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Nirvana Editor (NEdit) Help Documentation
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NEdit 5.3 June 1, 2002
NEdit is a standard GUI (Graphical User Interface) style text editor for
programs and plain-text files. Users of Macintosh and MS Windows based text
editors should 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 freely distributed under the terms of the Gnu General Public
License.
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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 from http://www.nedit.org. The
optional "nc" (NEdit Client) program is also available for users who want to
run nedit in client/server mode.
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GETTING STARTED
---------------
Help sections of interest to new users are listed under the "Basic
Operation" heading in the top-level Help menu:
* Selecting Text
* Finding and Replacing Text
* Cut and Paste
* Using the Mouse
* Keyboard Shortcuts
* Shifting and Filling
Programmers should also read the introductory section under the "Features
for Programming" section:
Programming with NEdit
If you get into trouble, the Undo command in the Edit menu can reverse any
modifications that you make. NEdit does not change the file you are editing
until you tell it to Save.
EDITING AN EXISTING FILE
To open an existing file, 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 open any number of files 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, will give you quick access to all of the
files you have open via the Windows menu, and ensure that you don't
accidentally open the same file twice. NEdit has no "main" window. It
remains running as long as at least one editor window is open.
CREATING A NEW FILE
If you already have an empty (Untitled) window displayed, just begin typing
in the window. To create a new Untitled window, choose New from the File
menu. To give the file a name and save its contents to the disk, choose Save
or Save As... from the File menu.
BACKUP FILES
NEdit maintains periodic backups of the file you are editing so that you can
recover the file in the event of a problem such as a system crash, network
failure, or X server crash. These files are saved under the name `~filename`
(on Unix) or `_filename` (on VMS), where filename is the name of the file
you were editing. If an NEdit process is killed, some of these backup files
may remain in your directory. (To remove one of these files on Unix, you may
have to prefix the `~' (tilde) character with a (backslash) to prevent the
shell from interpreting it as a special character.)
SHORTCUTS
As you become more familiar with NEdit, substitute the control and function
keys shown on the right side of the menus for pulling down menus with the
mouse.
Dialogs are also streamlined so you can enter information quickly and
without using the mouse*. 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. The Cancel or Dismiss button can be activated by pressing escape.
For example, to replace the string "thing" with "things" type:
<ctrl-r>thing<tab>things<return>
To open a file named "whole_earth.c", type:
<ctrl-o>who<return>
(how much of the filename you need to type depends on the other files in the
directory). See the section called "Keyboard Shortcuts" for more details.
* Users who have set their keyboard focus mode to "pointer" should set
"Popups Under Pointer" in the Default Settings menu to avoid the additional
step of moving the mouse into the dialog.
===============
BASIC OPERATION
===============
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SELECTING TEXT
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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".
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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.
Find Incremental is yet another variation on searching, where every
character typed triggers a new search. Incremental searching is generally
the quickest way to find something in a file, because it gives you the
immediate feedback of seeing how your search is progressing, so you never
need to type more than the minimally sufficient search string to reach your
target.
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.
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CUT AND PASTE
-------------
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".
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USING THE MOUSE
---------------
Mouse-based editing is what NEdit is all about, and learning to use the more
advanced features like secondary selections and primary selection dragging
will be well worth your while.
If you don't have time to learn everything, you can get by adequately with
just the left mouse button: Clicking the left button moves the cursor.
Dragging with the left button makes a selection. Holding the shift key while
clicking extends the existing selection, or begins a selection between the
cursor and the mouse. Double or triple clicking selects a whole word or a
whole line.
This section will make more sense if you also read the section called,
"Selecting Text", which explains the terminology of selections, that is,
what is meant by primary, secondary, rectangular, etc.
BUTTON AND MODIFIER KEY SUMMARY
General meaning of mouse buttons and modifier keys:
Buttons
Button 1 (left) Cursor position and primary selection
Button 2 (middle) Secondary selections, and dragging and
copying the 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
Quad 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+ Adjusts (extends or shrinks) the
Click 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 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.
Mouse buttons 4 and 5 are usually represented by a mouse wheel nowadays.
They are used to scroll up or down in the text window.
* 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.
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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 "Customizing NEdit", and
"X Resources" sections of the Help menu 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 to 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
"Customizing NEdit", and "X_Resources_")
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+<c> Insert the control-code equivalent of
a key <c>
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 "Customizing NEdit",
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 section
titled "Key Binding" under the Customizing heading in the Help menu.
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SHIFTING AND FILLING
--------------------
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.
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 (Preferences -> Wrap -> Continuous), 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 versatile, 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.
-----------
FILE FORMAT
-----------
While plain-text is probably the simplest and most interchangeable file
format in the computer world, there is still variation in what plain-text
means from system to system. Plain-text files can differ in character set,
line termination, and wrapping.
While character set differences are the most obvious and pose the most
challenge to portability, they affect NEdit only indirectly via the same
font and localization mechanisms common to all X applications. If your
system is set up properly, you will probably never see character-set related
problems in NEdit. NEdit can not display Unicode text files, or any
multi-byte character set.
The primary difference between an MS DOS format file and a Unix format file,
is how the lines are terminated. Unix uses a single newline character. MS
DOS uses a carriage-return and a newline. NEdit can read and write both file
formats, but internally, it uses the single character Unix standard. NEdit
auto-detects MS DOS format files based on the line termination at the start
of the file. Files are judged to be DOS format if all of the first five line
terminators, within a maximum range, are DOS-style. To change the format in
which NEdit writes a file from DOS to Unix or visa versa, use the Save As...
command and check or un-check the MS DOS Format button.
Wrapping within text files can vary among individual users, as well as from
system to system. Both Windows and MacOS make frequent use of plain text
files with no implicit right margin. In these files, wrapping is determined
by the tool which displays them. Files of this style also exist on Unix
systems, despite the fact that they are not supported by all Unix utilities.
To display this kind of file properly in NEdit, you have to select the wrap
style called Continuous. Wrapping modes are discussed in the sections:
Customizing -> Preferences, and Basic Operation -> Shifting and Filling.
The last and most minute of format differences is the terminating newline.
Some Unix compilers and utilities require a final terminating newline on all
files they read and fail in various ways on files which do not have it. Vi
and approximately half of Unix editors enforce the terminating newline on
all files that they write; Emacs does not enforce this rule. Users are
divided on which is best. NEdit makes the final terminating newline optional
(Preferences -> Default Settings -> Append Line Feed on Save).
========================
FEATURES FOR PROGRAMMING
========================
----------------------
PROGRAMMING WITH NEDIT
----------------------
Though general in appearance, NEdit has many features intended specifically
for programmers. Major programming-related topics are listed in separate
sections under the heading: "Features for Programming": Syntax Highlighting,
Tabs/Emulated Tabs, Finding_Declarations_(ctags)_, and Auto/Smart_Indent_.
Minor topics related to programming are discussed below:
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
Goto Matching command. Automatic parenthesis matching is activated when you
type, or move the insertion cursor after a parenthesis, bracket, or brace.
It momentarily highlights either the opposite character ('Delimiter') or the
entire expression ('Range') when the opposite 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 Goto 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 \.
Holding the Shift key while typing the accelerator key (Shift+Ctrl+M, by
default), will select all of the text between the matching characters.
When syntax highlighting is enabled, the matching routines can optionally
make use of the syntax information for improved accuracy. In that case, a
brace inside a highlighted string will not match a brace inside a comment,
for instance.
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
programmatic 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.nedit.org.
------------------
TABS/EMULATED TABS
------------------
CHANGING THE TAB DISTANCE
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.
-----------------
AUTO/SMART 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 "Shifting and Filling" under "Basic Operation" 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 Help section
"Highlighting Patterns" under "Customizing", 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 "Highlighting Patterns" 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 DECLARATIONS (CTAGS)
----------------------------
NEdit can process tags files generated using the Unix ctags command or the
Exuberant Ctags program. 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. NEdit can manage
any number of tags files simultaneously. Tag collisions are handled with a
popup menu to let the user decide which tag to use. In 'Smart' mode NEdit
will automatically choose the desired tag based on the scope of the file or
module. 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 "Customizing NEdit"). 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. NEdit normally evaluates relative path tag
file specifications every time a file is opened. All accessible tag files
are loaded at this time. To disable the automatic loading of tag files
specified as relative paths, set the X resource
nedit.alwaysCheckRelativeTagsSpecs to False.
To unload a tags file, select "Un-load Tags File" from the File menu and
choose from the list of tags files. NEdit will keep track of tags file
updates by checking the timestamp on the files, and automatically update the
tags cache.
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
Text") and choose "Find Definition" from the Search menu.
===================
REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
===================
-------------------------------
BASIC REGULAR EXPRESSION SYNTAX
-------------------------------
Regular expressions (regex's) are useful as a way to match inexact sequences
of characters. They can be used in the `Find...' and `Replace...' search
dialogs and are at the core of Color Syntax Highlighting patterns. To
specify a regular expression in a search dialog, simply click on the
`Regular Expression' radio button in the dialog.
A regex is a specification of a pattern to be matched in the searched text.
This pattern consists of a sequence of tokens, each being able to match a
single character or a sequence of characters in the text, or assert that a
specific position within the text has been reached (the latter is called an
anchor.) Tokens (also called atoms) can be modified by adding one of a
number of special quantifier tokens immediately after the token. A
quantifier token specifies how many times the previous token must be matched
(see below.)
Tokens can be grouped together using one of a number of grouping constructs,
the most common being plain parentheses. Tokens that are grouped in this way
are also collectively considered to be a regex atom, since this new larger
atom may also be modified by a quantifier.
A regex can also be organized into a list of alternatives by separating each
alternative with pipe characters, `|'. This is called alternation. A match
will be attempted for each alternative listed, in the order specified, until
a match results or the list of alternatives is exhausted (see Alternation
section below.)
THE 'ANY' CHARACTER
If a dot (`.') appears in a regex, it means to match any character exactly
once. By default, dot will not match a newline character, but this behavior
can be changed (see help topic Parenthetical Constructs, under the heading,
Matching Newlines).
CHARACTER CLASSES
A character class, or range, matches exactly one character of text, but the
candidates for matching are limited to those specified by the class. Classes
come in two flavors as described below:
[...] Regular class, match only characters listed.
[^...] Negated class, match only characters NOT listed.
As with the dot token, by default negated character classes do not match
newline, but can be made to do so.
The characters that are considered special within a class specification are
different than the rest of regex syntax as follows. If the first character
in a class is the `]' character (second character if the first character is
`^') it is a literal character and part of the class character set. This
also applies if the first or last character is `-'. Outside of these rules,
two characters separated by `-' form a character range which includes all
the characters between the two characters as well. For example, `[^f-j]' is
the same as `[^fghij]' and means to match any character that is not `f',
`g', `h', `i', or `j'.
ANCHORS
Anchors are assertions that you are at a very specific position within the
search text. NEdit regular expressions support the following anchor tokens:
^ Beginning of line
$ End of line
< Left word boundary
> Right word boundary
\B Not a word boundary
Note that the \B token ensures that the left and right characters are both
delimiter characters, or that both left and right characters are
non-delimiter characters. Currently word anchors check only one character,
e.g. the left word anchor `<' only asserts that the left character is a word
delimiter character. Similarly the right word anchor checks the right
character.
QUANTIFIERS
Quantifiers specify how many times the previous regular expression atom may
be matched in the search text. Some quantifiers can produce a large
performance penalty, and can in some instances completely lock up NEdit. To
prevent this, avoid nested quantifiers, especially those of the maximal
matching type (see below.)
The following quantifiers are maximal matching, or "greedy", in that they
match as much text as possible.
* Match zero or more
+ Match one or more
? Match zero or one
The following quantifiers are minimal matching, or "lazy", in that they
match as little text as possible.
*? Match zero or more
+? Match one or more
?? Match zero or one
One final quantifier is the counting quantifier, or brace quantifier. It
takes the following basic form:
{min,max} Match from `min' to `max' times the
previous regular expression atom.
If `min' is omitted, it is assumed to be zero. If `max' is omitted, it is
assumed to be infinity. Whether specified or assumed, `min' must be less
than or equal to `max'. Note that both `min' and `max' are limited to 65535.
If both are omitted, then the construct is the same as `*'. Note that `{,}'
and `{}' are both valid brace constructs. A single number appearing without
a comma, e.g. `{3}' is short for the `{min,min}' construct, or to match
exactly `min' number of times.
The quantifiers `{1}' and `{1,1}' are accepted by the syntax, but are
optimized away since they mean to match exactly once, which is redundant
information. Also, for efficiency, certain combinations of `min' and `max'
are converted to either `*', `+', or `?' as follows:
{} {,} {0,} *
{1,} +
{,1} {0,1} ?
Note that {0} and {0,0} are meaningless and will generate an error message
at regular expression compile time.
Brace quantifiers can also be "lazy". For example {2,5}? would try to match
2 times if possible, and will only match 3, 4, or 5 times if that is what is
necessary to achieve an overall match.
ALTERNATION
A series of alternative patterns to match can be specified by separating
them with vertical pipes, `|'. An example of alternation would be
`a|be|sea'. This will match `a', or `be', or `sea'. Each alternative can be
an arbitrarily complex regular expression. The alternatives are attempted in
the order specified. An empty alternative can be specified if desired, e.g.
`a|b|'. Since an empty alternative can match nothingness (the empty string),
this guarantees that the expression will match.
COMMENTS
Comments are of the form `(?#<comment text>)' and can be inserted anywhere
and have no effect on the execution of the regular expression. They can be
handy for documenting very complex regular expressions. Note that a comment
begins with `(?#' and ends at the first occurrence of an ending parenthesis,
or the end of the regular expression... period. Comments do not recognize
any escape sequences.
--------------
METACHARACTERS
--------------
ESCAPING METACHARACTERS
In a regular expression (regex), most ordinary characters match themselves.
For example, `ab%' would match anywhere `a' followed by `b' followed by `%'
appeared in the text. Other characters don't match themselves, but are
metacharacters. For example, backslash is a special metacharacter which
'escapes' or changes the meaning of the character following it. Thus, to
match a literal backslash would require a regular expression to have two
backslashes in sequence. NEdit provides the following escape sequences so
that metacharacters that are used by the regex syntax can be specified as
ordinary characters.
\( \) \- \[ \] \< \> \{ \}
\. \| \^ \$ \* \+ \? \& \\
SPECIAL CONTROL CHARACTERS
There are some special characters that are difficult or impossible to type.
Many of these characters can be constructed as a sort of metacharacter or
sequence by preceding a literal character with a backslash. NEdit recognizes
the following special character sequences:
\a alert (bell)
\b backspace
\e ASCII escape character (***)
\f form feed (new page)
\n newline
\r carriage return
\t horizontal tab
\v vertical tab
*** For environments that use the EBCDIC character set,
when compiling NEdit set the EBCDIC_CHARSET compiler
symbol to get the EBCDIC equivalent escape
character.)
OCTAL AND HEX ESCAPE SEQUENCES
Any ASCII (or EBCDIC) character, except null, can be specified by using
either an octal escape or a hexadecimal escape, each beginning with \0 or \x
(or \X), respectively. For example, \052 and \X2A both specify the `*'
character. Escapes for null (\00 or \x0) are not valid and will generate an
error message. Also, any escape that exceeds \0377 or \xFF will either cause
an error or have any additional character(s) interpreted literally. For
example, \0777 will be interpreted as \077 (a `?' character) followed by `7'
since \0777 is greater than \0377.
An invalid digit will also end an octal or hexadecimal escape. For example,
\091 will cause an error since `9' is not within an octal escape's range of
allowable digits (0-7) and truncation before the `9' yields \0 which is
invalid.
SHORTCUT ESCAPE SEQUENCES
NEdit defines some escape sequences that are handy shortcuts for commonly
used character classes.
\d digits 0-9
\l letters a-z, A-Z, and locale dependent letters
\s whitespace \t, \r, \v, \f, and space
\w word characters letters, digits, and underscore, `_'
\D, \L, \S, and \W are the same as the lowercase versions except that the
resulting character class is negated. For example, \d is equivalent to
`[0-9]', while \D is equivalent to `[^0-9]'.
These escape sequences can also be used within a character class. For
example, `[\l_]' is the same as `[a-zA-Z_]', extended with possible locale
dependent letters. The escape sequences for special characters, and octal
and hexadecimal escapes are also valid within a class.
WORD DELIMITER TOKENS
Although not strictly a character class, the following escape sequences
behave similarly to character classes:
\y Word delimiter character
\Y Not a word delimiter character
The `\y' token matches any single character that is one of the characters
that NEdit recognizes as a word delimiter character, while the `\Y' token
matches any character that is NOT a word delimiter character. Word delimiter
characters are dynamic in nature, meaning that the user can change them
through preference settings. For this reason, they must be handled
differently by the regular expression engine. As a consequence of this, `\y'
and `\Y' can not be used within a character class specification.
------------------------
PARENTHETICAL CONSTRUCTS
------------------------
CAPTURING PARENTHESES
Capturing Parentheses are of the form `(<regex>)' and can be used to group
arbitrarily complex regular expressions. Parentheses can be nested, but the
total number of parentheses, nested or otherwise, is limited to 50 pairs.
The text that is matched by the regular expression between a matched set of
parentheses is captured and available for text substitutions and
backreferences (see below.) Capturing parentheses carry a fairly high
overhead both in terms of memory used and execution speed, especially if
quantified by `*' or `+'.
NON-CAPTURING PARENTHESES
Non-Capturing Parentheses are of the form `(?:<regex>)' and facilitate
grouping only and do not incur the overhead of normal capturing parentheses.
They should not be counted when determining numbers for capturing
parentheses which are used with backreferences and substitutions. Because of
the limit on the number of capturing parentheses allowed in a regex, it is
advisable to use non-capturing parentheses when possible.
POSITIVE LOOK-AHEAD
Positive look-ahead constructs are of the form `(?=<regex>)' and implement a
zero width assertion of the enclosed regular expression. In other words, a
match of the regular expression contained in the positive look-ahead
construct is attempted. If it succeeds, control is passed to the next
regular expression atom, but the text that was consumed by the positive
look-ahead is first unmatched (backtracked) to the place in the text where
the positive look-ahead was first encountered.
One application of positive look-ahead is the manual implementation of a
first character discrimination optimization. You can include a positive
look-ahead that contains a character class which lists every character that
the following (potentially complex) regular expression could possibly start
with. This will quickly filter out match attempts that can not possibly
succeed.
NEGATIVE LOOK-AHEAD
Negative look-ahead takes the form `(?!<regex>)' and is exactly the same as
positive look-ahead except that the enclosed regular expression must NOT
match. This can be particularly useful when you have an expression that is
general, and you want to exclude some special cases. Simply precede the
general expression with a negative look-ahead that covers the special cases
that need to be filtered out.
CASE SENSITIVITY
There are two parenthetical constructs that control case sensitivity:
(?i<regex>) Case insensitive; `AbcD' and `aBCd' are
equivalent.
(?I<regex>) Case sensitive; `AbcD' and `aBCd' are
different.
Regular expressions are case sensitive by default, that is, `(?I<regex>)' is
assumed. All regular expression token types respond appropriately to case
insensitivity including character classes and backreferences. There is some
extra overhead involved when case insensitivity is in effect, but only to
the extent of converting each character compared to lower case.
MATCHING NEWLINES
NEdit regular expressions by default handle the matching of newlines in a
way that should seem natural for most editing tasks. There are situations,
however, that require finer control over how newlines are matched by some
regular expression tokens.
By default, NEdit regular expressions will NOT match a newline character for
the following regex tokens: dot (`.'); a negated character class (`[^...]');
and the following shortcuts for character classes:
`\d', `\D', `\l', `\L', `\s', `\S', `\w', `\W', `\Y'
The matching of newlines can be controlled for the `.' token, negated
character classes, and the `\s' and `\S' shortcuts by using one of the
following parenthetical constructs:
(?n<regex>) `.', `[^...]', `\s', `\S' match newlines
(?N<regex>) `.', `[^...]', `\s', `\S' don't match
newlines
`(?N<regex>)' is the default behavior.
NOTES ON NEW PARENTHETICAL CONSTRUCTS
Except for plain parentheses, none of the parenthetical constructs capture
text. If that is desired, the construct must be wrapped with capturing
parentheses, e.g. `((?i<regex))'.
All parenthetical constructs can be nested as deeply as desired, except for
capturing parentheses which have a limit of 50 sets of parentheses,
regardless of nesting level.
BACK REFERENCES
Backreferences allow you to match text captured by a set of capturing
parenthesis at some later position in your regular expression. A
backreference is specified using a single backslash followed by a single
digit from 1 to 9 (example: \3). Backreferences have similar syntax to
substitutions (see below), but are different from substitutions in that they
appear within the regular expression, not the substitution string. The
number specified with a backreference identifies which set of text capturing
parentheses the backreference is associated with. The text that was most
recently captured by these parentheses is used by the backreference to
attempt a match. As with substitutions, open parentheses are counted from
left to right beginning with 1. So the backreference `\3' will try to match
another occurrence of the text most recently matched by the third set of
capturing parentheses. As an example, the regular expression `(\d)\1' could
match `22', `33', or `00', but wouldn't match `19' or `01'.
A backreference must be associated with a parenthetical expression that is
complete. The expression `(\w(\1))' contains an invalid backreference since
the first set of parentheses are not complete at the point where the
backreference appears.
SUBSTITUTION
Substitution strings are used to replace text matched by a set of capturing
parentheses. The substitution string is mostly interpreted as ordinary text
except as follows.
The escape sequences described above for special characters, and octal and
hexadecimal escapes are treated the same way by a substitution string. When
the substitution string contains the `&' character, NEdit will substitute
the entire string that was matched by the `Find...' operation. Any of the
first nine sub-expressions of the match string can also be inserted into the
replacement string. This is done by inserting a `\' followed by a digit from
1 to 9 that represents the string matched by a parenthesized expression
within the regular expression. These expressions are numbered left-to-right
in order of their opening parentheses.
The capitalization of text inserted by `&' or `\1', `\2', ... `\9' can be
altered by preceding them with `\U', `\u', `\L', or `\l'. `\u' and `\l'
change only the first character of the inserted entity, while `\U' and `\L'
change the entire entity to upper or lower case, respectively.
---------------
ADVANCED TOPICS
---------------
SUBSTITUTIONS
Regular expression substitution can be used to program automatic editing
operations. For example, the following are search and replace strings to
find occurrences of the `C' language 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)'
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 alternatives 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.)
REFERENCES
An excellent book on the care and feeding of regular expressions is
"Mastering Regular Expressions"
Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
(c) 1997, O'Reilly & Associates
ISBN 1-56592-257-3
---------------------------
EXAMPLE REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
---------------------------
The following are regular expression examples which will match:
* An entire line.
^.*$
* Blank lines.
^$
* Whitespace on a line.
\s+
* Whitespace across lines.
(?n\s+)
* Whitespace that spans at least two lines. Note minimal matching `*?' quantifier.
(?n\s*?\n\s*)
* IP address (not robust).
(?:\d{1,3}(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})
* Two character US Postal state abbreviations (includes territories).
[ACDF-IK-PR-W][A-Z]
* Web addresses.
(?:http://)?www\.\S+
* Case insensitive double words across line breaks.
(?i(?n<(\S+)\s+\1>))
* Upper case words with possible punctuation.
<[A-Z][^a-z\s]*>
======================
MACRO/SHELL EXTENSIONS
======================
--------------------------
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. In the Shell Command
field, the % character expands to the name (including directory path), and
the # character expands to the current line number of the file in the
window. To include a % or # character in the command, use %% or ##,
respectively.
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. Note that the same character expansions described above in
Execute Command also occur with this command.
The X resource called nedit.shell (See "Customizing NEdit") 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 (that is, 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:
<Down Arrow> Ctrl+, 29 <Return>. 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. Help on creating items in these
menus can be found in the section, Help -> Customizing -> Preferences. 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 "Action_Routines_").
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 three data types, dynamic character
strings, integer values and associative arrays. 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. Arrays may contain integers, strings, or arrays.
Arrays are stored key/value pairs. Keys are always stored as 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 necessary 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.
To return a value from a subroutine, and/or to exit from the subroutine
before the end of the subroutine body, use the return statement:
return <value to return>
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 evaluated. 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".
Arrays and Array Operators
Arrays may contain either strings, integers, or other arrays. Arrays are
associative, which means that they relate two pieces of information, the key
and the value. The key is always a string; if you use integers they are
converted to strings.
To determine if a given key is in an array, use the in keyword.
if ("6" in x)
<body>
If the left side of the in keyword is an array, the result is true if every
key in the left array is in the right array. Array values are not compared.
To iterate through all the keys of an array use the for looping construct.
Keys are not guaranteed in any particular order:
for (aKey in x)
<body>
Elements can be removed from an array using the delete command:
delete x[3] # deletes element with key 3
delete x[] # deletes all elements
The number of elements in an array can be determined by referencing the
array with no indices:
dialog("array x has " x[] " elements", "OK")
Arrays can be combined with some operators. All the following operators only
compare the keys of the arrays.
result = x + y (Merge arrays)
The 'result' is a new array containing keys from both x and y. If duplicates
are present values from y are used.
result = x - y (Remove keys)
The 'result' is a new array containing all keys from x that are not in y.
result = x & y (Common keys)
The 'result' is a new array containing all keys which are in both x and y.
The values from y are used.
result = x | y (Unique keys)
The 'result' is a new array containing keys which exist in either x or y,
but not both.
When duplicate keys are encountered using the + and & operators, the values
from the array on the right side of the operators are used for the result.
All of the above operators are array only, meaning both the left and right
sides of the operator must be arrays. The results are also arrays.
Array keys can also contain multiple dimensions:
x[1, 1, 1] = "string"
These are used in the expected way, e.g.:
for (i = 1; i < 3; i++)
{
for (j = 1; j < 3; j++)
{
x[i, j] = k++
}
}
gives the following array:
x[1, 1] = 0
x[1, 2] = 1
x[2, 1] = 2
x[2, 2] = 3
Internally all indices are part of one string, separated by the string
$sub_sep (ASCII 0x18). The first key in the above example is in fact
["1" $sub_sep "1"]
If you need to extract one of the keys, you can use split(), using $sub_sep
as the separator.
You can also check for the existence of multi-dimensional array by looking
for $sub_sep in the key.
Last, you need $sub_sep if you want to use the 'in' keyword.
if ((1,2) in myArray)
{..}
doesn't work, but
if (("1" $sub_sep "2") in myArray)
{..}
does work.
LOOPING AND CONDITIONALS
NEdit supports looping constructs: for and while, and conditional
statements: if and else, with essentially the same syntax as C:
for (<init>, ...; <condition>; <increment>, ...) <body>
while (<condition>) <body>
if (<condition>) <body>
if (<condition>) <body> else <body>
<body>, as in C, can be a single statement, or a list of statements enclosed
in curly braces ({}). <condition> is an expression which must evaluate to
true for the statements in <body> to be executed. for loops may also contain
initialization statements, <init>, 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.
-----------------
MACRO SUBROUTINES
-----------------
BUILT IN VARIABLES
These variables are read-only and can not be changed.
$active_pane
Index of the current pane.
$auto_indent
Contains the current preference for auto indent. Can be "off", "on" or
"auto".
$cursor
Position of the cursor in the current window.
$column
Column number of the cursor position in the current window.
$display_width
Width of the current pane in pixels.
$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.
$empty_array
An array with no elements. This can be used to initialize an array to an
empty state.
$file_format
Current newline format that the file will be saved with. Can be "unix",
"dos" or "macintosh".
$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.
$font_name
Contains the current plain text font name.
$font_name_bold
Contains the current bold text font name.
$font_name_bold_italic
Contains the current bold-italic text font name.
$font_name_italic
Contains the current italic text font name.
$highlight_syntax
Whether syntax highlighting is turned on.
$incremental_backup
Contains 1 if incremental auto saving is on, otherwise 0.
$incremental_search_line
Has a value of 1 if the preference is selected to always show the
incremental search line, otherwise 0.
$language_mode
Name of language mode set in the current window.
$line
Line number of the cursor position in the current window.
$locked
True if the file has been locked by the user.
$make_backup_copy
Has a value of 1 if original file is kept in a backup file on save,
otherwise 0.
$max_font_width
The maximum font width of all the active styles. Syntax highlighting styles
are only considered if syntax highlighting is turned on.
$min_font_width
The minimum font width of all the active styles. Syntax highlighting styles
are only considered if syntax highlighting is turned on.
$modified
True if the file in the current window has been modified and the
modifications have not yet been saved.
$n_display_lines
The number of lines visible in the currently active pane.
$n_panes
The number of panes in the current window.
$overtype_mode
True if in Overtype mode.
$read_only
True if the file is read only.
$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.
$server_name
Name of the current NEdit server.
$show_line_numbers
Whether line numbers are shown next to the text.
$show_matching
Contains the current preference for showing matching pairs, such as "[]" and
"{}" pairs. Can be "off", "delimiter", or "range".
$match_syntax_based
Whether pair matching should use syntax information, if available.
$statistics_line
Has a value of 1 if the statistics line is shown, otherwise 0.
$sub_sep
Contains the value of the array sub-script separation string.
$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.
$top_line
The line number of the top line of the currently active pane.
$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.
$wrap_text
The current wrap text mode. Values are "none", "auto" or "continuous".
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 eight
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").
getenv( name )
Gets the value of an environment variable.
length( string )
Returns the length of a string
list_dialog( message, text, btn_1_label, btn_2_label, ... )
Pop up a dialog for prompting the user to choose a line from the given text
string. The first argument is a message string to be used as a title for the
fixed text describing the list. The second string provides the list data:
this is a text string in which list entries are separated by newline
characters. Up to seven additional optional arguments represent labels for
buttons to appear along the bottom of the dialog. Returns the line of text
selected by the user as the function value (without any newline separator)
or the empty string if none was selected, and number of the button pressed
(the first button is number 1), in $list_dialog_button. If the user closes
the dialog via the window close box, the function returns the empty string,
and $list_dialog_button returns 0.
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", "word", "caseWord", "regex", or "regexNoCase". 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", "word",
"caseWord", "regex", or "regexNoCase" 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", "word", "caseWord", "regex",
or "regexNoCase" 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( position )
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.
split(string, separation_string [, search_type])
Splits a string using the separator specified. Optionally the search_type
argument can specify how the separation_string is interpreted. The default
is "literal". The returned value is an array with keys beginning at 0.
string_dialog( message, btn_1_label, btn_2_label, ... )
Pops up a dialog 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_compare(string1, string2 [, consider-case])
Compare two strings and return 0 if they are equal, -1 if string1 is less
than string2 or 1 if string1 is greater than string2. The values for the
optional consider-case argument is either "case" or "nocase". The default is
to do a case sensitive comparison.
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" in the Customizing
section of the Help menu).
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_macro_file() goto_selected()
load_macro_file_dialog() mark()
load_tags_file() mark_dialog()
load_tags_file_dialog() goto_mark()
unload_tags_file() goto_mark_dialog()
print() goto_matching()
print_selection() select_to_matching()
exit() find_definition()
Edit Menu Shell Menu
----------------------- -------------------------
undo() filter_selection_dialog()
redo() filter_selection()
delete() execute_command()
select_all() execute_command_dialog()
shift_left() execute_command_line()
shift_left_by_tab() shell_menu_command()
shift_right()
shift_right_by_tab() Macro Menu
uppercase() -------------------------
lowercase() macro_menu_command()
fill_paragraph() repeat_macro()
control_code_dialog() repeat_dialog()
Windows Menu
-------------------------
split_window()
close_pane()
An action representing a menu command is named the same as its corresponding
menu item except that all punctuation is removed, all letters are changed to
lower case, and spaces are replaced with underscores. To present a dialog to
ask the user for input, use the actions with the `_dialog` suffix. Actions
without the `_dialog` suffix take the information from the routine's
arguments (see below).
MENU ACTION ROUTINE ARGUMENTS
Arguments are text strings enclosed in quotes. Below are the menu action
routines which take arguments. Optional arguments are enclosed in [].
close( ["prompt" | "save" | "nosave"] )
execute_command( shell-command )
filter_selection( shell-command )
find( search-string [, search-direction] [, search-type]
[, search-wrap] )
find_again( [search-direction] [, search-wrap] )
find_definition( [tag-name] )
find_dialog( [search-direction] [, search-type]
[, keep-dialog] )
find_selection( [search-direction] [, search-wrap]
[, non-regex-search-type] )
goto_line_number( [line-number] )
goto_mark( mark-letter )
include_file( filename )
load_tags_file( filename )
macro_menu_command( macro-menu-item-name )
mark( mark-letter )
open( filename )
replace( search-string, replace-string,
[, search-direction] [, search-type] [, search-wrap] )
replace_again( [search-direction] [, search-wrap] )
replace_dialog( [search-direction] [, search-type]
[, keep-dialog] )
replace_in_selection( search-string,
replace-string [, search-type] )
save_as( filename )
shell_menu_command( shell-menu-item-name )
unload_tags_file( filename )
----------- Some notes on argument types above -----------
filename Path names are relative to the directory from
which NEdit was started. Shell interpreted
wildcards and `~' are not expanded.
keep-dialog Either "keep" or "nokeep".
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-menu-item-name
Name of the command exactly as specified in
the Macro Menu dialogs.
non-regex-search-type
Either "literal", "case", "word", or
"caseWord".
search-direction
Either "forward" or "backward".
search-type Either "literal", "case", "word",
"caseWord", "regex", or "regexNoCase".
search-wrap Either "wrap" or "nowrap".
shell-menu-item-name
Name of the command exactly as specified in
the Shell Menu dialogs.
WINDOW PREFERENCES ACTIONS
set_auto_indent( "off" | "on" | "smart" )
Set auto indent mode for the current window.
set_em_tab_dist( em-tab-distance )
Set the emulated tab size. An em-tab-distance value of 0 or -1 translates to
no emulated tabs. Em-tab-distance must be smaller than 1000.
set_fonts( font-name, italic-font-name, bold-font-name, bold-italic-font-name )
Set all the fonts used for the current window.
set_highlight_syntax( [0 | 1] )
Set syntax highlighting mode for the current window. A value of 0 turns it
off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option
is toggled.
set_incremental_backup( [0 | 1] )
Set incremental backup mode for the current window. A value of 0 turns it
off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option
is toggled.
set_incremental_search_line( [0 | 1] )
Show or hide the incremental search line for the current window. A value of
0 turns it off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied
the option is toggled.
set_language_mode( language-mode )
Set the language mode for the current window. If the language mode is "" or
unrecognized, it will be set to Plain.
set_locked( [0 | 1] )
This only affects the locked status of a file, not it's read-only status.
Permissions are NOT changed. A value of 0 turns it off and a value of 1
turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option is toggled.
set_make_backup_copy( [0 | 1] )
Set whether backup copies are made during saves for the current window. A
value of 0 turns it off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are
supplied the option is toggled.
set_overtype_mode( [0 | 1] )
Set overtype mode for the current window. A value of 0 turns it off and a
value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option is toggled.
set_show_line_numbers( [0 | 1] )
Show or hide line numbers for the current window. A value of 0 turns it off
and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option is
toggled.
set_show_matching( "off" | "delimiter" | "range" )
Set show matching (...) mode for the current window.
set_match_syntax_based( [0 | 1] )
Set whether matching should be syntax based for the current window.
set_statistics_line( [0 | 1] )
Show or hide the statistics line for the current window. A value of 0 turns
it off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the
option is toggled.
set_tab_dist( tab-distance )
Set the size of hardware tab spacing. Tab-distance must must be a value
greater than 0 and no greater than 20.
set_use_tabs( [0 | 1] )
Set whether tabs are used for the current window. A value of 0 turns it off
and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option is
toggled.
set_wrap_margin( wrap-width )
Set the wrap width for text wrapping of the current window. A value of 0
means to wrap at window width.
set_wrap_text( "none" | "auto" | "continuous" )
Set wrap text mode for the current window.
KEYBOARD-ONLY ACTIONS
In addition to the arguments listed in the call descriptions below, 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. Any routine that accepts the "scrollbar" argument
will move the display but not the cursor or selection. Routines that accept
the "nobell" argument will fail silently without beeping, when that argument
is supplied.
backward_character( ["nobell"] )
Moves the cursor one character to the left.
backward_paragraph(["nobell"] )
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( ["nobell"] )
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( ["scrollbar"] )
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( ["nobell"] )
If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the
character following the cursor.
delete_previous_character( ["nobell"] )
If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the
character before the cursor.
delete_next_word( ["nobell"] )
If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the
word following the cursor.
delete_previous_word( ["nobell"] )
If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the
word before the cursor.
delete_to_start_of_line( ["nobell"] )
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( ["nobell"] )
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( ["scrollbar"] )
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( ["nobell"] )
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.
focus_pane( [relative-pane] | [positive-index] | [negative-index] )
Move the focus to the requested pane. Arguments can be specified in the form
of a relative-pane ("first", "last", "next", "previous"), a positive-index
(numbers greater than 0, 1 is the same as "first") or a negative-index
(numbers less than 0, -1 is the same as "last").
forward_character()
Moves the cursor one character to the right.
forward_paragraph( ["nobell"] )
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( ["tail"] ["nobell"] )
Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next word. Word delimiters are
user-settable, and defined by the X resource wordDelimiters. If the "tail"
argument is supplied the cursor will be moved to the end of the current word
or the end of the next word, if the cursor is between words.
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" [,"nobell"] )
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( ["stutter"] ["column"] ["scrollbar"] ["nobell"] )
Moves the cursor and scroll forward one page. The parameter "stutter" moves
the cursor to the bottom of the display, unless it is already there,
otherwise it will page down. The parameter "column" will maintain the
preferred column while moving the cursor.
page_left( ["scrollbar"] ["nobell"] )
Move the cursor and scroll left one page.
page_right( ["scrollbar"] ["nobell"] )
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( ["stutter"] ["column"] ["scrollbar"] ["nobell"] )
Moves the cursor and scroll backward one page. The parameter "stutter" moves
the cursor to the top of the display, unless it is already there, otherwise
it will page up. The parameter "column" will maintain the preferred column
while moving the cursor.
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( ["nobell"] )
Moves the cursor down one line.
process_return()
Same as newline for compatibility with previous versions.
process_shift_down( ["nobell"] )
Same as process_down("extend") for compatibility with previous versions.
process_shift_up( ["nobell"] )
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( ["nobell"] )
Moves the cursor up one line.
raise_window([relative-window] | [positive-index] | [negative-index])
Raise the current focused window to the front if no argument is supplied.
Arguments can be specified in the form of a relative-window ("first",
"last", "next", "previous"), a positive-index (numbers greater than 0, 1 is
the same as "last") or a negative-index (numbers less than 0, -1 is the same
as "first").
scroll_down(nLines)
Scroll the display down (towards the end of the file) by nLines.
scroll_left( nPixels )
Scroll the display left by nPixels.
scroll_right( nPixels )
Scroll the display right by nPixels.
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.
===========
CUSTOMIZING
===========
-----------------
CUSTOMIZING NEDIT
-----------------
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.
Incremental Search Line
Keep the incremental search bar (Search -> Find Incremental) permanently
displayed at the top of the window.
Show Line Numbers
Display line numbers to the right of the text.
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 -> Programming with
NEdit 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 Help -> Features for Programming ->
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 omitted 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 Help -> Features for Programming -> 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, or the
range between them, when one of these characters is typed, or when the
insertion cursor is positioned after it. Delimiter only highlights the
matching delimiter, while Range highlights the whole range of text between
the matching delimiters.
Optionally, the matching can make use of syntax information if syntax
highlighting is enabled. Alternatively, the matching is purely character
based. In general, syntax based matching results in fewer false matches.
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 different
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.
Tag Collisions
How to react to multiple tags for the same name. Tags are described in the
section: Features for Programmers -> Finding Declarations (ctags). In Show
All mode, all matching tags are displayed in a dialog. In Smart mode, if one
of the matching tags is in the current window, that tag is chosen, without
displaying the dialog.
Customize Menus
Add/remove items from the Shell, Macro, and window background menus (see
below).
Customize Window Title
Opens a dialog where the information to be displayed in the windows's title
field can be defined and tested. The dialog contains a Help button,
providing further information about the options available.
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 (unless Beep On Search
Wrap is turned on).
Wrap Around - Search and Replace operations wrap around the beginning (or
end) of the file.
Beep On Search Wrap - Beep when Search and Replace operations wrap around
the beginning (or end) of the file (only if Wrap Around is turned on).
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.
Default Replace Scope - [THIS OPTION IS ONLY PRESENT WHEN NEDIT WAS COMPILED
WITH THE
-DREPLACE_SCOPE FLAG TO SELECT AN ALTERNATIVE REPLACE DIALOG LAYOUT.]
Initial setting for the scope in the Replace/Find dialog, when a selection
exists. It can be either "In Window", "In Selection", or "Smart". "Smart"
results in "In Window" if the size of the selection is smaller than 1 line,
and to "In Selection" otherwise.
Syntax Highlighting
Program and configure enhanced text display for new or supported languages
(See Features for Programming -> Syntax Highlighting).
Append Line Feed on Save
Some UNIX tools expect that files end with a line feed. If this option is
activated, NEdit will append one if required.
Sort Open Prev. Menu
Option to order the File -> Open Previous menu alphabetically, versus in
order of last access.
Popups Under Pointer
Display pop-up dialogs centered on the current mouse position, as opposed to
centered on the parent window. This generally speeds interaction, and is
essential for users who users who set their window managers so keyboard
focus follows the mouse.
Modification Warnings
Pop up a warning dialog when files get changed external to NEdit.
Exit Warnings
Ask before exiting when two or more files are open in an NEdit session.
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.
If a menu item is followed by the single language qualification "@*", that
item will appear only if there are no applicable language-specific items of
the same name in the same submenu. For example, if you have the following
three entries in the same menu:
Make Prototypes@C@C++
Make Prototypes@Java
Make Prototypes@*
The first will be available when the language mode is C or C++, the second
when the language mode is Java, and for all other language modes (including
the "Plain" non-language mode). If the entry:
Make Prototypes
also exists, this will always appear, meaning that the menu will always have
two "Make Prototypes" entries, whatever the language mode.
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 <file>
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)
This can be the name of a file, or multiple files separated by a colon (:)
character, of the type produced by Exuberant Ctags or the Unix ctags
command, which NEdit will load at startup time (see ctag support ). The tag
file provides a database from which NEdit can automatically open files
containing the definition of a particular subroutine or data type.
nedit.alwaysCheckRelativeTagsSpecs: True
When this resource is set to True, and there are tag files specified (with
the nedit.tagFile resource, see above) as relative paths, NEdit will
evaluate these tag value paths whenever a file is opened. All accessible tag
files will be loaded at this time. When this resource value is False,
relative path tag specifications will only be evaluated at NEdit startup
time.
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. Note that this default value may be overridden by the
setting in Preferences -> Default Settings -> Language Modes....
nedit.remapDeleteKey: False
Setting this resource to True forcibly maps the delete key to backspace.
This can be helpful on systems where the bindings have become tangled, and
in environments which mix systems with PC style keyboards and systems with
DEC and Macintosh keyboards. Theoretically, these bindings should be made
using the standard X/Motif mechanisms, outside of NEdit. In practice, some
environments where users access several different systems remotely, can be
very hard to configure. If you've given up and are using a backspace key
halfway off the keyboard because you can't figure out the bindings, set this
to True.
nedit.overrideDefaultVirtualKeyBindings: Auto
Motif uses a virtual key binding mechanism that shares the bindings between
different Motif applications. When a first Motif application is started, it
installs some default virtual key bindings and any other Motif application
that runs afterwards, simply reuses them. Obviously, if the first
application installs an invalid set, all others applications may have
problems.
In the past, NEdit has been the victim of invalid bindings installed by
other applications several times. Through this resource, NEdit can be
instructed to ignore the bindings installed by other applications, and use
its own private bindings. By default, NEdit tries to detect invalid bindings
and ignore them automatically (Auto). Optionally, NEdit can be told to
always keep the installed bindings (Never), or to always override them
(Always).
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.bgMenuButton: ~Shift~Ctrl~Meta~Alt<Btn3Down>
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.printCommand: (system specific)
Command used by the print dialog to print a file, such as, lp, lpr, etc..
The command must be capable of accepting input via stdin (standard input).
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.visualID: Best
If your screen supports multiple visuals (color mapping models), this
resource allows you to manually choose among them. The default value of
"Best" chooses the deepest (most colors) visual available. Since NEdit does
not depend on the specific characteristics of any given color model, Best
probably IS the best choice for everyone, and the only reason for setting
this resource would be to patch around some kind of X server problem. The
resource may also be set to "Default", which chooses the screen's default
visual (often a color-mapped, PseudoColor, visual for compatibility with
older X applications). It may also be set to a numeric visual-id value (use
xdpyinfo to see the list of visuals supported by your display), or a visual
class name: PseudoColor, DirectColor, TrueColor, etc..
nedit.installColormap: False
Force the installation of a private colormap. If you have a humble 8-bit
color display, and netscape is hogging all of the color cells, you may want
to try turning this on. On most systems, this will result in colors flashing
wildly when you switch between NEdit and other applications. But a few
systems (SGI) have hardware support for multiple simultaneous colormaps, and
applications with installed colormaps are well behaved.
nedit.findReplaceUsesSelection: False
Controls if the Find and Replace dialogs are automatically loaded with the
contents of the primary selection.
nedit.stickyCaseSenseButton: True
Controls if the "Case Sensitive" buttons in the Find and Replace dialogs and
the incremental search bar maintain a separate state for literal and regular
expression searches. Moreover, when set to True, by default literal searches
are case insensitive and regular expression searches are case sensitive.
When set to False, the "Case Sensitive" buttons are independent of the
"Regular Expression" toggle.
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.lineNumForeground: gray47
Color for displaying line numbers in the NEdit window.
nedit.text.blinkRate: 500
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: #b3b3b3
Default background color for menus, dialogs, scroll bars, etc..
nedit.fontList: helvetica medium 12 points
Default font for menus, dialogs, scroll bars, etc..
nedit.helpFont: helvetica medium 12 points
Font used for displaying online help.
nedit.boldHelpFont: helvetica bold 12 points
Bold font for online help.
nedit.italicHelpFont: helvetica italic 12 points
Italic font for online help.
nedit.fixedHelpFont: courier medium 12 points
Fixed font for online help.
nedit.boldFixedHelpFont: courier bold 12 points
Fixed bold for online help.
nedit.italicFixedHelpFont: courier italic 12 points
Fixed italic font for online help.
nedit.h1HelpFont: helvetica bold 14 points
Font for level-1 titles in help text.
nedit.h2HelpFont: helvetica bold italic 12 points
Font for level-2 titles in help text.
nedit.h3HelpFont: courier bold 12 points
Font for level-3 titles in help text.
nedit.helpLinkFont: helvetica medium 12 points
Font for hyperlinks in the help text
nedit.helpLinkColor: #009900
Color for hyperlinks in the help text
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.
and other characteristics):
The following are Selected widget names (to which you may append
.background, .foreground, .fontList, etc., to change colors, fonts
nedit*statsForm
Statistics line and incremental search bar. Use this to set statistics line
background color. To set attributes affecting both the statistics line and
the incremental search bar, use '*' rather than '.' to separate the resource
name. For example, to set the foreground color of both components:
nedit*statsForm*foreground, or to set the foreground color of the statistics
line only: nedit*statsForm.statsLine.foreground.
nedit*menuBar
Top-of-window menu-bar.
nedit*textHorScrollBar
Horizontal scroll bar.
nedit*textVertScrollBar
Vertical scroll bar.
-----------
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 help section "X Resources"). 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\
Alt<Key>y: insert_string("Hi!") \n
The Help topic "Action Routines" 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, so 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: Ctrl<Key>x
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: Alt<Key>f
nedit*searchMenu.findShift.accelerator: Shift Alt<Key>f
---------------------
HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS
---------------------
WRITING SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS
Patterns are the mechanism by which language syntax highlighting is
implemented in NEdit (see Syntax Highlighting under the heading of Features
for Programming). To create syntax highlighting patterns for a new language,
or to modify existing patterns, select "Recognition Patterns" 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 NEdit Help menu item on 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 "&" 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 guarantee 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 guarantee 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 <line context> lines and <character context>
characters, around any modified text. Combining line and character
requirements guarantee 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.)
-------------------
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.
------------------
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] [-lm languagemode] [-geometry geometry]
[-iconic] [-noiconic] [-display [host]:server[.screen]
[-xrm resourcestring] [-svrname name] [-import file]
[-background color] [-foreground color] [-V|-version]
[--] [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 gen- erated by Exuberant Ctags,
or the standard 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'.
-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").
-lm languagemode
Initial language mode used for editing succeeding files.
-geometry geometry (or -g geometry)
The initial size and/or location of editor windows. The argument geometry
has the form:
[<width>x<height>][+|-][<xoffset>[+|-]<yoffset>]
where <width> and <height> are the desired width and height of the window,
and <xoffset> and <yoffset> are the distance from the edge of the screen to
the window, + for top or left, - for bottom or right. -geometry can be
specified for individual files on the command line.
-iconic, -noiconic
Initial window state for succeeding files.
-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.
-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 "Customizing
NEdit").
-svrname name
When starting NEdit in server mode, name the server, such that it responds
to requests only when nc is given a corresponding -svrname argument. By
naming servers, you can run several simultaneously, and direct files and
commands specifically to any one.
-import file
Loads an additional preferences file on top of the existing defaults saved
in your .nedit file. To incorporate macros, language modes, and highlight
patterns and styles written by other users, run NEdit with -import <file>,
then re-save your .nedit file with Preferences -> Save Defaults.
-version
Prints out the NEdit version information. The -V option is synonymous.
--
Treats all subsequent arguments as file names, even if they start with a
dash. This is so NEdit can access files that begin with the dash character.
------------------
CLIENT/SERVER MODE
------------------
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 Nedit Client (nc) program
when no servers are available.
The nc 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 to 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" section).
Sometimes it is useful to have more than one NEdit server running, for
example to keep mail and programming work separate. The option, -svrname, to
both nedit and nc, allows you to start, and communicate with, separate named
servers. A named server responds only to requests with the corresponding
-svrname argument. If you use ClearCase and are within a ClearCase view, the
server name will default to the name of the view (based on the value of the
CLEARCASE_ROOT environment variable).
Communication between nc and nedit is through the X display. So as long as X
windows is set up and working properly, nc 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 still recover most of your
work. NEdit maintains a backup file which it updates periodically (every 8
editing operations or 80 characters typed). This file 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" on Unix type the command:
mv \~help.c help.c
A minor caveat, is that if the file you were editing was in MS DOS format,
the backup file will be in Unix format, and you will need to open the backup
file in NEdit and change the file format back to MS DOS via the Save As...
dialog (or use the Unix unix2dos command outside of NEdit).
-------
VERSION
-------
NEdit 5.3
Jun 1, 2002
NEdit was written by Mark Edel, Joy Kyriakopulos, Christopher Conrad, Jim
Clark, Arnulfo Zepeda-Navratil, Suresh Ravoor, Tony Balinski, Max Vohlken,
Yunliang Yu, Donna Reid, Arne Førlie, Eddy De Greef, Steve LoBasso,
Alexander Mai, Scott Tringali, Thorsten Haude, and Steve Haehn.
The regular expression matching routines used in NEdit are adapted (with
permission) from original code written by Henry Spencer at the University of
Toronto.
Syntax highlighting patterns and smart indent macros 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, Markus
Schwarzenberg, Himanshu Gohel, Steven C. Kapp, Michael Turomsha, John
Fieber, Chris Ross, Nathaniel Gray, Joachim Lous, Mike Duigou, Seak
Teng-Fong, Joor Loohuis, Mark Jones, and Niek van den Berg.
NEdit sources, executables, additional documentation, and contributed
software are available from the NEdit web site at http://www.nedit.org.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License in the
Help section "Distribution Policy" for more details.
-------------------
DISTRIBUTION POLICY
-------------------
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 675 Mass Ave,
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute
verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to
share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended
to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure
the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies
to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program
whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation
software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You
can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our
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To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to
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For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or
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must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you
must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2)
offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute
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everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If
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Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We
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The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification
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GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION
AND MODIFICATION
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms
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licensee is addressed as "you".
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is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its
contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been
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Program does.
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code
as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and
disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this
License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of
the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you
may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it,
thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such
modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you
also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that
you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or
in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be
licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of
this License.
c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run,
you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most
ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate
copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying
that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program
under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not
normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not
required to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable
sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be
reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then
this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you
distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections
as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of
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regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your
rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise
the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works
based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with
the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage
or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this
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3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under
Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1
and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
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If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any
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licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a
consequence of the rest of this License.
8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain
countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original
copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an
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that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded.
In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the
body of this License.
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of
the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be
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address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
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either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
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10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs
whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for
permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software
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NO WARRANTY
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR
THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN
OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
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THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM
PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR
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12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR
THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER
PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
-------------
MAILING LISTS
-------------
There are two separate mailing lists for nedit users, and one for
developers. Users may post to the developer mailing list to report defects
and communicate with the nedit developers. Remember that nedit is entirely a
volunteer effort, so please ask questions first to the discussion list, and
do your share to answer other users questions as well.
discuss@nedit.org
General discussion, questions and answers among NEdit users and developers.
announce@nedit.org
A low-volume mailing list for announcing new versions.
develop@nedit.org
Communication among and with NEdit developers. Developers should also
subscribe to the discuss list.
To subscribe, send mail to <majordomo@nedit.org> with one or more of the
following in the body of the message:
subscribe announce
subscribe discuss
subscribe develop
----------------
PROBLEMS/DEFECTS
----------------
SOLUTIONS TO COMMON PROBLEMS
For a much more comprehensive list of common problems and solutions, see the
NEdit FAQ. The latest version of the FAQ can always be found on the NEdit
web site at:
http://www.nedit.org.
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: 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 menu).
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 Backspace key doesn't work, or deletes forward rather than backward.
S: While this is an X/Motif binding problem, and should be solved outside of
NEdit in the Motif virtual binding layer (or possibly xmodmap or
translations), NEdit provides an out. If you set the resource:
nedit.remapDeleteKey to True, NEdit will forcibly map the delete key to
backspace. The default setting of this resource recently changed, so users
who have been depending on this remapping will now have to set it explicitly
(or fix their bindings).
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/v5_0_2/individual/README.sun on
ftp.nedit.org, as well as a tar file containing a complete nls directory:
ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/v5_0_2/nls.tar. README.sun contains directions for
setting up an nls directory, which is required by Motif for handling copy
and paste to Motif text fields.
KNOWN DEFECTS
Below is the list of known defects which affect NEdit. The defects 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 defects in Motif 1.2, so it is in your best interest to
upgrade your system.
All Versions
DEFECT
Operations between rectangular selections on overlapping lines do nothing.
Work Around
None. These operations are very complicated and rarely used.
DEFECT
Cut and Paste menu items fail, or possibly crash, for very large
(multi-megabyte) selections.
Work Around
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.
REPORTING DEFECTS
The NEdit developers subscribe to both discuss@nedit.org and
develop@nedit.org, either of which may be used for reporting defects. If
you're not sure, or you think the report might be of interest to the general
NEdit user community, send the report to discuss@nedit.org. If it's
something obvious and boring, like we misspelled "anemometer" in the on-line
help, send it to develop@nedit.org. If you don't want to subscribe to the
Mailing Lists, please add a note to your mail about cc'ing you on responses.
