_paragraph() -- Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next
paragraph. Paragraphs are defined as regions of text delimited by one or
more blank lines.
forward_word() -- Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next word. Word
delimiters are user-settable, and defined by the X resource
wordDelimiters.
grab_focus() -- Moves the cursor to the mouse pointer location, and prepares
for a possible drag-selection operation (bound to extend_adjust), or
multi-click operation (a further grab_focus action). If a second
invocation of grab focus follows immediately, it selects a whole word, or
a third, a whole line.
insert_string("string") If pending delete is on and the cursor is inside
the selection, replaces the selection with "string". Otherwise, inserts
"string" at the cursor location.
key_select("direction") Moves the cursor one character in "direction"
("left", "right", "up", or "down") and extends the selection. Same as
forward/backward-character("extend"), or process-up/down("extend"), for
compatibility with previous versions.
move-destination() -- Moves the cursor to the pointer location without
disturbing the selection. (This is an unusual way of working. We left
it in for compatibility with previous versions, but if you actually use
this capability, please send us some mail, otherwise it is likely to
disappear in the future.
move_to() -- If a secondary selection exists, deletes the contents of the
secondary selection and inserts it at the cursor, or if pending-delete is
on and there is a primary selection, replaces the primary selection. If
no secondary selection exists, moves the primary selection to the pointer
location, deleting it from its original position.
move_to_or_end_drag() -- Completes either a secondary selection operation,
or a primary drag. If the user is dragging the mouse to adjust a
secondary selection, the selection is deleted and either inserted at the
cursor location, or, if pending-delete is on and a primary selection
exists in the window, replaces the primary selection. If the user is
dragging a block of text (primary selection), completes the drag
operation and deletes the text from it's current location.
newline() -- Inserts a newline character. If Auto Indent is on, lines up
the indentation of the cursor with the current line.
newline_and_indent() -- Inserts a newline character and lines up the
indentation of the cursor with the current line, regardless of the
setting of Auto Indent.
newline_no_indent() -- Inserts a newline character, without automatic
indentation, regardless of the setting of Auto Indent.
next_page() -- Moves the cursor and scroll forward one page.
page_left() -- Move the cursor and scroll left one page.
page_right() -- Move the cursor and scroll right one page.
paste_clipboard() -- Insert the contents of the clipboard at the cursor, or
if pending delete is on, replace the primary selection with the contents
of the clipboard.
previous_page() -- Moves the cursor and scroll backward one page.
process_bdrag() -- Same as secondary_or_drag_start for compatibility with
previous versions.
process_cancel() -- Cancels the current extend_adjust, secondary_adjust, or
secondary_or_drag_adjust in progress.
process_down() -- Moves the cursor down one line.
process_return() -- Same as newline for compatibility with previous
versions.
process_shift_down() -- Same as process_down("extend") for compatibility
with previous versions.
process_shift_up() -- Same as process_up("extend") for compatibility with
previous versions.
process_tab() -- If tab emulation is turned on, inserts an emulated tab,
otherwise inserts a tab character.
process_up() -- Moves the cursor up one line.
scroll_down(nLines) Scroll the display down (towards the end of the file) by
nLines.
scroll_up(nLines) Scroll the display up (towards the beginning of the file)
by nLines.
scroll_to_line(lineNum) Scroll to position line number lineNum at the top of
the pane. The first line of a file is line 1.
secondary_adjust() -- Attached mouse-movement events to extend the secondary
selection to the mouse position.
secondary_or_drag_adjust() -- Attached mouse-movement events to extend the
secondary selection, or reposition the primary text being dragged. Takes
two optional arguments, "copy", and "overlay". "copy" leaves a copy of
the dragged text at the site at which the drag began. "overlay" does the
drag in overlay mode, meaning the dragged text is laid on top of the
existing text, obscuring and ultimately deleting it when the drag is
complete.
secondary_or_drag_start() -- To be attached to a mouse down event. Begins
drag selecting a secondary selection, or dragging the contents of the
primary selection, depending on whether the mouse is pressed inside of an
existing primary selection.
secondary_start() -- To be attached to a mouse down event. Begin drag
selecting a secondary selection.
select_all() -- Select the entire file.
self_insert() -- To be attached to a key-press event, inserts the character
equivalent of the key pressed.
Arguments to Keyboard Action Routines
In addition to the arguments listed in the call descriptions, any routine
involving cursor movement can take the argument "extend", meaning, adjust the
primary selection to the new cursor position. Routines which take the "extend"
argument as well as mouse dragging operations for both primary and secondary
selections can take the optional keyword "rect", meaning, make the selection
rectangular.
CUSTOMIZATION
NEdit can be customized many different ways. The most important user-settable
options are presented in the Preferences menu, including all options that users
might need to change during an editing session. Options set in the Default
Settings sub-menu of the Preferences menu can be preserved between sessions by
selecting Save Defaults, which writes a file called .nedit in the user's home
directory. See the section titled PREFERENCES for more details.
User defined commands can be added to NEdit's Shell, Macro, and window
background menus. Dialogs for creating items in these menus can be found under
Customize Menus in the Default Settings sub menu of the Preferences menu.
For users who depend on NEdit every day and want to tune every excruciating
detail, there are also X resources for tuning a vast number of such details,
down to the color of each individual button. See the section "X Resources" for
more information, as well as a list of selected resources.
The most common reason customizing your X resources for NEdit, however, is key
binding. While limited key binding can be done through Preferences settings
(Preferences -> Default Settings -> Customize Menus), you can really only add
keys this way, and each key must have a corresponding menu item. Any
significant changes to key binding should be made via the Translations resource
and menu accelerator resources. The sections titled "Key Binding" and "X
Resources" have more information.
PREFERENCES
The Preferences menu allows you to set options for both the current editing
window, and default values for newly created windows and future NEdit
sessions. Options in the Preferences menu itself (not in the Default Settings
sub-menu) take effect immediately and refer to the current window only.
Options in the Default Settings sub-menu have no effect on the current window,
but instead provide initial settings for future windows created using the New
or Open commands. Preferences set in the Default Settings sub-menu can also be
saved in a file that is automatically read by NEdit at startup time, by
selecting Save Defaults.
Preferences Menu
Default Settings -- Menu of initial settings for future windows.
Generally the same as the options in the main part of the menu, but
apply as defaults for future windows created during this NEdit
session. These settings can be saved using the Save Defaults command
below, to be loaded automatically each time NEdit is started.
Save Defaults -- Save the default options as set under Default Settings
for future NEdit sessions.
Statistics Line -- Show the full file name, line number, and length of the
file being edited.
Language Mode -- Tells NEdit what language (if any) to assume, for
selecting language-specific features such as highlight patterns and
smart indent macros, and setting language specific preferences like
word delimiters, tab emulation, and auto-indent. See FEATURES FOR
PROGRAMMING for more information.
Auto Indent -- Setting Auto Indent "on" maintains a running indent
(pressing the return key will line up the cursor with the indent level
of the previous line). If smart indent macros are available for the
current language mode, smart indent can be selected and NEdit will
attempt to guess proper language indentation for each new line. See
AUTOMATIC INDENT for more information.
Wrap -- Choose between two styles of automatic wrapping or none. Auto
Newline wrap, wraps text at word boundaries when the cursor reaches the
right margin, by replacing the space or tab at the last word boundary
with a newline character. Continuous Wrap wraps long lines which
extend past the right margin. Continuous Wrap mode is typically used to
produce files where newlines are ommitted within paragraphs, to make
text filling automatic (a kind of poor-man's word processor). Text of
this style is common on Macs and PCs but is not necessarily supported
very well under Unix (except in programs which deal with e-mail, for
which it is often the format of choice).
Wrap Margin -- Set margin for Auto Newline Wrap, Continuous Wrap, and
Fill Paragraph. Lines may, be wrapped at the right margin of the
window, or the margin can be set at a specific column.
Tabs -- Set the tab distance (number of characters between tab stops) for
tab characters, and control tab emulation and use of tab characters in
padding and emulated tabs.
Text Font... -- Change the font(s) used to display text (fonts for menus
and dialogs must be set using X resources for the text area of the
window). See below for more information.
Highlight Syntax -- If NEdit recognizes the language being edited, and
highlighting patterns are available for that language, use fonts and
colors to enhance viewing of the file. See "SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING" for
more information.
Make Backup Copy -- On Save, write a backup copy of the file as it existed
before the Save command with the extension .bck (Unix only).
Incremental Backup -- Periodically make a backup copy of the file being
edited under the name ~filename on Unix or _filename on VMS (see CRASH
RECOVERY).
Show Matching (..) -- Momentarily highlight matching parenthesis,
brackets, and braces when one of these characters is typed, or when the
insertion cursor is positioned after it.
Overtype -- In overtype mode, new characters entered replace the
characters in front of the insertion cursor, rather than being inserted
before them.
Read Only -- Lock the file against accidental modification. This
temporarily prevents the file from being modified in this NEdit
session. Note that this is diferent from setting the file protection.
Preferences -> Default Settings Menu
Options in the Preferences -> Default Settings menu have the same meaning as
those in the top-level Preferences menu, except that they apply to future NEdit
windows and future NEdit sessions if saved with the Save Defaults command.
Additional options which appear in this menu are:
Language Modes -- Define language recognition information (for
determining language mode from file name or content) and set language
specific preferences.
Customize Menus -- Add/remove items from the Shell, Macro, and window
background menus (see below).
Searching -- Options for controlling the behavior of Find and Replace
commands:
Verbose - Presents search results in dialog form, asks before
wrapping a search back around the beginning (or end) of the
file.
Keep Dialogs Up - Don't pop down Replace and Find boxes after
searching.
Default Search Style - Initial setting for search type in Find and
Replace dialogs.
Syntax Highlighting -- Program and configure enhanced text display for
new or supported languages (See SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING and WRITING SYNTAX
HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS).
Initial Window Size -- Default size for new windows.
Changing Font(s)
The font used to display text in NEdit is set under Preferences -> Text Font
(for the current window), or Preferences -> Default Settings Text Font (for
future windows). These dialogs also allow you to set fonts for syntax
highlighting. If you don't intend to use syntax highlighting, you can ignore
most of the dialog, and just set the field labeled Primary Font.
Unless you are absolutely certain about the types of files that you will be
editing with NEdit, you should choose a fixed-spacing font. Many, if not most,
plain-text files are written expecting to be viewed with fixed character
spacing, and will look wrong with proportional spacing. NEdit's filling,
wrapping, and rectangular operations will also work strangely if you choose a
proportional font.
Note that in the font browser (the dialog brought up by the Browse... button),
the subset of fonts which are shown is narrowed depending on the
characteristics already selected. It is therefore important to know that you
can unselect characteristics from the lists by clicking on the selected items a
second time.
Fonts for syntax highlighting should ideally match the primary font in both
height and spacing. A mismatch in spacing will result in similar distortions
as choosing a proportional font: column alignment will sometimes look wrong,
and rectangular operations, wrapping, and filling will behave strangely. A
mismatch in height will cause windows to re-size themselves slightly when
syntax highlighting is turned on or off, and increase the inter- line spacing
of the text. Unfortunately, on some systems it is hard to find sets of fonts
which match exactly in height.
Customizing Menus
You can add or change items in the Shell, Macro, and window background menus
under Preferences -> Default Settings -> Customize Menus. When you choose one
of these, you will see a dialog with a list of the current user-configurable
items from the menu on the left. To change an existing item, select it from
the list, and its properties will appear in the remaining fields of the dialog,
where you may change them. Selecting the item "New" from the list allows you
to enter new items in the menu.
Hopefully most of the characteristics are self explanatory, but here are a few
things to note:
Accelerator keys are keyboard shortcuts which appear on the right hand side of
the menus, and allow you avoid pulling down the menu and activate the command
with a single keystroke. Enter accelerators by typing the keys exactly as you
would to activate the command.
Mnemonics are a single letter which should be part of the menu item name, which
allow users to traverse and activate menu items by typing keys when the menu is
pulled down.
In the Shell Command field of the Shell Commands dialog, the % character
expands to the name (including directory path) of the file in the window. To
include a % character in the command, use %%.
The Menu Entry field can contain special characters for constructing
hierarchical sub-menus, and for making items which appear only in certain
language modes. The right angle bracket character ">" creates a sub-menu. The
name of the item itself should be the last element of the path formed from
successive sub-menu names joined with ">". Menu panes are called in to
existence simply by naming them as part of a Menu Entry name. To put several
items in the same sub-menu, repeat the same hierarchical sequence for each.
For example, in the Macro Commands dialog, two items with menu entries: a>b>c
and a>b>d would create a single sub menu under the macro menu called "a", which
would contain a single sub-menu, b, holding the actual items, c and d:
+---++---++---+
|a >||b >||c |
+---++---+|d |
+---+
To qualify a menu entry with a language mode, simply add an at-sign "@" at the
end of the menu command, followed (no space) by a language mode name. To make
a menu item which appears in several language modes, append additional @s and
language mode names. For example, an item with the menu entry:
Make C Prototypes@C@C++
would appear only in C and C++ language modes, and:
Make Class Template@C++
would appear only in C++ mode. Menu items with no qualification appear in all
language modes.
Sharing Customizations with Other NEdit Users
If you have written macro or shell menu commands, highlight patterns, or smart-
indent macros that you want to share with other NEdit users, you can make a
file which they can load into their nedit environment.
To load such a file, start nedit with the command:
nedit -import
In the new nedit session, verify that the imported patterns or macros do what
you want, then select Preferences -> Save Defaults. Saving incorporates the
changes into your own .nedit file, so the next time you run nedit, you will not
have to import the distribution file.
Loading a customization file is automated, but creating one is not. To produce
a file to be imported by other users, you must make a copy of your own .nedit
file, and edit it, by hand, to remove everything but the few items of interest
to the recipient. Leave only the individual resource(s), and within those
resources, only the particular macro, pattern, style, etc, that you wish to
exchange. For example, to share a highlighting pattern set, you would include
the patterns, any new styles you added, and language mode information only if
the patterns are intended to support a new language rather than updating an
existing one. For example:
nedit.highlightPatterns:\
My Language:1:0{\n\
Comment:"#":"$"::Comment::\n\
Loop Header:"^[ \\t]*loop:":::Loop::\n\
}
nedit.languageModes: My Language:.my::::::
nedit.styles: Loop:blue:Bold
Resources are in the format of X resource files, but the format of text within
multiple-item resources like highlight patterns, language modes, macros,
styles, etc., are private to NEdit. Each resource is a string which ends at
the first newline character not escaped with \, so you must be careful about
how you treat ends of lines. While you can generally just cut and paste
indented sections, if something which was originally in the middle of a
resource string is now at the end, you must remove the \ line continuation
character(s) so it will not join the next line into the resource. Conversely,
if something which was originally at the end of a resource is now in the
middle, you'll have to add continuation character(s) to make sure that the
resource string is properly continued from beginning to end, and possibly
newline character(s) (\n) to make sure that it is properly separated from the
next item.
X RESOURCES
NEdit has additional options to those provided in the Preferences menu which
are set using X resources. Like most other X programs, NEdit can be customized
to vastly unnecessary proportions, from initial window positions down to the
font and shadow colors of each individual button (A complete discussion of how
to do this is left to books on the X Windows System). Key binding (see KEY
BINDING) is one of the most useful of these resource settable options.
X resources are usually specified in a file called .Xdefaults or .Xresources in
your home directory (on VMS this is sys$login:decw$xdefaults.dat). On some
systems, this file is read and its information attached to the X server (your
screen) when you start X. On other systems, the .Xdefaults file is read each
time you run an X program. When X resource values are attached to the X
server, changes to the resource file are not available to application programs
until you either run the xrdb program with the appropriate file as input, or
re-start the X server.
The .nedit File
The .nedit (saved preferences) file is in the same format as an X resource
file, and its contents can be moved into your X resource file. One reason for
doing so would be to attach server specific preferences, such as a default font
to a particular X server. Another reason for moving preferences into the X
resource file would be to keep preferences menu options and resource settable
options together in one place. Though the files are the same format, additional
resources should not be added to the .nedit file, they will not be read, and
NEdit modifies this file by overwriting it completely. Note also that the
contents of the .nedit file take precedence over the values of X resources.
Using Save Defaults after moving the contents of your .nedit file to your
.Xdefaults file will re-create the .nedit file, interfering with the options
that you have moved.
Selected X Resource Names
The following are selected NEdit resource names and default values for NEdit
options not settable via the Preferences menu (for preference resource names,
see your .nedit file):
nedit.tagFile: (not defined) -- The name of a file of the type produced
by the Unix ctags command which NEdit will load at startup time
(see FINDING SUBROUTINE AND DATA DECLARATIONS above). The tag file
provides a database from which NEdit can automatically open files
containing the definition of a particular subroutine or data type.
nedit.shell: /bin/csh -- (Unix systems only) The Unix shell (command
interpreter) to use for executing commands from the Shell menu
nedit.wordDelimiters: .,/\\`'!@#%^&*()-=+{}[]":;<>? -- The characters,
in addition to blanks and tabs, which mark the boundaries between
words for the move-by-word (Ctrl+Arrow) and select-word (double
click) commands.
nedit.remapDeleteKey: True -- Setting this resource to False restores
the original Motif binding of the delete key to forward-delete.
This binding causes problems when X servers with one delete/
backspace configuration are connected with X clients of the other.
Users with a backspace key in the backspace/delete position and who
use only machines with that style of keyboard can set this resource
to False to get back the forward-delete function of the delete key.
nedit.bgMenuButton: ~Shift~Ctrl~Meta~Alt -- Specification for
mouse button / key combination to post the background menu (in the
form of an X translation table event specification). The event
specification should be as specific as possible, since it will
override less specific translation table entries.
nedit.maxPrevOpenFiles: 30 -- Number of files listed in the Open
Previous sub-menu of the File menu. Setting this to zero disables
the Open Previous menu item and maintenance of the .neditdb file.
nedit.stdOpenDialog: False -- Setting this resource to True restores the
standard Motif style of Open dialog. NEdit file open dialogs are
missing a text field at the bottom of the dialog, where the file
name can be entered as a string. The field is removed in NEdit to
encourage users to type file names in the list, a non-standard, but
much faster method for finding files.
nedit.printCommand: (system specific) -- Command used by the print dialog
to print a file, i.e. lp, lpr, etc..
nedit.printCopiesOption: (system specific) -- Option name used to
specify multiple copies to the print command. If the option should
be separated from its argument by a space, leave a trailing space.
If blank, no "Number of Copies" item will appear in the print dialog.
nedit.printQueueOption: (system specific) -- Option name used to specify
a print queue to the print command. If the option should be
separated from its argument by a space, leave a trailing space. If
blank, no "Queue" item will appear in the print dialog.
nedit.printNameOption: (system specific) -- Option name used to specify a
job name to the print command. If the option should be separated
from its argument by a space, leave a trailing space. If blank, no
job or file name will be attached to the print job or banner page.
nedit.printHostOption: (system specific) -- Option name used to specify a
host name to the print command. If the option should be separated
from its argument by a space, leave a trailing space. If blank, no
"Host" item will appear in the print dialog.
nedit.printDefaultQueue: (system specific) -- The name of the default
print queue. Used only to display in the print dialog, and has no
effect on printing.
nedit.printDefaultHost: (system specific) -- The node name of the
default print host. Used only to display in the print dialog, and
has no effect on printing.
nedit.multiClickTime: (system specific) -- Maximum time in milliseconds
allowed between mouse clicks within double and triple click actions.
nedit*scrollBarPlacement: BOTTOM_LEFT -- How scroll bars are placed in
NEdit windows, as well as various lists and text fields in the
program. Other choices are: BOTTOM_RIGHT, TOP_LEFT, or TOP_RIGHT.
nedit*text.autoWrapPastedText: False -- When Auto- Newline Wrap is turned
on, apply automatic wrapping (which normally only applies to typed
text) to pasted text as well.
nedit*text.heavyCursor: False -- For monitors with poor resolution or
users who have difficulty seeing the cursor, makes the cursor in the
text editing area of the window heavier and darker.
nedit*text.foreground: black -- Foreground color of the text editing area
of the NEdit window.
nedit*text.background: white -- Background color of the text editing area
of the NEdit window.
nedit*text.selectForeground: black -- Foreground (text) color for
selections in the text editing area of the NEdit window.
nedit*text.selectBackground: gray80 -- Color for selections in the text
editing area of the NEdit window.
nedit*text.highlightForeground: white -- Foreground (text) color for
highlights (parenthesis flashing) in the text editing area of the
NEdit window.
nedit*text.highlightBackground: red -- Color for highlights (parenthesis
flashing) in the text editing area of the NEdit window.
nedit*text.cursorForeground: black -- Color for text cursor in the text
editing area of the NEdit window.
nedit*text.blinkRate: 600 -- Blink rate of the text insertion cursor in
milliseconds. Set to zero to stop blinking.
nedit*text.Translations: -- Modifies key bindings (see below).
nedit*foreground: black -- Default foreground color for menus, dialogs,
scroll bars, etc..
nedit*background: gray70 -- Default background color for menus, dialogs,
scroll bars, etc..
nedit*fontList: helvetica-bold-14 -- Default font for menus, dialogs,
scroll bars, etc..
nc.autoStart: False -- Whether the nc program should automatically start
an NEdit server (without prompting the user) if an appropriate server
is not found.
nc.serverCommand: nedit -server -- Command used by the nc program to
start an NEdit server.
Selected NEdit Widget Names
You can change colors, fonts, and other characteristics, of the widgets named
below, by appending .background, .foreground, .fontList, etc., to these names:
nedit*statsLine -- Statistics line
nedit*menuBar -- Top-of-window menu-bar
nedit*textHorScrollBar -- Horizontal scroll bar
nedit*textVertScrollBar -- Vertical scroll bar
nedit*helpText -- Help window text
KEY BINDING
There are several ways to change key bindings in NEdit. The easiest way to add
a new key binding in NEdit is to define a macro in Preferences -> Default
Settings -> Customize Menus -> Macro Menu. However, if you want to change
existing bindings or add a significant number of new key bindings you will need
to do so via X resources.
Before reading this section, you must understand how to set X resources (see
the section titled "X RESOURCES" above). Since setting X resources is tricky,
it is also helpful when working on key-binding, to set some easier-to-verify
resource at the same time, as a simple check that the NEdit program is actually
seeing your changes. The appres program is also very helpful in checking that
the resource settings that you make, actually reach the program for which they
are intended in the correct form.
Key Binding in General
Keyboard commands are associated with editor action routines through two
separate mechanisms in NEdit. Commands which appear in pull-down menus have
individual resources designating a keyboard equivalent to the menu command,
called an accelerator key. Commands which do not have an associated menu item
are bound to keys via the X toolkit translation mechanism. The methods for
changing these two kinds of bindings are quite different.
Key Binding Via Translations
The most general way to bind actions to keys in NEdit is to use the translation
table associated with the text widget. To add a binding to Alt+Y to insert the
string "Hi!", for example, add lines similar to the following to your X
resource file:
NEdit*text.Translations: #override \n\
Alty: insert_string("Hi!") \n
The section "ACTION ROUTINES" above lists the actions available to be bound.
Translation tables map key and mouse presses, window operations, and other
kinds of events, to actions. The syntax for translation tables is simplified
here, and you. may need to refer to a book on the X window system for more
detailed information.
Note that accelerator resources (discussed below) override translations, and
that most Ctrl+letter and Alt+letter combinations are already bound to an
accelerator key. To use one of these combinations from a translation table,
therefore, you must first un-bind the original menu accelerator.
A resource for changing a translation table consists of a keyword; #override,
#augment, or #replace; followed by lines (separated by newline characters)
pairing events with actions. Events begin with modifiers, like Ctrl, Shift, or
Alt, followed by the event type in <>. BtnDown, Btn1Down, Btn2Down, Btn1Up,
Key, KeyUp are valid event types. For key presses, the event type is followed
by the name of the key. You can specify a combination of events, such as a
sequence of key presses, by separating them with commas. The other half of the
event/action pair is a set of actions. These are separated from the event
specification by a colon and from each other by spaces. Actions are names
followed by parentheses, optionally containing one or more parameters separated
by comas.
Changing Menu Accelerator Keys
The menu shortcut keys shown at the right of NEdit menu items can also be
changed via X resources. Each menu item has two resources associated with it,
accelerator, the event to trigger the menu item; and acceleratorText, the
string shown in the menu. The form of the accelerator resource is the same as
events for translation table entries discussed above, though multiple keys and
other subtleties are not allowed. The resource name for a menu is the title in
lower case, followed by "Menu", the resource name of menu item is the name in
lower case, run together, with words separated by caps, and all punctuation
removed. For example, to change Cut to Ctrl+X, you would add the following to
your .Xdefaults file:
nedit*editMenu.cut.accelerator: Ctrlx
nedit*editMenu.cut.acceleratorText: Ctrl+X
Accelerator keys with optional shift key modifiers, like Find..., have an
additional accelerator resource with Shift appended to the name. For example:
nedit*searchMenu.find.acceleratorText: [Shift]Alt+F
nedit*searchMenu.find.accelerator: Altf
nedit*searchMenu.findShift.accelerator: Shift Altf
WRITING SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS
Patterns are the mechanism by which syntax highlighting (see SYNTAX
HIGHLIGHTING above) is programmed in NEdit, that is, how it decides what to
highlight in a given language. To create syntax highlighting patterns for a
new language, or to modify existing patterns, select "Patterns for
Highlighting" from "Syntax Highlighting" sub-section of the "Default Settings"
sub-menu of the "Preferences" menu.
First, a word of caution. As with regular expression matching in general, it
is quite possible to write patterns which are so inefficient that they
essentially lock up the editor as they recursively re-examine the entire
contents of the file thousands of times. With the multiplicity of patterns,
the possibility of a lock-up is significantly increased in syntax
highlighting. When working on highlighting patterns, be sure to save your work
frequently.
NEdit's syntax highlighting is unusual in that it works in real-time (as you
type), and yet is completely programmable using standard regular expression
notation. Other syntax highlighting editors usually fall either into the
category of fully programmable but unable to keep up in real-time, or real-time
but limited programmability. The additional burden that NEdit places on
pattern writers in order to achieve this speed/flexibility mix, is to force
them to state self-imposed limitations on the amount of context that patterns
may examine when re-parsing after a change. While the "Pattern Context
Requirements" heading is near the end of this section, it is not optional, and
must be understood before making any any serious effort at pattern writing.
In its simplest form, a highlight pattern consists of a regular expression to
match, along with a style representing the font an color for displaying any
text which matches that expression. To bold the word, "highlight", wherever it
appears the text, the regular expression simply would be the word "highlight".
The style (selected from the menu under the heading of "Highlight Style")
determines how the text will be drawn. To bold the text, either select an
existing style, such as "Keyword", which bolds text, or create a new style and
select it under Highlight Style.
The full range of regular expression capabilities can be applied in such a
pattern, with the single caveat that the expression must conclusively match or
not match, within the pre-defined context distance (as discussed below under
Pattern Context Requirements).
To match longer ranges of text, particularly any constructs which exceed the
requested context, you must use a pattern which highlights text between a
starting and ending regular expression match. To do so, select "Highlight text
between starting and ending REs" under "Matching", and enter both a starting
and ending regular expression. For example, to highlight everything between
double quotes, you would enter a double quote character in both the starting
and ending regular expression fields. Patterns with both a beginning and
ending expression span all characters between the two expressions, including
newlines.
Again, the limitation for automatic parsing to operate properly is that both
expressions must match within the context distance stated for the pattern set.
With the ability to span large distances, comes the responsibility to recover
when things go wrong. Remember that syntax highlighting is called upon to
parse incorrect or incomplete syntax as often as correct syntax. To stop a
pattern short of matching its end expression, you can specify an error
expression, which stops the pattern from gobbling up more than it should. For
example, if the text between double quotes shouldn't contain newlines, the
error expression might be "$". As with both starting and ending expressions,
error expressions must also match within the requested context distance.
Coloring Sub-Expressions
It is also possible to color areas of text within a regular expression match.
A pattern of this type associates a style with sub-expressions references of
the parent pattern (as used in regular expression substitution patterns, see
the section titled: REGULAR EXPRESSIONS). Sub-expressions of both the starting
and ending patterns may be colored. For example, if the parent pattern has a
starting expression "\<", and end expression "\>", (for highlighting all of the
text contained within angle brackets), a sub-pattern using "\0" in both the
starting and ending expression fields could color the brackets differently from
the intervening text. A quick shortcut to typing in pattern names in the
Parent Pattern field is to use the middle mouse button to drag them from the
Patterns list.
Hierarchical Patterns
A hierarchical sub-pattern, is identical to a top level pattern, but is invoked
only between the beginning and ending expression matches of its parent
pattern. Like the sub-expression coloring patterns discussed above, it is
associated with a parent pattern using the Parent Pattern field in the pattern
specification. Pattern names can be dragged from the pattern list with the
middle mouse button to the Parent Pattern field.
After the start expression of the parent pattern matches, the syntax
highlighting parser searches for either the parent's end pattern or a matching
sub-pattern. When a sub-pattern matches, control is not returned to the parent
pattern until the entire sub-pattern has been parsed, regardless of whether the
parent's end pattern appears in the text matched by the sub-pattern.
The most common use for this capability is for coloring sub-structure of
language constructs (smaller patterns embedded in larger patterns).
Hierarchical patterns can also simplify parsing by having sub-patterns "hide"
special syntax from parent patterns, such as special escape sequences or
internal comments.
There is no depth limit in nesting hierarchical sub-patterns, but beyond the
third level of nesting, automatic re-parsing will sometimes have to re-parse
more than the requested context distance to guaranty a correct parse (which can
slow down the maximum rate at which the user can type if large sections of text
are matched only by deeply nested patterns).
While this is obviously not a complete hierarchical language parser it is still
useful in many text coloring situations. As a pattern writer, your goal is not
to completely cover the language syntax, but to generate colorings that are
useful to the programmer. Simpler patterns are usually more efficient and also
more robust when applied to incorrect code.
Deferred (Pass-2) Parsing
NEdit does pattern matching for syntax highlighting in two passes. The first
pass is applied to the entire file when syntax highlighting is first turned on,
and to new ranges of text when they are initially read or pasted in. The
second pass is applied only as needed when text is exposed (scrolled in to
view).
If you have a particularly complex set of patterns, and parsing is beginning to
add a noticeable delay to opening files or operations which change large
regions of text, you can defer some of that parsing from startup time, to when
it is actually needed for viewing the text. Deferred parsing can only be used
with single expression patterns, or begin/end patterns which match entirely
within the requested context distance. To defer the parsing of a pattern to
when the text is exposed, click on the Pass-2 pattern type button in the
highlight patterns dialog.
Sometimes a pattern can't be deferred, not because of context requirements, but
because it must run concurrently with pass-1 (non-deferred) patterns. If they
didn't run concurrently, a pass-1 pattern might incorrectly match some of the
characters which would normally be hidden inside of a sequence matched by the
deferred pattern. For example, C has character constants enclosed in single
quotes. These typically do not cross line boundaries, meaning they can be
parsed entirely within the context distance of the C pattern set and should be
good candidates for deferred parsing. However, they can't be deferred because
they can contain sequences of characters which can trigger pass-one patterns.
Specifically, the sequence, '\"', contains a double quote character, which
would be matched by the string pattern and interpreted as introducing a string.
Pattern Context Requirements
The context requirements of a pattern set state how much additional text around
any change must be examined to guaranty that the patterns will match what they
are intended to match. Context requirements are a promise by NEdit to the
pattern writer, that the regular expressions in his/her patterns will be
matched against at least lines and
characters, around any modified text. Combining line and character
requirements guaranty that both will be met.
Automatic re-parsing happens on EVERY KEYSTROKE, so the amount of context which
must be examined is very critical to typing efficiency. The more complicated
your patterns, the more critical the context becomes. To cover all of the
keywords in a typical language, without affecting the maximum rate at which
users can enter text, you may be limited to just a few lines and/or a few
hundred characters of context.
The default context distance is 1 line, with no minimum character requirement.
There are several benefits to sticking with this default. One is simply that
it is easy to understand and to comply with. Regular expression notation is
designed around single line matching. To span lines in a regular expression,
you must explicitly mention the newline character "\n", and matches which are
restricted to a single line are virtually immune to lock-ups. Also, if you can
code your patterns to work within a single line of context, without an
additional character-range context requirement, the parser can take advantage
the fact that patterns don't cross line boundaries, and nearly double its
efficiency over a one-line and 1-character context requirement. (In a single
line context, you are allowed to match newlines, but only as the first and/or
last character.)
WRITING SMART INDENT MACROS
Smart indent macros can be written for any language, but are usually more
difficult to write than highlighting patterns. A good place to start, of
course, is to look at the existing macros for C and C++.
Smart indent macros for a language mode consist of standard NEdit macro
language code attached to any or all of the following three activation
conditions: 1) When smart indent is first turned on for a text window
containing code of the language, 2) When a newline is typed and smart indent
is expected, 3) after any character is typed. To attach macro code to any of
these code "hooks", enter it in the appropriate section in the Preferences ->
Default Settings -> Auto Indent -> Program Smart Indent dialog.
Typically most of the code should go in the initialization section, because
that is the appropriate place for subroutine definitions, and smart indent
macros are complicated enough that you are not likely to want to write them as
one monolithic run of code. You may also put code in the Common/Shared
Initialization section (accessible through the button in the upper left corner
of the dialog). Unfortunately, since the C/C++ macros also reside in the
common/shared section, when you add code there, you run some risk of missing
out on future upgrades to these macros, because your changes will override the
built-in defaults.
The newline macro is invoked after the user types a newline, but before the
newline is entered in the buffer. It takes a single argument ($1) which is the
position at which the newline will be inserted. It must return the number of
characters of indentation the line should have, or -1. A return value of -1
means to do a standard auto-indent. You must supply a newline macro, but the
code: "return -1" (auto-indent), or "return 0" (no indent) is sufficient.
The type-in macro takes two arguments. $1 is the insert position, and $2 is
the character just inserted, and does not return a value. You can do just
about anything here, but keep in mind that this macro is executed for every
keystroke typed, so if you try to get too fancy, you may degrade performance.
THE NEDIT COMMAND LINE
nedit [-read] [-create] [-line n | +n] [-server] [-do command] [-tags file]
[-tabs n] [-wrap] [-nowrap] [-autowrap] [-autoindent] [-noautoindent]
[-autosave] [-noautosave] [-rows n] [-columns n] [-font font]
[-geometry geometry] [-display [host]:server[.screen]
[-xrm resourcestring] [-svrname name] [file...]
-read -- Open the file Read Only regardless of the actual file
protection.
-create -- Don't warn about file creation when a file doesn't exist.
-line n (or +n) -- Go to line number n
-server -- Designate this session as an NEdit server, for processing
commands from the nc program. nc can be used to interface NEdit
to code development environments, mailers, etc., or just as a
quick way to open files from the shell command line without
starting a new NEdit session.
-do command -- Execute an NEdit macro or action on each file following
the -do argument on the command line. -do is particularly useful
from the nc program, where nc -do can remotely execute commands in
an nedit -server session.
-tags file -- Load a file of directions for finding definitions of
program subroutines and data objects. The file must be of the
format generated by the Unix ctags command.
-tabs n -- Set tab stops every n characters.
-wrap, -nowrap -- Wrap long lines at the right edge of the window
rather than continuing them past it. (Continuous Wrap mode)
-autowrap, -noautowrap -- Wrap long lines when the cursor reaches
the right edge of the window by inserting newlines at word
boundaries. (Auto Newline Wrap mode)
-autoindent, noautoindent -- Maintain a running indent.
-autosave, -noautosave -- Maintain a backup copy of the file being
edited under the name ~filename (on Unix) or _filename (on VMS).
-rows n -- Default height in characters for an editing window.
-columns n -- Default width in characters for an editing window.
-font font (or -fn font) -- Font for text being edited (Font for
menus and dialogs can be set with -xrm "*fontList:font").
-display [host]:server[.screen] -- The name of the X server to use.
host specifies the machine, server specifies the display server
number, and screen specifies the screen number. host or screen
can be omitted and default to the local machine, and screen 0.
-geometry geometry (or -g geometry) -- The initial size and/or
location of editor windows. The argument has the form:
[x][+|-][[+|-]]
where and are the desired width and height of
the window, and and are the distance from
the edge of the screen to the window, + for top or left, - for
bottom or right.
-background color (or -bg color) -- Background color. (background
color for text can be set separately with:
-xrm "nedit*text.background: color").
-foreground color (or -fg color) -- Foreground color. (foreground
color for text can be set separately with:
-xrm "nedit*text.foreground: color").
-xrm resourcestring -- Set the value of an X resource to override a
default value (see CUSTOMIZIATION).
-svrname name -- When starting nedit in server mode, name the
server, such that it responds to requests only when nc is given
a correspoding -svrname argument. By naming servers, you can
run several simultaneously, and direct files and commands
specifically to any one.
SERVER MODE AND NC
NEdit can be operated on its own, or as a two-part client/server application.
Client/server mode is useful for integrating NEdit with software development
environments, mailers, and other programs; or just as a quick way to open files
from the shell command line without starting a new NEdit session.
To run NEdit in server mode, type:
nedit -server
NEdit can also be started in server mode via the nc program when no servers are
available.
The nc (for NEdit Client) program, which is distributed along with nedit, sends
commands to an nedit server to open files, select lines, or execute editor
actions. It accepts a limited set of the nedit command line options: -read,
-create, -line (or +n), -do, and a list of file names. Listing a file on the
nc command line means, open it if it is not already open and bring the window
to the front. -read and -create affect only newly opened files, but -line and
-do can also be used on files which are already open (See NEDIT COMMAND LINE
for more information).
In typical Unix style, arguments affect the files which follow them on the
command line, for example:
incorrect: nc file.c -line 25
correct: nc -line 25 file.c
-read, -create, and -line affect all of the files which follow them on the
command line. The -do macro is executed only once, on the next file on the
line. -do without a file following it on the command line, executes the macro
on the first available window (presumably when you give a -do command without a
corresponding file or window, you intend it to do something independent of the
window in which it happens execute).
nc also accepts one command line option of its own, -noask (or -ask), which
instructs it whether to automatically start a server if one is not available.
This is also settable via the X resource, nc.autoStart (See X RESOURCES above).
Sometimes it is useful to have more than one NEdit server running, for example
to keep mail and programming work separate, or more importantly for working
with tools like ClearCase which provide different views of the file system from
different shells. The option, -svrname, to both nedit and nc, allow you to
start, and communicate with, separate named servers. A named server responds
only to requests with the corresponding -svrname argument.
Communication between nc and nedit is through the X display. So as long as X
windows is set up and working properly, nc will will work properly as well. nc
uses the DISPLAY environment variable, the machine name and your user name to
find the appropriate server, meaning, if you have several machines sharing a
common file system, nc will not be able to find a server that is running on a
machine with a different host name, even though it may be perfectly appropriate
for editing a given file.
The command which nc uses to start an nedit server is settable via the X
resource nc.serverCommand, by default, "nedit -server".
CRASH RECOVERY
If a system crash, network failure, X server crash, or program error should
happen while you are editing a file, you can easily recover most of your work.
NEdit maintains a backup file which it updates periodically (every 8 editing
operations or 30 characters typed under Unix, or 80 characters under VMS).
This file is has the same name as the file that you are editing, but with the
character "~" (tilde) on Unix or "_" (underscore) on VMS prefixed to the name.
To recover a file after a crash, simply rename the file to remove the tilde
or underscore character, replacing the older version of the file. Because
several of the Unix shells consider the tilde to be a special character, you
may have to prefix the character with a "\" (backslash) when you move or
delete an NEdit backup file.
Example, to recover the file called "help.c" type the command:
mv \~help.c help.c
On VMS, type:
RENAME _HELP.C HELP.C
SOLUTIONS TO COMMON PROBLEMS
P: No files are shown in the "Files" list in the Open... dialog.
S: When you use the "Filter" field, include the file specification or a
complete directory specification, including the trailing "/" on Unix. (See
Help in the Open... dialog).
P: Keyboard shortcuts for menu items don't work.
S: Be sure the Caps Lock and Num Lock keys are both unlocked. In Motif
programs, these keys prevent the menu accelerators from working.
P: Find Again and Replace Again don't continue in the same direction as the
original Find or Replace.
S: Find Again and Replace Again don't use the direction of the original search.
The Shift key controls the direction: Ctrl+G means forward, Shift+Ctrl+G
means backward.
P: Preferences specified in the Preferences menu don't seem to get saved when I
select Save Defaults.
S: NEdit has two kinds of preferences: 1) per-window preferences, in the
Preferences menu, and 2) default settings for preferences in newly created
windows, in the Default Settings sub-menu of the Preferences menu. Per-
window preferences are not saved by Save Defaults, only Default Settings.
P: Columns and indentation don't line up.
S: NEdit is using a proportional width font. Set the font to a fixed style
(see PREFERENCES).
P: NEdit performs poorly on very large files.
S: Turn off Incremental Backup. With Incremental Backup on, NEdit periodically
writes a full copy of the file to disk.
P: Commands added to the Shell Commands menu (Unix only) don't output anything
until they are finished executing.
S: If the command output is directed to a dialog, or the input is from a
selection, output is collected together and held until the command
completes. De-select both of the options and the output will be shown
incrementally as the command executes.
P: Dialogs don't automatically get keyboard focus when they pop up.
S: Most X Window managers allow you to choose between two categories of
keyboard focus models: pointer focus, and explicit focus. Pointer focus
means that as you move the mouse around the screen, the window under the
mouse automatically gets the keyboard focus. NEdit users who use this focus
model should set "Popups Under Pointer" in the Default Settings sub menu of
the preferences menu in NEdit. Users with the explicit focus model, in some
cases, may have problems with certain dialogs, such as Find and Replace. In
MWM this is caused by the mwm resource startupKeyFocus being set to False
(generally a bad choice for explicit focus users). NCDwm users should use
the focus model "click" instead of "explicit", again, unless you have set it
that way to correct specific problems, this is the appropriate setting for
most explicit focus users.
P: The Delete key doesn't forward-delete.
S: See the X Resources section on nedit.remapDeleteKey.
P: NEdit crashes when I try to paste text in to a text field in a dialog (like
Find or Replace) on my SunOS system.
S: On many SunOS systems, you have to set up an nls directory before various
inter-client communication features of Motif will function properly. There
are instructions in README.sun in /pub/nedit/v4_0_1 on ftp.fnal.gov, as well
as a tar file containg a complete nls directory: ftp://ftp.fnal.gov/pub/
nedit/v4_0_2/individual/README.sun. This contains directions for setting up
an nls directory, which is required by Motif for handling copy and paste to
Motif text fields.
KNOWN BUGS
Below is the list of known bugs which affect NEdit. The bugs your copy of
NEdit will exhibit depend on which system you are running and with which Motif
libraries it was built. Note that there are now Motif 1.2 and/or 2.0 libraries
available on ALL supported platforms, and as you can see below there are far
fewer bugs in Motif 1.2, so it is in your best interest to upgrade your system.
All Versions
BUG: Operations between rectangular selections on overlapping lines do nothing.
WORKAROUND: None. These operations are very complicated and you probably
wouldn't get what you expected anyhow.
BUG: Cut and Paste menu items fail, or possibly crash, for very large
(multi-megabyte) selections.
WORKAROUND: Use selection copy (middle mouse button click) for transferring
larger quantities of data. Cut and Paste save the copied text in server
memory, which is usually limited.
Motif 1.1 Versions
BUG: The shortcut method for entering control characters (Alt+Ctrl+char) is not
available.
WORKAROUND: Use the Ins. Control Char command.
BUG: Pop-up dialogs "jump" (appear briefly in a different location) when they
are first invoked.
WORKAROUND: Turn off "Popups Under Pointer" if this gives you a headache.
VMS Versions
BUGS: 1. Abbreviation of command line qualifiers is not allowed.
2. Error messages for mistakes on the command line don't make sense.
WORKAROUND: NEdit does not parse its command line with the standard DCL command
parser, instead, it superficially converts the command line to a
Unix-style command line before processing it. Because information is
lost, NEdit may not always be able to distinguish between items that are
supposed to be qualifiers and those which are supposed to be files and
arguments to the qualifiers. However, correct VMS command lines are
always processed correctly, and only certain types of errors will appear
to give strange results.
BUG: Protection settings for new versions of files produced by NEdit over
DECNET connections may revert to defaults.
WORKAROUND: Check and reset protections when accessing files via DECNET.
IBM Versions built with Motif 1.1
BUG: The Command to set the font for the current window is not available.
WORKAROUND: Use the Default Settings sub-menu to set the default font and then
create a new window.
BUG: NEdit can occasionally crash on window closing.
WORKAROUND: Save files frequently, see Crash Recovery.
MAILING LIST
There are now two separate mailing lists for NEdit users. nedit_discuss, as
the name implies, is for open discussion among NEdit users. nedit_announces
intended to be a very low volume mailing list for announcement of new versions,
new executables, and significant contributed software.
To subscribe to nedit_discuss, send a message containing the following line in
the body of the message (not the subject) to mailserv@fnal.gov:
subscribe nedit_discuss
To subscribe to nedit_announce, send a separate message to mailserv@fnal.gov
containing the line:
subscribe nedit_announce
To unsubscribe, send:
unsubscribe nedit_discuss (or nedit_announce)
After subscribing, you will receive copies of all of the email submitted to the
list. You may submit mail to the discussion list by sending it to:
nedit_discuss@fnal.gov
Users are allowed to post to nedit_announce as well (just make sure that the
content is appropriate).
DISTRIBUTION POLICY
FermiTools Software Legal Information - November 1, 1996
COPYRIGHT STATUS: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) documents are
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No.
DE-AC02-76CH03000. Therefore, the U.S. Government retains a non-exclusive,
royalty-free license to publish or reproduce these documents or software for
U.S. Government purposes. All documents and software available from this
server are protected under the U.S. and Foreign Copyright Laws, and FNAL
reserves all rights.
Terms and Conditions
When a User distributes or otherwise obtains a software package included in
the Fermilab Software Tools Program, the user agrees to abide by the Terms and
Conditions of the Program below:
o Any redistribution of the software shall be accompanied by this
INFORMATION/LICENSE AGREEMENT and the product's ORIGIN STATEMENT (below).
o The User shall acknowledge the origin of the software as set forth
below:
"This work was performed at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory,
operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., under contract
DE-AC02-76CH03000 with the U.S. Department of Energy."
o The user is asked to feed back problems, benefits, and/or suggestions
about the software to the Fermilab Software Providers and/or FermiTools
management.
o Any distribution of the software available from this server shall be at
no charge. To obtain a license to commercialize any of the software
programs available from Fermilab including this software, contact FNAL's
Office of Research and Technology Applications, P.O. Box 500, MS-200,
Batavia, IL 60510-0500.
Indemnification by User of Third Party Claims and Disclosure of Liability
The User, his/her directors, officers, employees, and agents hereby release
and waive all claims against Universities Research Association, Inc. (URA)
operator of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, its trustees, overseers,
directors, officers, employees, agents, subcontractors, successors and
assigns, for any and all liability and damages arising from the reproduction,
use or other disposition of the software. The User shall indemnify URA and
the U.S. Government for all damages, costs or expenses, including attorney's
fees, arising from the utilization of the software, including, but not limited
to, the making, using, selling or exporting of products, processes or services
derived from the Software. The User agrees to indemnify, hold harmless and
defend URA, its trustees, overseers, directors, officers, employees, agents,
subcontractors, successors and assigns, against any and all liability, damage,
loss, cost, charge, claim, demand, fee or expense of every nature and kind
which may at any time hereafter, be sustained by URA by reason of claims of
third parties arising out of alleged acts or omissions of the User in the
reproduction, use or other disposition of the Software.
The User agrees that URA, its trustees, overseers, directors, officers,
employees, agents, subcontractors, successors and assigns shall not be liable
under any claim, charge, or demand, whether in contract, tort, criminal law,
or otherwise, for any and all loss, cost, charge, claim, demand, fee, expense,
or damage of every nature and kind arising out of, connected with, resulting
from or sustained as a result of the use of the software programs available
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indirect or consequential damages, losses, costs, charges, claims, demands,
fees or expenses of any nature or kind.
Disclaimer of Warranties
The software is provided on an "as is" basis only. URA makes no
representations, express or implied. URA makes no representations or
warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, or
assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness,
or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product or process disclosed, or
represents that the Software will not infringe any privately held patent,
copyright, or trademark. The entire risk as to the results and the
performance of this software is assumed by the User.
Disclaimer of Endorsement
Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by
tradename, trademark, manufacturer or otherwise, does not constitute or imply
its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government,
U.S. Department of Energy or URA. The views and opinions of individuals
expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United
States Government, U.S. Department of Energy or URA and shall not be used for
advertising or product endorsement purposes.
Liabilities of the Government
This software is provided by URA, independent from its Prime Contract with the
U.S. Department of Energy. URA is acting independently from the Government
and in its own private capacity and is not acting on behalf of the U.S.
Government, nor as its contractor nor its agent. Correspondingly, it is
understood and agreed that the U.S. Government has no connection to this
software and in no manner whatsoever shall be liable for nor assume any
responsibility or obligation for any claim, cost, or damages arising out of or
resulting from the use of the software available from this server.
ORIGIN STATEMENT
Authors
Mark Edel, Joy Kyriakopulos, Arnulfo Zepeda-Navratil, Suresh Ravoor, Donna Reid,
Jeff Kallenbach
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
MS 234
P.O.Box 500
Batavia, IL 60510
EMAIL: edel@fnal.gov
Acknowledgements:
Syntax highlighting patterns were contributed by: Simon T. MacDonald, Maurice
Leysens, Matt Majka, Alfred Smeenk, Alain Fargues, Christopher Conrad, Scott
Markinson, Konrad Bernloehr, Ivan Herman, Patrice Venant, Christian Denat,
Philippe Couton, Max Vohlken, and Markus Schwarzenberg.
Regular expression code by Henry Spencer
Nedit incorporates an altered version of Henry Spencer's regcomp and regexec
code adapted for NEdit. Original copyright notice:
Copyright (c) 1986 by University of Toronto. Written by Henry Spencer. Not
derived from licensed software.
Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose on any
computer system, and to redistribute it freely, subject to the following
restrictions:
1. The author is not responsible for the consequences of use of this software,
no matter how awful, even if they arise from defects in it.
2. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented, either by explicit
claim or by omission.
3. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
misrepresented as being the original software.
End of INFORMATION/LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR NEDIT.
Send questions and comments to: nedit_support@fnal.gov.