IRIX 6.5 Applications 2002 May/SGI IRIX 6.5 Applications 2002 May.iso/relnotes/nedit/nedit.doc

Text File | 2002-04-12 | 185KB | 3,900 lines

                     NEdit Version 5.2, August, 2001

$Id: nedit.doc,v 1.1 2002/02/19 23:06:33 rhess Exp $

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.


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://nedit.org.  The optional "nc" (NEdit
Client) program is also available for users who want to run NEdit in
client/server mode.


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.

Start NEdit by typing nedit.  You can specify a file or several files to edit
on the command line, but you can also open them from inside of NEdit.  If you
don't specify a file name to edit, NEdit will open a window titled "Untitled".
You can create a new file by typing into this window and choosing Save or
Save As... from the File menu.  There is no "main window" in NEdit, all
editor windows are equivalent, and NEdit remains running as long as at least
one window is open.

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.


SELECTING TEXT

NEdit has two general types of selections, primary (highlighted text), and
secondary (underlined text). Selections can cover either a simple range of text
between two points in the file, or they can cover a rectangular area of the
file.  Rectangular selections are only useful with non-proportional (fixed
spacing) fonts.

To select text for copying, deleting, or replacing, press the left mouse button
with the pointer at one end of the text you want to select, and drag it to the
other end.  The text will become highlighted.  To select a whole word, double
click (click twice quickly in succession).  Double clicking and then dragging
the mouse will select a number of words.  Similarly, you can select a whole line
or a number of lines by triple clicking or triple clicking and dragging.
Quadruple clicking selects the whole file.  After releasing the mouse button,
you can still adjust a selection by holding down the shift key and dragging on
either end of the selection.  To delete the selected text, press delete or
backspace.  To replace it, begin typing.

To select a rectangle or column of text, hold the Ctrl key while dragging the
mouse.  Rectangular selections can be used in any context that normal selections
can be used, including cutting and pasting, filling, shifting, dragging, and
searching.  Operations on rectangular selections automatically fill in tabs and
spaces to maintain alignment of text within and to the right of the selection.
Note that the interpretation of rectangular selections by Fill Paragraph is
slightly different from that of other commands, the section titled "Shifting and
Filling" has details.

The middle mouse button can be used to make an additional selection (called the
secondary selection).  As soon as the button is released, the contents of this
selection will be copied to the insert position of the window where the mouse
was last clicked (the destination window).  This position is marked by a caret
shaped cursor when the mouse is outside of the destination window.  If there is
a (primary) selection, adjacent to the cursor in the window, the new text will
replace the selected text.  Holding the shift key while making the secondary
selection will move the text, deleting it at the site of the secondary
selection, rather than copying it.

Selected text can also be dragged to a new location in the file using the middle
mouse button.  Holding the shift key while dragging the text will copy the
selected text, leaving the original text in place.  Holding the control key will
drag the text in overlay mode.

Normally, dragging moves text by removing it from the selected position at the
start of the drag, and inserting it at a new position relative to to the mouse.
Dragging a block of text over existing characters, displaces the characters to
the end of the selection.  In overlay mode, characters which are occluded by
blocks of text being dragged are simply removed.  When dragging non-rectangular
selections, overlay mode also converts the selection to rectangular form,
allowing it to be dragged outside of the bounds of the existing text.

The section "Using the Mouse" summarizes the mouse commands for making primary
and secondary selections.  Primary selections can also be made via keyboard
commands, see "Keyboard Shortcuts".


CUTTING and PASTING

The easiest way to copy and move text around in your file or between windows, is
to use the clipboard, an imaginary area that temporarily stores text and data.
The Cut command removes the selected text (see SELECTING TEXT) from your file
and places it in the clipboard.  Once text is in the clipboard, the Paste
command will copy it to the insert position in the current window.  For example,
to move some text from one place to another, select it by dragging the mouse
over it, choose Cut to remove it, click the pointer to move the insert point
where you want the text inserted, then choose Paste to insert it.  Copy copies
text to the clipboard without deleting it from your file.  You can also use the
clipboard to transfer text to and from other Motif programs and X programs which
make proper use of the clipboard.

There are many other methods for copying and moving text within NEdit windows
and between NEdit and other programs.  The most common such method is clicking
the middle mouse button to copy the primary selection (to the clicked
position).  Copying the selection by clicking the middle mouse button in many
cases is the only way to transfer data to and from many X programs.  Holding
the Shift key while clicking the middle mouse button moves the text, deleting
it from its original position, rather than copying it.  Other methods for
transferring text include secondary selections, primary selection dragging,
keyboard-based selection copying, and drag and drop.  These are described in
detail in the sections: Selecting Text, Using the Mouse, and Keyboard
Shortcuts.


FINDING AND REPLACING TEXT

The Search menu contains a number of commands for finding and replacing text.

The Find... and Replace... commands present dialogs for entering text for
searching and replacing.  These dialogs also allow you to choose whether you
want the search to be sensitive to upper and lower case, or whether to use the
standard Unix pattern matching characters (regular expressions).  Searches
begin at the current text insertion position.

Find Again and Replace Again repeat the last find or replace command without
prompting for search strings.  To selectively replace text, use the two
commands in combination: Find Again, then Replace Again if the highlighted
string should be replaced, or Find Again again to go to the next string.

Find Selection searches for the text contained in the current primary
selection (see SELECTING TEXT).  The selected text does not have to be in the
current editor window, it may even be in another program.  For example, if the
word dog appears somewhere in a window on your screen, and you want to find it
in the file you are editing, select the word dog by dragging the mouse across
it, switch to your NEdit window and choose Find Selection from the Search
menu.

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.


USING THE MOUSE

NEdit is one of the most mouse interactive text editors around, but you don't
need to know all of the details below to be productive.  You can get by with
just the left mouse button, clicking to move the cursor, and dragging to make a
selection.

This section will make more sense if you also read the sections, SELECTING,
and CUTTING, and PASTING, which explain the terminology of selections, i.e.
what is meant by primary, secondary, rectangular, etc.

The general meaning of mouse buttons and modifier keys is as follows:

    Buttons

        Button 1 (left)     Cursor position and primary selection

        Button 2 (middle)   Secondary selections, and dragging and
                            copying primary selection

        Button 3 (right)    Quick-access programmable menu and pan scrolling

    Modifier keys

        Shift   On primary selections, (left mouse button):
                    Extends selection to the mouse pointer
                On secondary and copy operations, (middle):
                    Toggles between move and copy

        Ctrl    Makes selection rectangular or insertion
                columnar

        Alt*    (on release) Exchange primary and secondary
                selections.


Left Mouse Button

    The left mouse button is used to position the cursor and to make primary
    selections.

    Click               Moves the cursor

    Double Click        Selects a whole word

    Triple Click        Selects a whole line

    Quadruple Click     Selects the whole file

    Shift Click         Adjusts (extends or shrinks) the selection, or if there
                        is no existing selection, begins a new selection between
                        the cursor and the mouse.

    Ctrl+Shift+Click    Adjusts (extends or shrinks) the selection
                        rectangularly.

    Drag                Selects text between where the mouse was pressed and
                        where it was released.

    Ctrl+Drag           Selects rectangle between where the mouse was pressed
                        and where it was released.


Right Mouse Button

    The right mouse button posts a programmable menu for frequently used
    commands.

    Click/Drag  Pops up the background menu (programmed from Preferences ->
                Default Settings -> Customize Menus -> Window Background).

    Ctrl+Drag   Pan scrolling.  Scrolls the window both vertically and
                horizontally, as if you had grabbed it with your mouse.


Middle Mouse Button

    The middle mouse button is for making secondary selections, and copying and
    dragging the primary selection.

    Click       Copies the primary selection to the clicked position.

    Shift+Click Moves the primary selection to the clicked position, deleting it
                from its original position.

    Drag        1) Outside of the primary selection:
                    Begins a secondary selection.
                2) Inside of the primary selection:
                    Moves the entire selection by dragging.

    Ctrl+Drag   1) Outside of the primary selection:
                    Begins a rectangular secondary selection.
                2) Inside of the primary selection:
                    Drags the selection in overlay mode (see below).

When the mouse button is released after creating a secondary selection:

    No Modifiers    If there is a primary selection, replaces it with the
                    secondary selection.  Otherwise, inserts the secondary
                    selection at the cursor position.

    Shift           Move the secondary selection, deleting it from its original
                    position.  If there is a primary selection, the move will
                    replace the primary selection with the secondary selection.
                    Otherwise, moves the secondary selection to to the cursor
                    position.

    Alt*            Exchange the primary and secondary selections.


While moving the primary selection by dragging with the middle mouse button:

    Shift   Leaves a copy of the original selection in place rather than
            removing it or blanking the area.

    Ctrl    Changes from insert mode to overlay mode (see below).

    Escape  Cancels drag in progress.

Overlay Mode: Normally, dragging moves text by removing it from the selected
position at the start of the drag, and inserting it at a new position relative
to to the mouse.  When you drag a block of text over existing characters, the
existing characters are displaced to the end of the selection.  In overlay
mode, characters which are occluded by blocks of text being dragged are simply
removed.  When dragging non-rectangular selections, overlay mode also converts
the selection to rectangular form, allowing it to be dragged outside of the
bounds of the existing text.

Mouse buttons 4 and 5 are usually represented by a mouse wheel nowadays. They
are used to scroll up/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.


KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

Most of the keyboard shortcuts in NEdit are shown on the right hand sides of
the pull-down menus.  However, there are more which are not as obvious.  These
include; dialog button shortcuts; menu and dialog mnemonics; labeled keyboard
keys, such as the arrows, page-up, page-down, and home; and optional Shift
modifiers on accelerator keys, like [Shift]Ctrl+F.

Menu Accelerators

Pressing the key combinations shown on the right of the menu items is a
shortcut for selecting the menu item with the mouse.  Some items have the shift
key enclosed in brackets, such as [Shift]Ctrl+F.  This indicates that the shift
key is optional.  In search commands, including the shift key reverses the
direction of the search.  In Shift commands, it makes the command shift the
selected text by a whole tab stop rather than by single characters.

Menu Mnemonics

Pressing the Alt key in combination with one of the underlined characters in
the menu bar pulls down that menu.  Once the menu is pulled down, typing the
underlined characters in a menu item (without the Alt key) activates that
item.  With a menu pulled down, you can also use the arrow keys to select menu
items, and the space or enter keys to activate them.

Keyboard Shortcuts within Dialogs

One button in a dialog is usually marked with a thick indented outline.
Pressing the Return or Enter key activates this button.

All dialogs have either a Cancel or Dismiss button.  This button can be
activated by pressing the Escape (or Esc) key.

Pressing the tab key moves the keyboard focus to the next item in a dialog.
Within an associated group of buttons, the arrow keys move the focus among the
buttons.  Shift+Tab moves backward through the items.

Most items in dialogs have an underline under one character in their name.
Pressing the Alt key along with this character, activates a button as if you
had pressed it with the mouse, or moves the keyboard focus to the associated
text field or list.

You can select items from a list by using the arrow keys to move the selection
and space to select.

In file selection dialogs, you can type the beginning characters of the file
name or directory in the list to select files

Labeled Function Keys

The labeled function keys on standard workstation and PC keyboards, like the
arrows, and page-up and page-down, are active in NEdit, though not shown in the
pull-down menus.

Holding down the control key while pressing a named key extends the scope of
the action that it performs.  For example, Home normally moves the insert
cursor the beginning of a line.  Ctrl+Home moves it to the beginning of the
file. Backspace deletes one character, Ctrl+Backspace deletes one word.

Holding down the shift key while pressing a named key begins or extends a
selection.  Combining the shift and control keys combines their actions.  For
example, to select a word without using the mouse, position the cursor at the
beginning of the word and press Ctrl+Shift+RightArrow.  The Alt key modifies
selection commands to make the selection rectangular.

Under X and Motif, there are several levels of translation between keyboard
keys and the actions they perform in a program.  The "KEY BINDING", and "X
RESOURCES" sections below have more information on this subject.  Because of
all of this configurability, and since keyboards and standards for the meaning
of some keys vary from machine to machine, the mappings may be changed from the
defaults listed below.

Modifier Keys (in general)

    Ctrl    Extends the scope of the action that the key would otherwise
            perform.  For example, Home normally moves the insert cursor the
            beginning of a line. Ctrl+Home moves it to the beginning of the
            file.  Backspace deletes one character, Ctrl+ Backspace deletes one
            word.

    Shift   Extends the selection to the cursor position. If there's no
            selection, begins one between the old and new cursor positions.

    Alt     When modifying a selection, makes the selection rectangular.

(For the effects of modifier keys on mouse button presses, see the section
titled "Using the Mouse")

All Keyboards

    Escape          Cancels operation in progress: menu selection, drag,
                    selection, etc.  Also equivalent to cancel button in
                    dialogs.

    Backspace       Delete the character before the cursor

    Ctrl+BS         Delete the word before the cursor

    Arrows:

        Left            Move the cursor to the left one character

        Ctrl+Left       Move the cursor backward one word (Word delimiters are
                        settable, see CUSTOMIZATION)

        Right           Move the cursor to the right one character

        Ctrl+Right      Move the cursor forward one word

        Up              Move the cursor up one line

        Ctrl+Up         Move the cursor up one paragraph.  (Paragraphs are
                        delimited by blank lines.)

        Down            Move the cursor down one line.

        Ctrl+Down       Move the cursor down one paragraph.

    Ctrl+Return     Return with automatic indent, regardless of the setting of
                    Auto Indent.

    Shift+Return    Return without automatic indent, regardless of the
                    setting of Auto Indent.

    Ctrl+Tab        Insert an ASCII tab character, without processing
                    emulated tabs.

    Alt+Ctrl+<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 CUSTOMIZATION,
                    and X RESOURCES)


    Ctrl+Delete     Delete to end of line.

    Shift+Delete    Cut, remove the currently selected text and place it in the
                    clipboard. (same as Cut menu item or ^X) for compatibility
                    with Motif standard key binding.

    Shift+Ctrl+Delete
                    Cut the primary selection to the cursor location.

    Home            Move the cursor to the beginning of the line.

    Ctrl+Home       Move the cursor to the beginning of the file.

    End             Move the cursor to the end of the line.

    Ctrl+End        Move the cursor to the end of the file.

    PageUp          Scroll and move the cursor up by one page.

    Ctrl+PageUp     Scroll and move the cursor left by one page.

    PageDown        Scroll and move the cursor down by one page.

    Ctrl+PageDown   Scroll and move the cursor right by one page.

    F10             Make the menu bar active for keyboard input (Arrow Keys,
                    Return, Escape, and the Space Bar)


Specialty Keyboards

On machines with different styles of keyboards, generally, text editing actions
are properly matched to the labeled keys, such as Remove, Next-screen, etc..
If you prefer different key bindings, see the heading titled "Binding Keys to
Actions" in the X RESOURCES section below.


TEXT FILLING

Text filling using the Fill Paragraph command in the Edit menu is one of the
most important concepts in NEdit.  And it will be well worth your while to
understand how to use it properly.

In plain text files, unlike word-processor files, there is no way to tell which
lines are continuations of other lines, and which lines are meant to be
separate, because there is no distinction in meaning between newline characters
which separate lines in a paragraph, and ones which separate paragraphs from
other text.  This makes it impossible for a text editor like NEdit to tell
parts of the text which belong together as a paragraph from carefully arranged
individual lines.

In continuous wrap mode, lines automatically wrap and unwrap themselves to
line up properly at the right margin.  In this mode, you simply omit the
newlines within paragraphs and let NEdit make the line breaks as needed.
Unfortunately, continuous wrap mode is not appropriate in the majority of
situations, because files with extremely long lines are not common under Unix
and may not be compatible with all tools, and because you can't achieve
effects like indented sections, columns, or program comments, and still take
advantage of the automatic wrapping.

Without continuous wrapping, paragraph filling is not entirely automatic.
Auto-Newline wrapping keeps paragraphs lined up as you type, but once entered,
NEdit can no longer distinguish newlines which join wrapped text, and newlines
which must be preserved.  Therefore, editing in the middle of a paragraph will
often leave the right margin messy and uneven.

Since NEdit can't act automatically to keep your text lined up, you need to
tell it explicitly where to operate, and that is what Fill Paragraph is for.
It arranges lines to fill the space between two margins, wrapping the lines
neatly at word boundaries.  Normally, the left margin for filling is inferred
from the text being filled.  The first line of each paragraph is considered
special, and its left indentation is maintained separately from the remaining
lines (for leading indents, bullet points, numbered paragraphs, etc.).
Otherwise, the left margin is determined by the furthest left non-whitespace
character.  The right margin is either the Wrap Margin, set in the preferences
menu (by default, the right edge of the window), or can also be chosen on the
fly by using a rectangular selection (see below).

There are three ways to use Fill Paragraph.  The simplest is, while you are
typing text, and there is no selection, simply select Fill Paragraph (or type
Ctrl+J), and NEdit will arrange the text in the paragraph adjacent to the
cursor.  A paragraph, in this case, means an area of text delimited by blank
lines.

The second way to use Fill Paragraph is with a selection.  If you select a
range of text and then chose Fill Paragraph, all of the text in the selection
will be filled.  Again, continuous text between blank lines is interpreted as
paragraphs and filled individually, respecting leading indents and blank lines.

The third, and most 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.

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.

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.
NEdit, like vi and approximately half of Unix editors, enforces a final
terminating newline on all of the files that it writes.  NEdit does this
because some Unix compilers and utilities require it, and fail in various ways
on files which do not have it.  Emacs does not enforce this rule.  Users are
divided on which is best.

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

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"
below.)

The Dot Meta Character

If an un-escaped 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 "Grouping", item "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.

Special Control Characters

In a regex, most ordinary characters match themselves.  For example, `ab%'
would match anywhere `a' followed by `b' followed by `%' appeared in the text.
However, there are some special characters that are difficult or impossible to
type.  Many of these characters have escape sequences (simple characters
preceded by `\') assigned to represent them.  NEdit recognizes the following
special character escape 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.)

Escaped Meta Characters

Characters that have special meaning to the regex syntax are called meta
characters.  NEdit provides the following escape sequences so that characters
that are used by the regex syntax can be specified as ordinary characters and
not interpreted as meta characters.

   \(  \)  \-  \[  \]  \<  \>  \{  \}
   \.  \|  \^  \$  \*  \+  \?  \&  \\

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 Escapes

NEdit defines some escape sequences that are handy shortcuts for commonly used
character classes.

   \d  digits            0-9
   \l  letters           a-z and A-Z
   \s  whitespace        \t, \r, \v, \f, and space
   \w  word characters   a-z, A-Z, 0-9, 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_]'.  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.

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, i.e `(?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 latter 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.

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.)

Examples:

o  Entire line.

  ^.*$

o  Blank lines.

  ^$

o  Whitespace on a line.

  \s+

o  Whitespace across lines.

  (?n\s+)

o  Whitespace that spans at least two lines.  Note minimal
   matching `*?' quantifier.

  (?n\s*?\n\s*)

o  IP address (not robust.)

  (?:\d{1,3}(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})

o  Two character US Postal state abbreviations (includes
   territories.)

  [ACDF-IK-PR-W][A-Z]

o  Web addresses

  (?:http://)?www\.\S+

o  Case insensitive double words across line breaks.

  (?i(?n<(\S+)\s+\1>))

o  Upper case words with possible punctuation.

  <[A-Z][^a-z\s]*>

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


FEATURES FOR PROGRAMMERS

Though general in appearance, NEdit has many features intended specifically
for programmers.  Programming-related topics are listed here, and in the next
four sections: TABS AND TAB EMULATION, AUTOMATIC INDENT, SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING,
and FINDING SUBROUTINE AND DATA DECLARATIONS (CTAGS).

Language Modes

When NEdit initially reads a file, it attempts to determine whether the file is
in one of the computer languages that it knows about.  Knowing what language a
file is written in allows NEdit to assign highlight patterns and smart indent
macros, and to set language specific preferences like word delimiters, tab
emulation, and auto-indent.  Language mode can be recognized from both the file
name and from the first 200 characters of content.  Language mode recognition
and language-specific preferences are configured in: Preferences -> Default
Settings -> Language Modes....

You can set the language mode manually for a window, by selecting it from the
menu: Preferences -> Language Modes.

Line Numbers

To find a particular line in a source file by line number, choose Goto Line
#... from the Search menu.  You can also directly select the line number text
in the compiler message in the terminal emulator window (xterm, decterm,
winterm, etc.) where you ran the compiler, and choose Goto Selected from the
Search menu.

To find out the line number of a particular line in your file, turn on
Statistics Line in the Preferences menu and position the insertion point
anywhere on the line.  The statistics line continuously updates the line number
of the line containing the cursor.

Matching Parentheses

To help you inspect nested parentheses, brackets, braces, quotes, and other
characters, NEdit has both an automatic parenthesis matching mode, and a Find
Matching command.  Automatic parenthesis matching is activated when you type,
or move the insertion cursor after a parenthesis, bracket, or brace.  It
momentarily highlights either the opposite character ('Delimiter') or the entire
expression ('Range') if 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 Find Matching from the Search menu.
If the character matches itself, such as a quote or slash, select the first
character of the pair.  NEdit will match {, (, [, <, ", ', `, /, and \.

Opening Included Files

The Open Selected command in the File menu understands the C preprocessor's
#include syntax, so selecting an #include line and invoking Open Selected will
generally find the file referred to, unless doing so depends on the settings of
compiler switches or other information not available to NEdit.

Interface to Programming Tools

Integrated software development environments such as SGI's CaseVision and
Centerline Software's Code Center, can be interfaced directly with NEdit via
the client server interface.  These tools allow you to click directly on
compiler and runtime error messages and request NEdit to open files, and select
lines of interest.  The easiest method is usually to use the tool's interface
for character-based editors like vi, to invoke nc, but programatic interfaces
can also be derived using the source code for nc.

There are also some simple compile/review, grep, ctree, and ctags browsers
available at ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/v5_0_2/contrib.


TABS AND TAB EMULATION

Tabs are important for programming in languages which use indentation to show
nesting, as short-hand for producing white-space for leading indents.  As a
programmer, you have to decide how to use indentation, and how or whether tab
characters map to your indentation scheme.

Ideally, tab characters map directly to the amount of indent that you use to
distinguish nesting levels in your code.  Unfortunately, the Unix standard for
interpretation of tab characters is eight characters (probably dating back to
mechanical capabilities of the original teletype), which is usually too coarse
for a single indent.

Most text editors, NEdit included, allow you to change the interpretation of
the tab character, and many programmers take advantage of this, and set their
tabs to 3 or 4 characters to match their programming style.  In NEdit you set
the hardware tab distance in Preferences -> Tabs... for the current window, or
Preferences -> Default Settings -> Tabs... (general), or Preferences -> Default
Settings -> Language Modes... (language-specific) to change the defaults for
future windows.

Changing the meaning of the tab character makes programming much easier while
you're in the editor, but can cause you headaches outside of the editor,
because there is no way to pass along the tab setting as part of a plain-text
file.  All of the other tools which display, print, and otherwise process your
source code have to be made aware of how the tabs are set, and must be able to
handle the change.  Non-standard tabs can also confuse other programmers, or
make editing your code difficult for them if their text editors don't support
changes in tab distance.

Emulated Tabs

An alternative to changing the interpretation of the tab character is tab
emulation.  In the Tabs... dialog(s), turning on Emulated Tabs causes the Tab
key to insert the correct number of spaces and/or tabs to bring the cursor the
next emulated tab stop, as if tabs were set at the emulated tab distance rather
than the hardware tab distance.  Backspacing immediately after entering an
emulated tab will delete the fictitious tab as a unit, but as soon as you move
the cursor away from the spot, NEdit will forget that the collection of spaces
and tabs is a tab, and will treat it as separate characters.  To enter a real
tab character with "Emulate Tabs" turned on, use Ctrl+Tab.

It is also possible to tell NEdit not to insert ANY tab characters at all in
the course of processing emulated tabs, and in shifting and rectangular
insertion/deletion operations, for programmers who worry about the
misinterpretation of tab characters on other systems.


AUTOMATIC INDENT

Programmers who use structured languages usually require some form of automatic
indent, so that they don't have to continually re-type the sequences of tabs
and/or spaces needed to maintain lengthy running indents.  Version 5.0 of NEdit
is the first release of NEdit to offer "smart" indent, at least experimentally,
in addition to the traditional automatic indent which simply lines up the
cursor position with the previous line.

Smart Indent

Smart Indent in this release must still be considered somewhat experimental.
Smart indent macros are only available by default for C and C++, and while
these can easily be configured for different default indentation distances,
they may not conform to everyone's exact C programming style.  Smart indent is
programmed in terms of macros in the NEdit macro language which can be entered
in: Preferences -> Default Settings -> Indent -> Program Smart Indent.  Hooks
are provided for intervening at the point that a newline is entered, either via
the user pressing the Enter key, or through auto-wrapping; and for arbitrary
type-in to act on specific characters typed.

To type a newline character without invoking smart-indent when operating in
smart-indent mode, hold the Ctrl key while pressing the Return or Enter key.

Auto-Indent

With Indent set to Auto (the default), NEdit keeps a running indent.  When you
press the Return or Enter key, spaces and tabs are inserted to line up the
insert point under the start of the previous line.  Ctrl+Return in auto-indent
mode acts like a normal return, With auto-indent turned off, Ctrl+Return does
indentation.

Block Indentation Adjustment

The Shift Left and Shift Right commands as well as rectangular dragging can be
used to adjust the indentation for several lines at once.  To shift a block of
text one character to the right, select the text, then choose Shift Right from
the Edit menu.  Note that the accelerator keys for these menu items are Ctrl+9
and Ctrl+0, which correspond to  the right and left parenthesis on most
keyboards.  Remember them as adjusting the text in the direction pointed to by
the parenthesis character.  Holding the Shift key while selecting either Shift
Left or Shift Right will shift the text by one tab stop (or by one emulated tab
stop if tab emulation is turned on).  The help section: "SHIFT LEFT, SHIFT
RIGHT" above has details.


SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING

Syntax Highlighting means using colors and fonts to help distinguish language
elements in programming languages and other types of structured files.
Programmers use syntax highlighting to understand code faster and better, and
to spot many kinds of syntax errors more quickly.

To use syntax highlighting in NEdit, select Highlight Syntax in the Preferences
menu.  If NEdit recognizes the computer language that you are using, and
highlighting rules (patterns) are available for that language, it will
highlight your text, and maintain the highlighting, automatically, as you type.

If NEdit doesn't correctly recognize the type of the file you are editing, you
can manually select a language mode from Language Modes in the Preferences
menu.  You can also program the method that NEdit uses to recognize language
modes in Preferences -> Default Settings -> Language Modes....

If no highlighting patterns are available for the language that you want to
use, you can create new patterns relatively quickly.  The section below titled
"WRITING SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS", has details.

If you are satisfied with what NEdit is highlighting, but would like it to use
different colors or fonts, you can change these by selecting Preferences ->
Default Settings -> Syntax Highlighting -> Text Drawing Styles.  Highlighting
patterns are connected with font and color information through a common set of
styles so that colorings defined for one language will be similar across
others, and patterns within the same language which are meant to appear
identical can be changed in the same place.  To understand which styles are
used to highlight the language you are interested in, you may need to look at
"Patterns for Highlighting" section, as well.

Syntax highlighting is CPU intensive, and under some circumstances can affect
NEdit's responsiveness.  If you have a particularly slow system, or work with
very large files, you may not want to use it all of the time.  Syntax
highlighting introduces two kinds of delays.  The first is an initial parsing
delay, proportional to the size of the file.  This delay is also incurred when
pasting large sections of text, filtering text through shell commands, and
other circumstances involving changes to large amounts of text.  The second
kind of delay happens when text which has not previously been visible is
scrolled in to view.  Depending on your system, and the highlight patterns you
are using, this may or may not be noticeable.  A typing delay is also possible,
but unlikely if you are only using the built-in patterns.


FINDING SUBROUTINE AND DATA DECLARATIONS (CTAGS)

NEdit can process tags files generated using the Unix ctags command 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.

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.


SHELL COMMANDS AND FILTERS

The Shell menu (Unix versions only) allows you to execute Unix shell commands
from within NEdit.  You can add items to the menu to extend NEdit's command set
or to incorporate custom automatic editing features using shell commands or
editing languages like awk and sed.  To add items to the menu, select
Preferences -> Default Settings Customize Menus -> Shell Menu.  NEdit comes
pre-configured with a few useful Unix commands like spell and sort, but we
encourage you to add your own custom extensions.

Filter Selection... prompts you for a Unix command to use to process the
currently selected text.  The output from this command replaces the contents of
the selection.

Execute Command... prompts you for a Unix command and replaces the current
selection with the output of the command.  If there is no selection, it
deposits the output at the current insertion point.

Execute Command Line uses the position of the cursor in the window to indicate
a line to execute as a shell command line.  The cursor may be positioned
anywhere on the line.  This command allows you to use an NEdit window as an
editable command window for saving output and saving commands for re-execution.

The X resource called nedit.shell (See X RESOURCES) determines which Unix
shell is used to execute commands.  The default value for this resource is
/bin/csh.


LEARN/REPLAY

Selecting Learn Keystrokes from the Macro menu puts NEdit in learn mode.  In
learn mode, keystrokes and menu commands are recorded, to be played back later,
using the Replay Keystrokes command, or pasted into a macro in the Macro
Commands dialog of the Default Settings menu in Preferences.

Note that only keyboard and menu commands are recorded, not mouse clicks or
mouse movements since these have no absolute point of reference, such as cursor
or selection position.  When you do a mouse-based operation in learn mode,
NEdit will beep (repeatedly) to remind you that the operation was not recorded.

Learn mode is also the quickest and easiest method for writing macros.  The
dialog for creating macro commands contains a button labeled "Paste Learn /
Replay Macro", which will deposit the last sequence learned into the body of
the macro.


REPEATING ACTIONS AND LEARN/REPLAY SEQUENCES

You can repeat the last (keyboard-based) command, or learn/replay sequence with
the Repeat... command in the Macro menu.  To repeat an action, first do the
action (i.e. insert a character, do a search, move the cursor), then select
Repeat..., decide how or how many times you want it repeated, and click OK.
For example, to move down 30 lines through a file, you could type: <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.  See the section below titled, "PREFERENCES," for
more information on creating items in these menus.  The .neditmacro file is a
file of macro commands and definitions which you can create in your home
directory, and which NEdit will automatically load when it is first started.

NEdit's macro language is a simple interpreter with integer arithmetic, dynamic
strings, and C-style looping constructs (very similar to the procedural portion
of the Unix awk program).  From the macro language, you can call the same
action routines which are bound to keyboard keys and menu items, as well
additional subroutines for accessing and manipulating editor data, which are
specific to the macro language (these are listed in the sections titled Macro
Subroutines, and Actions).

Syntax

An NEdit macro language program consists of a list of statements, each
terminated by a newline.  Groups of statements which are executed together
conditionally, such as the body of a loop, are surrounded by curly braces "{}".

Blank lines and comments are also allowed.  Comments begin with a "#" and end
with a newline, and can appear either on a line by themselves, or at the end of
a statement.

Statements which are too long to fit on a single line may be split across
several lines, by placing a backslash "\" character at the end of each line to
be continued.

Data Types

The NEdit macro language recognizes only 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.

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.

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: '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: 'result' is a new array containing all keys from x that are
        not in y.
    result = x & y
        Common keys: '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: '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.


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_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.

    $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.

    $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".

    $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 nine additional
        optional arguments represent labels for buttons to appear along the
        bottom of the dialog.  Returns the number of the button pressed (the
        first button is number 1), or 0 if the user closed the dialog via the
        window close box.

    focus_window(window_name) -- Sets the window on which subsequent macro
        commands operate.  window_name can be either a fully qualified file name,
        or one of "last" for the last window created, or "next" for the next
        window in the chain from the currently focused window (the first window
        being the one returned from calling focus_window("last").  Returns the
        name of the newly-focused window, or an empty string if the requested
        window was not found.

    get_character(position) -- Returns the single character at the position
        indicated by the first argument to the routine from the current window.

    get_range(start, end) -- Returns the text between a starting and ending
        position from the current window.

    get_selection() -- Returns a string containing the text currently selected
        by the primary selection either from the current window (no keyword), or
        from anywhere on the screen (keyword "any").

    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" or "regex".  The default search type is "literal".
        Returns a new string with all of the replacements done, or an empty
        string ("") if no occurrences were found.

    replace_range(start, end, string) -- Replaces all of the text in the current
        window between two positions.

    replace_selection(string) -- Replaces the primary-selection selected text in
        the current window with string.  If string is empty, the
        primary-selected text will be deleted.

    replace_substring(string, start, end, replace_with) -- Replacing a substring
        between two positions in a string within another string.

    search(search_for, start, [search_type, wrap, direction]) -- Searches
        silently in a window without dialogs, beeps, or changes to the
        selection.  Arguments are: 1: string to search for, 2: starting
        position.  Optional arguments may include the strings: "wrap" to make
        the search wrap around the beginning or end of the string, "backward" or
        "forward" to change the search direction ("forward" is the default),
        "literal", "case" or "regex" to change the search type (default is
        "literal").  Returns the starting position of the match, or -1 if
        nothing matched.  Also returns the ending position of the match in
        search_end.

    search_string(string, search_for, start, [search_type, direction]) --
        Built-in macro subroutine for searching a string.  Arguments are 1:
        string to search in, 2: string to search for, 3: starting position.
        Optional arguments may include the strings: "wrap" to make the search
        wrap around the beginning or end of the string, "backward" or "forward"
        to change the search direction ("forward" is the default), "literal",
        "case" or "regex" to change the search type (default is "literal").
        Returns the starting position of the match, or -1 if nothing matched.
        Also returns the ending position of the match in $search_end

    select(start, end) -- Selects (with the primary selection) text in the
        current buffer between a starting and ending position.

    select_rectangle(start, end, left, right) -- Selects a rectangular area of
        text between a starting and ending position, and confined horizontally
        to characters displayed between positions "left", and "right".

    set_cursor_pos(pos) -- Set the cursor position for the current window.

    shell_command(command, input_string) -- executes a shell command, feeding it
        input from input_string.  On completion, output from the command is
        returned as the function value, and the command's exit status is
        returned in the global variable $shell_cmd_status.

    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, ...) -- Pop up a dialog for
        prompting the user to enter information.  The first argument is a string
        to show in the message area of the dialog.  Up to nine additional
        optional arguments represent labels for buttons to appear along the
        bottom of the dialog.  Returns the string entered by the user as the
        function value, and number of the button pressed (the first button is
        number 1), in $string_dialog_button.  If the user closes the dialog via
        the window close box, the function returns the empty string, and
        $string_dialog_button returns 0.

    string_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 default is to do a case sensitive
        comparison. Optionally a "nocase" argument can be supplied to force the
        comparison to ignore case differences.

    string_to_clipboard(string) -- Copy the contents of a macro string to the
        clipboard.

    substring(string, start, end) -- Returns the portion of a string between a
        starting and ending position.

    t_print(string1, string2, ...) -- Writes strings to the terminal (stdout)
        from which NEdit was started.

    tolower(string) -- Return an all lower-case version of string.

    toupper(string) -- Return an all upper-case version of string.

    write_file(string, filename) -- Writes a string (parameter 1) to a file
        named in parameter 2.  Returns 1 on successful write, or 0 if
        unsuccessful.


ACTION ROUTINES

All of the editing capabilities of NEdit are represented as a special type of
subroutine, called an action routine, which can be invoked from both macros and
translation table entries (see KEY BINDING below).


Actions Representing Menu Commands:

    File Menu                      Search Menu
    ---------------------     -----------------------
    new()                     find()
    open()                    find_dialog()
    open_dialog()             find_again()
    open_selected()           find_selection()
    close()                   replace()
    save()                    replace_dialog()
    save_as()                 replace_all()
    save_as_dialog()          replace_in_selection()
    revert_to_saved()         replace_again()
    include_file()            goto_line_number()
    include_file_dialog()     goto_line_number_dialog()
    load_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()                    execute_command()
    redo()                    execute_command_dialog()
    delete_selection()        execute_command_line()
    select_all()              filter_selection()
    shift_left()              filter_selection_dialog()
    shift_left_by_tab()       shell_menu_command()
    shift_right()
    shift_right_by_tab()      Macro Menu
    uppercase()               -----------------------
    lowercase()               repeat_macro()
    fill_paragraph()          repeat_dialog()
    control_code_dialog()     macro_menu_command()

                              Windows Menu
                              -----------------------
                              split_window()
                              close_pane()

The actions representing menu commands are named the same as the menu item with
punctuation removed, all lower case, and underscores replacing spaces.  Without
the _dialog suffix, commands which normally prompt the user for information,
instead take the information from the routine's arguments (see below).  To
present a dialog and ask the user for input, rather than supplying it in via
arguments, use the actions with the _dialog suffix.

Menu Action Routine Arguments:

Arguments are text strings enclosed in quotes.  Below are the menu action
routines which take arguments.  Optional arguments are inclosed in [].

    open(filename)

    close(["prompt" | "save" | "nosave"])

    save_as(filename)

    include_file(filename)

    load_tags_file(filename)

    unload_tags_file(filename)

    find_dialog([search_direction] [, search-type] [, keep-dialog])

    find(search_string [, search-direction] [, search-type] [, search-wrap])

    find_again([search-direction] [, search-wrap])

    find_selection([search-direction] [, search-wrap] [, non-regex-search-type])

    replace_dialog([search-direction] [, search-type] [, keep-dialog])

    replace(search-string, replace-string [, search-direction] [, search-type]
            [, search-wrap])

    replace_in_selection(search-string, replace-string [, search-type])

    replace_again([search-direction] [, search-wrap])

    goto_line_number([line-number])

    mark(mark-letter)

    goto_mark(mark-letter)

    find_definition([tag-name])

    filter_selection(shell-command)

    execute_command(shell-command)

    shell_menu_command(shell-menu-item-name)

    macro_menu_command(macro-menu-item-name)

Some notes on argument types above:

    filename            Path names are interpreted relative to the directory
                        from which NEdit was started, wildcards and ~ are not
                        expanded.

    search-direction    Either "forward" or "backward"

    search-type         Either "literal", "case", "word", "caseWord", "regex",
                        or "regexNoCase"

    non-regex-search-type   Either "literal". "case", "word", or "caseWord"

    search-wrap         Either "wrap" or "nowrap"

    consider-case       Either "case" or "nocase"

    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 or shell)    Name of the command exactly as specified in the Shell
    -menu-item-name     Menu or Macro 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_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

    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.  Possible arguments are:

        relative-pane is one of "first", "last", "next", "previous".
        positive-index are numbers greater than 0. 1 is the same as "first".
        negative-index are numbers less than 0. -1 is the as "last".

    forward_character(["nobell"]) -- 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.  Possible arguments are:

        relative-pane is one of "first", "last", "next", "previous".
        positive-index are numbers greater than 0. 1 is the same as "first".
        negative-index are numbers less than 0. -1 is the as "last".

    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.

Arguments to Keyboard Action Routines

In addition to the arguments listed in the call descriptions, any routine
involving cursor movement can take the argument "extend", meaning, adjust the
primary selection to the new cursor position.
Routines which take the "extend" argument as well as mouse dragging operations
for both primary and secondary selections can take the optional keyword "rect",
meaning, make the selection rectangular.
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,
if that argument is supplied.

CUSTOMIZATION

NEdit can be customized many different ways.  The most important user-settable
options are presented in the Preferences menu, including all options that users
might need to change during an editing session.  Options set in the Default
Settings sub-menu of the Preferences menu can be preserved between sessions by
selecting Save Defaults, which writes a file called .nedit in the user's home
directory.  See the section titled PREFERENCES for more details.

User defined commands can be added to NEdit's Shell, Macro, and window
background menus.  Dialogs for creating items in these menus can be found under
Customize Menus in the Default Settings sub menu of the Preferences menu.

For users who depend on NEdit every day and want to tune every excruciating
detail, there are also X resources for tuning a vast number of such details,
down to the color of each individual button.  See the section "X Resources" for
more information, as well as a list of selected resources.

The most common reason customizing your X resources for NEdit, however, is key
binding.  While limited key binding can be done through Preferences settings
(Preferences -> Default Settings -> Customize Menus), you can really only add
keys this way, and each key must have a corresponding menu item.  Any
significant changes to key binding should be made via the Translations resource
and menu accelerator resources.  The sections titled "Key Binding" and "X
Resources" have more information.


PREFERENCES

The Preferences menu allows you to set options for both the current editing
window, and default values for newly created windows and future NEdit
sessions.  Options in the Preferences menu itself (not in the Default Settings
sub-menu) take effect immediately and refer to the current window only.
Options in the Default Settings sub-menu have no effect on the current window,
but instead provide initial settings for future windows created using the New
or Open commands.  Preferences set in the Default Settings sub-menu can also be
saved in a file that is automatically read by NEdit at startup time, by
selecting Save Defaults.

Preferences Menu

   Default Settings -- Menu of initial settings for future windows.
      Generally the same as the options in the main part of the menu, but
      apply as defaults for future windows created during this NEdit
      session.  These settings can be saved using the Save Defaults command
      below, to be loaded automatically each time NEdit is started.

   Save Defaults -- Save the default options as set under Default Settings
      for future NEdit sessions.

   Statistics Line -- Show the full file name, line number, and length of the
      file being edited.

   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 for more information.

   Auto Indent -- Setting Auto Indent "on" maintains a running indent
      (pressing the return key will line up the cursor with the indent level
      of the previous line).  If smart indent macros are available for the
      current language mode, smart indent can be selected and NEdit will
      attempt to guess proper language indentation for each new line.  See
      AUTOMATIC INDENT for more information.

   Wrap -- Choose between two styles of automatic wrapping or none.  Auto
      Newline wrap, wraps text at word boundaries when the cursor reaches the
      right margin, by replacing the space or tab at the last word boundary
      with a newline character.  Continuous Wrap wraps long lines which
      extend past the right margin. Continuous Wrap mode is typically used to
      produce files where newlines are 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 "SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING" for
      more information.

   Make Backup Copy -- On Save, write a backup copy of the file as it existed
      before the Save command with the extension .bck (Unix only).

   Incremental Backup -- Periodically make a backup copy of the file being
      edited under the name ~filename on Unix or _filename on VMS (see CRASH
      RECOVERY).

   Show Matching (..) -- Momentarily highlight matching parenthesis,
      brackets, and braces when one of these characters is typed, or when the
      insertion cursor is positioned after it.

   Overtype -- In overtype mode, new characters entered replace the
      characters in front of the insertion cursor, rather than being inserted
      before them.

   Read Only -- Lock the file against accidental modification.  This
      temporarily prevents the file from being modified in this NEdit
      session. Note that this is 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).

    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.

        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 - 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 SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING and WRITING SYNTAX
        HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS).

    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.  Checking is done both before a save which might
        overwrite a modified file, and when changes are made to NEdit's
        displayed version of the file.

    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) -- The name of a file of the type produced
        by the Unix ctags command which NEdit will load at startup time
        (see FINDING SUBROUTINE AND DATA DECLARATIONS above).  The tag file
        provides a database from which NEdit can automatically open files
        containing the definition of a particular subroutine or data type.

    nedit.shell: /bin/csh -- (Unix systems only) The Unix shell (command
        interpreter) to use for executing commands from the Shell menu

    nedit.wordDelimiters: .,/\\`'!@#%^&*()-=+{}[]":;<>? -- The characters,
        in addition to blanks and tabs, which mark the boundaries between
        words for the move-by-word (Ctrl+Arrow) and select-word (double
        click) commands.

    nedit.remapDeleteKey: True -- Setting this resource to False restores
        the original Motif binding of the delete key to forward-delete.
        This binding causes problems when X servers with one delete/
        backspace configuration are connected with X clients of the other.
        Users with a backspace key in the backspace/delete position and who
        use only machines with that style of keyboard can set this resource
        to False to get back the forward-delete function of the delete key.

    nedit.bgMenuButton: ~Shift~Ctrl~Meta~Alt<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.stdOpenDialog: False -- Setting this resource to True restores the
        standard Motif style of Open dialog.  NEdit file open dialogs are
        missing a text field at the bottom of the dialog, where the file
        name can be entered as a string.  The field is removed in NEdit to
        encourage users to type file names in the list, a non-standard, but
        much faster method for finding files.

    nedit.printCommand: (system specific) -- Command used by the print dialog
        to print a file, i.e. lp, lpr, etc..

    nedit.printCopiesOption: (system specific) -- Option name used to
        specify multiple copies to the print command.  If the option should
        be separated from its argument by a space, leave a trailing space.
        If blank, no "Number of Copies" item will appear in the print dialog.

    nedit.printQueueOption: (system specific) -- Option name used to specify
        a print queue to the print command.  If the option should be
        separated from its argument by a space, leave a trailing space. If
        blank, no "Queue" item will appear in the print dialog.

    nedit.printNameOption: (system specific) -- Option name used to specify a
        job name to the print command.  If the option should be separated
        from its argument by a space, leave a trailing space. If blank, no
        job or file name will be attached to the print job or banner page.

    nedit.printHostOption: (system specific) -- Option name used to specify a
        host name to the print command.  If the option should be separated
        from its argument by a space, leave a trailing space. If blank, no
        "Host" item will appear in the print dialog.

    nedit.printDefaultQueue: (system specific) -- The name of the default
        print queue.  Used only to display in the print dialog, and has no
        effect on printing.

    nedit.printDefaultHost: (system specific) -- The node name of the
        default print host.  Used only to display in the print dialog, and
        has no effect on printing.

    nedit.multiClickTime: (system specific) -- Maximum time in milliseconds
        allowed between mouse clicks within double and triple click actions.

    nedit*scrollBarPlacement: BOTTOM_LEFT -- How scroll bars are placed in
        NEdit windows, as well as various lists and text fields in the
        program.  Other choices are: BOTTOM_RIGHT, TOP_LEFT, or TOP_RIGHT.

    nedit*text.autoWrapPastedText: False -- When Auto- Newline Wrap is turned
        on, apply automatic wrapping (which normally only applies to typed
        text) to pasted text as well.

    nedit*text.heavyCursor: False -- For monitors with poor resolution or
        users who have difficulty seeing the cursor, makes the cursor in the
        text editing area of the window heavier and darker.

    nedit*text.foreground: black -- Foreground color of the text editing area
        of the NEdit window.

    nedit*text.background: white -- Background color of the text editing area
        of the NEdit window.

    nedit*text.selectForeground: black -- Foreground (text) color for selections
        in the text editing area of the NEdit window.

    nedit*text.selectBackground: gray80 -- Color for selections in the text
        editing area of the NEdit window.

    nedit*text.highlightForeground: white -- Foreground (text) color for
        highlights (parenthesis flashing) in the text editing area of the NEdit
        window.

    nedit*text.highlightBackground: red -- Color for highlights (parenthesis
        flashing) in the text editing area of the NEdit window.

    nedit*text.cursorForeground: black -- Color for text cursor in the text
        editing area of the NEdit window.

    nedit*text.blinkRate: 600 -- Blink rate of the text insertion cursor in
        milliseconds.  Set to zero to stop blinking.

    nedit*text.Translations: -- Modifies key bindings (see below).

    nedit*foreground: black -- Default foreground color for menus, dialogs,
        scroll bars, etc..

    nedit*background: gray70 -- Default background color for menus, dialogs,
        scroll bars, etc..

    nedit*fontList: helvetica-bold-14 -- Default font for menus, dialogs,
        scroll bars, etc..

    nc.autoStart: False -- Whether the nc program should automatically start
        an NEdit server (without prompting the user) if an appropriate server
        is not found.

    nc.serverCommand: nedit -server -- Command used by the nc program to
        start an NEdit server.

Selected NEdit Widget Names

You can change colors, fonts, and other characteristics, of the widgets named
below, by appending .background, .foreground, .fontList, etc., to these names:

    nedit*statsLine -- Statistics line

    nedit*menuBar -- Top-of-window menu-bar

    nedit*textHorScrollBar -- Horizontal scroll bar

    nedit*textVertScrollBar -- Vertical scroll bar

    nedit*helpText -- Help window text


KEY BINDING

There are several ways to change key bindings in NEdit.  The easiest way to add
a new key binding in NEdit is to define a macro in Preferences -> Default
Settings -> Customize Menus -> Macro Menu.  However, if you want to change
existing bindings or add a significant number of new key bindings you will need
to do so via X resources.

Before reading this section, you must understand how to set X resources (see
the section titled "X RESOURCES" above).  Since setting X resources is tricky,
it is also helpful when working on key-binding, to set some easier-to-verify
resource at the same time, as a simple check that the NEdit program is actually
seeing your changes.  The appres program is also very helpful in checking that
the resource settings that you make, actually reach the program for which they
are intended in the correct form.

Key Binding in General

Keyboard commands are associated with editor action routines through two
separate mechanisms in NEdit.  Commands which appear in pull-down menus have
individual resources designating a keyboard equivalent to the menu command,
called an accelerator key.  Commands which do not have an associated menu item
are bound to keys via the X toolkit translation mechanism.  The methods for
changing these two kinds of bindings are quite different.

Key Binding Via Translations

The most general way to bind actions to keys in NEdit is to use the translation
table associated with the text widget.  To add a binding to Alt+Y to insert the
string "Hi!", for example, add lines similar to the following to your X
resource file:

    NEdit*text.Translations: #override \n\
        Alt<Key>y: insert_string("Hi!") \n

The section "ACTION ROUTINES" above lists the actions available to be bound.

Translation tables map key and mouse presses, window operations, and other
kinds of events, to actions.  The syntax for translation tables is simplified
here, and you may need to refer to a book on the X window system for more
detailed information.

Note that accelerator resources (discussed below) override translations, and
that most Ctrl+letter and Alt+letter combinations are already bound to an
accelerator key.  To use one of these combinations from a translation table,
therefore, you must first un-bind the original menu accelerator.

A resource for changing a translation table consists of a keyword; #override,
#augment, or #replace; followed by lines (separated by newline characters)
pairing events with actions.  Events begin with modifiers, like Ctrl, Shift, or
Alt, followed by the event type in <>.  BtnDown, Btn1Down, Btn2Down, Btn1Up,
Key, KeyUp are valid event types.  For key presses, the event type is followed
by the name of the key.  You can specify a combination of events, such as a
sequence of key presses, by separating them with commas.  The other half of the
event/action pair is a set of actions.  These are separated from the event
specification by a colon and from each other by spaces.  Actions are names
followed by parentheses, optionally containing one or more parameters separated
by comas.

Changing Menu Accelerator Keys

The menu shortcut keys shown at the right of NEdit menu items can also be
changed via X resources.  Each menu item has two resources associated with it,
accelerator, the event to trigger the menu item; and acceleratorText, the
string shown in the menu.  The form of the accelerator resource is the same as
events for translation table entries discussed above, though multiple keys and
other subtleties are not allowed.  The resource name for a menu is the title in
lower case, followed by "Menu", the resource name of menu item is the name in
lower case, run together, with words separated by caps, and all punctuation
removed.  For example, to change Cut to Ctrl+X, you would add the following to
your .Xdefaults file:

    nedit*editMenu.cut.accelerator: 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


WRITING SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS

Patterns are the mechanism by which syntax highlighting (see SYNTAX
HIGHLIGHTING above) is programmed in NEdit, that is, how it decides what to
highlight in a given language.  To create syntax highlighting patterns for a
new language, or to modify existing patterns, select "Patterns for
Highlighting" from "Syntax Highlighting" sub-section of the "Default Settings"
sub-menu of the "Preferences" menu.

First, a word of caution.  As with regular expression matching in general, it
is quite possible to write patterns which are so inefficient that they
essentially lock up the editor as they recursively re-examine the entire
contents of the file thousands of times.  With the multiplicity of patterns,
the possibility of a lock-up is significantly increased in syntax
highlighting.  When working on highlighting patterns, be sure to save your work
frequently.

NEdit's syntax highlighting is unusual in that it works in real-time (as you
type), and yet is completely programmable using standard regular expression
notation.  Other syntax highlighting editors usually fall either into the
category of fully programmable but unable to keep up in real-time, or real-time
but limited programmability.  The additional burden that NEdit places on
pattern writers in order to achieve this speed/flexibility mix, is to force
them to state self-imposed limitations on the amount of context that patterns
may examine when re-parsing after a change.  While the "Pattern Context
Requirements" heading is near the end of this section, it is not optional, and
must be understood before making any any serious effort at pattern writing.

In its simplest form, a highlight pattern consists of a regular expression to
match, along with a style representing the font an color for displaying any
text which matches that expression.  To bold the word, "highlight", wherever it
appears the text, the regular expression simply would be the word "highlight".
The style (selected from the menu under the heading of "Highlight Style")
determines how the text will be drawn.  To bold the text, either select an
existing style, such as "Keyword", which bolds text, or create a new style and
select it under Highlight Style.

The full range of regular expression capabilities can be applied in such a
pattern, with the single caveat that the expression must conclusively match or
not match, within the pre-defined context distance (as discussed below under
Pattern Context Requirements).

To match longer ranges of text, particularly any constructs which exceed the
requested context, you must use a pattern which highlights text between a
starting and ending regular expression match.  To do so, select "Highlight text
between starting and ending REs" under "Matching", and enter both a starting
and ending regular expression.  For example, to highlight everything between
double quotes, you would enter a double quote character in both the starting
and ending regular expression fields.  Patterns with both a beginning and
ending expression span all characters between the two expressions, including
newlines.

Again, the limitation for automatic parsing to operate properly is that both
expressions must match within the context distance stated for the pattern set.

With the ability to span large distances, comes the responsibility to recover
when things go wrong.  Remember that syntax highlighting is called upon to
parse incorrect or incomplete syntax as often as correct syntax.  To stop a
pattern short of matching its end expression, you can specify an error
expression, which stops the pattern from gobbling up more than it should.  For
example, if the text between double quotes shouldn't contain newlines, the
error expression might be "$".  As with both starting and ending expressions,
error expressions must also match within the requested context distance.

Coloring Sub-Expressions

It is also possible to color areas of text within a regular expression match.
A pattern of this type associates a style with sub-expressions references of
the parent pattern (as used in regular expression substitution patterns, see
the section titled: REGULAR EXPRESSIONS).  Sub-expressions of both the starting
and ending patterns may be colored.  For example, if the parent pattern has a
starting expression "\<", and end expression "\>", (for highlighting all of the
text contained within angle brackets), a sub-pattern using "\0" in both the
starting and ending expression fields could color the brackets differently from
the intervening text.  A quick shortcut to typing in pattern names in the
Parent Pattern field is to use the middle mouse button to drag them from the
Patterns list.

Hierarchical Patterns

A hierarchical sub-pattern, is identical to a top level pattern, but is invoked
only between the beginning and ending expression matches of its parent
pattern.  Like the sub-expression coloring patterns discussed above, it is
associated with a parent pattern using the Parent Pattern field in the pattern
specification.  Pattern names can be dragged from the pattern list with the
middle mouse button to the Parent Pattern field.

After the start expression of the parent pattern matches, the syntax
highlighting parser searches for either the parent's end pattern or a matching
sub-pattern.  When a sub-pattern matches, control is not returned to the parent
pattern until the entire sub-pattern has been parsed, regardless of whether the
parent's end pattern appears in the text matched by the sub-pattern.

The most common use for this capability is for coloring sub-structure of
language constructs (smaller patterns embedded in larger patterns).
Hierarchical patterns can also simplify parsing by having sub-patterns "hide"
special syntax from parent patterns, such as special escape sequences or
internal comments.

There is no depth limit in nesting hierarchical sub-patterns, but beyond the
third level of nesting, automatic re-parsing will sometimes have to re-parse
more than the requested context distance to guaranty a correct parse (which can
slow down the maximum rate at which the user can type if large sections of text
are matched only by deeply nested patterns).

While this is obviously not a complete hierarchical language parser it is still
useful in many text coloring situations.  As a pattern writer, your goal is not
to completely cover the language syntax, but to generate colorings that are
useful to the programmer.  Simpler patterns are usually more efficient and also
more robust when applied to incorrect code.

Deferred (Pass-2) Parsing

NEdit does pattern matching for syntax highlighting in two passes.  The first
pass is applied to the entire file when syntax highlighting is first turned on,
and to new ranges of text when they are initially read or pasted in.  The
second pass is applied only as needed when text is exposed (scrolled in to
view).

If you have a particularly complex set of patterns, and parsing is beginning to
add a noticeable delay to opening files or operations which change large
regions of text, you can defer some of that parsing from startup time, to when
it is actually needed for viewing the text.  Deferred parsing can only be used
with single expression patterns, or begin/end patterns which match entirely
within the requested context distance.  To defer the parsing of a pattern to
when the text is exposed, click on the Pass-2 pattern type button in the
highlight patterns dialog.

Sometimes a pattern can't be deferred, not because of context requirements, but
because it must run concurrently with pass-1 (non-deferred) patterns.  If they
didn't run concurrently, a pass-1 pattern might incorrectly match some of the
characters which would normally be hidden inside of a sequence matched by the
deferred pattern.  For example, C has character constants enclosed in single
quotes.  These typically do not cross line boundaries, meaning they can be
parsed entirely within the context distance of the C pattern set and should be
good candidates for deferred parsing.  However, they can't be deferred because
they can contain sequences of characters which can trigger pass-one patterns.
Specifically, the sequence, '\"', contains a double quote character, which
would be matched by the string pattern and interpreted as introducing a string.

Pattern Context Requirements

The context requirements of a pattern set state how much additional text around
any change must be examined to guaranty that the patterns will match what they
are intended to match.  Context requirements are a promise by NEdit to the
pattern writer, that the regular expressions in his/her patterns will be
matched against at least <line context> lines and <character context>
characters, around any modified text.  Combining line and character
requirements guaranty that both will be met.

Automatic re-parsing happens on EVERY KEYSTROKE, so the amount of context which
must be examined is very critical to typing efficiency.  The more complicated
your patterns, the more critical the context becomes.  To cover all of the
keywords in a typical language, without affecting the maximum rate at which
users can enter text, you may be limited to just a few lines and/or a few
hundred characters of context.

The default context distance is 1 line, with no minimum character requirement.
There are several benefits to sticking with this default.  One is simply that
it is easy to understand and to comply with.  Regular expression notation is
designed around single line matching.  To span lines in a regular expression,
you must explicitly mention the newline character "\n", and matches which are
restricted to a single line are virtually immune to lock-ups.  Also, if you can
code your patterns to work within a single line of context, without an
additional character-range context requirement, the parser can take advantage
the fact that patterns don't cross line boundaries, and nearly double its
efficiency over a one-line and 1-character context requirement.  (In a single
line context, you are allowed to match newlines, but only as the first and/or
last character.)


WRITING SMART INDENT MACROS

Smart indent macros can be written for any language, but are usually more
difficult to write than highlighting patterns.  A good place to start, of
course, is to look at the existing macros for C and C++.

Smart indent macros for a language mode consist of standard NEdit macro
language code attached to any or all of the following three activation
conditions: 1) When smart indent is first turned on for a text window
containing code of the language, 2) When a newline is typed and smart indent
is expected, 3) after any character is typed.  To attach macro code to any of
these code "hooks", enter it in the appropriate section in the Preferences ->
Default Settings -> Auto Indent -> Program Smart Indent dialog.

Typically most of the code should go in the initialization section, because
that is the appropriate place for subroutine definitions, and smart indent
macros are complicated enough that you are not likely to want to write them as
one monolithic run of code.  You may also put code in the Common/Shared
Initialization section (accessible through the button in the upper left corner
of the dialog).  Unfortunately, since the C/C++ macros also reside in the
common/shared section, when you add code there, you run some risk of missing
out on future upgrades to these macros, because your changes will override the
built-in defaults.

The newline macro is invoked after the user types a newline, but before the
newline is entered in the buffer.  It takes a single argument ($1) which is the
position at which the newline will be inserted.  It must return the number of
characters of indentation the line should have, or -1.  A return value of -1
means to do a standard auto-indent.  You must supply a newline macro, but the
code: "return -1" (auto-indent), or "return 0" (no indent) is sufficient.

The type-in macro takes two arguments.  $1 is the insert position, and $2 is
the character just inserted, and does not return a value.  You can do just
about anything here, but keep in mind that this macro is executed for every
keystroke typed, so if you try to get too fancy, you may degrade performance.


THE NEDIT COMMAND LINE

nedit [-read] [-create] [-line n | +n] [-server] [-do command] [-tags file]
    [-tabs n] [-wrap] [-nowrap] [-autowrap] [-autoindent] [-noautoindent]
    [-autosave] [-noautosave] [-lm languagemode] [-rows n] [-columns n]
    [-font font] [-geometry geometry] [-iconic] [-noiconic] [-svrname name]
    [-display [host]:server[.screen] [-background color] [-foreground color]
    [-xrm resourcestring] [-import file] [file...]

    -read -- Open the file Read Only regardless of the actual file protection.

    -create -- Don't warn about file creation when a file doesn't exist.

    -line n (or +n) -- Go to line number n

    -server -- Designate this session as an NEdit server, for processing
        commands from the nc program.  nc can be used to interface NEdit to code
        development environments, mailers, etc., or just as a quick way to open
        files from the shell command line without starting a new NEdit session.

    -do command -- Execute an NEdit macro or action on each file following the
        -do argument on the command line.  -do is particularly useful from the
        nc program, where nc -do can remotely execute commands in an nedit
        -server session.

    -tags file -- Load a file of directions for finding definitions of program
        subroutines and data objects.  The file must be of the format generated
        by the Unix ctags command.

    -tabs n -- Set tab stops every n characters.

    -wrap, -nowrap -- Wrap long lines at the right edge of the window rather
        than continuing them past it.  (Continuous Wrap mode)

    -autowrap, -noautowrap -- Wrap long lines when the cursor reaches the right
        edge of the window by inserting newlines at word boundaries.  (Auto
        Newline Wrap mode)

    -autoindent, -noautoindent -- Maintain a running indent.

    -autosave, -noautosave -- Maintain a backup copy of the file being edited
        under the name ~filename  (on Unix) or _filename (on VMS).

    -lm languagemode -- Initial language mode used for editing
        succeeding files.

    -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").

    -geometry geometry (or -g geometry) -- The initial size and/or location of
        editor windows.  The argument 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 CUSTOMIZATION).

    -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.


SERVER MODE AND NC

NEdit can be operated on its own, or as a two-part client/server application.
Client/server mode is useful for integrating NEdit with software development
environments, mailers, and other programs; or just as a quick way to open files
from the shell command line without starting a new NEdit session.

To run NEdit in server mode, type:

nedit -server

NEdit can also be started in server mode via the nc program when no servers are
available.

The nc (for NEdit Client) program, which is distributed along with nedit, sends
commands to an nedit server to open files, select lines, or execute editor
actions.  It accepts a limited set of the nedit command line options: -read,
-create, -line (or +n), -do, and a list of file names.  Listing a file on the
nc command line means, open it if it is not already open and bring the window
to the front.  -read and -create affect only newly opened files, but -line and
-do can also be used on files which are already open (See  NEDIT COMMAND LINE
for more information).

In typical Unix style, arguments affect the files which follow them on the
command line, for example:

    incorrect:   nc file.c -line 25
    correct:     nc -line 25 file.c

-read, -create, and -line affect all of the files which follow them on the
command line.  The -do macro is executed only once, on the next file on the
line.  -do without a file following it on the command line, executes the macro
on the first available window (presumably when you give a -do command without a
corresponding file or window, you intend it to do something independent of the
window in which it happens 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 above).

Sometimes it is useful to have more than one NEdit server running, for example
to keep mail and programming work separate, or more importantly for working
with tools like ClearCase which provide different views of the file system from
different shells.  The option, -svrname, to both nedit and nc, allow you to
start, and communicate with, separate named servers.  A named server responds
only to requests with the corresponding -svrname argument.

Communication between nc and nedit is through the X display.  So as long as X
windows is set up and working properly, nc will work properly as well.  nc
uses the DISPLAY environment variable, the machine name and your user name to
find the appropriate server, meaning, if you have several machines sharing a
common file system, nc will not be able to find a server that is running on a
machine with a different host name, even though it may be perfectly appropriate
for editing a given file.

The command which nc uses to start an nedit server is settable via the X
resource nc.serverCommand, by default, "nedit -server".


CRASH RECOVERY

If a system crash, network failure, X server crash, or program error should
happen while you are editing a file, you can easily recover most of your work.
NEdit maintains a backup file which it updates periodically (every 8 editing
operations or 30 characters typed under Unix, or 80 characters under VMS).
This file has the same name as the file that you are editing, but with the
character "~" (tilde) on Unix or "_" (underscore) on VMS prefixed to the name.
To recover a file after a crash, simply rename the file to remove the tilde
or underscore character, replacing the older version of the file.  Because
several of the Unix shells consider the tilde to be a special character, you
may have to prefix the character with a "\" (backslash) when you move or
delete an NEdit backup file.

Example, to recover the file called "help.c" type the command:

    mv \~help.c help.c

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).


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://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: Keyboard shortcuts for menu items don't work.
S: Be sure the Caps Lock and Num Lock keys are both unlocked.  In Motif
   programs, these keys prevent the menu accelerators from working.

P: Find Again and Replace Again don't continue in the same direction as the
   original Find or Replace.
S: Find Again and Replace Again don't use the direction of the original search.
   The Shift key controls the direction: Ctrl+G means forward, Shift+Ctrl+G
   means backward.

P: Preferences specified in the Preferences menu don't seem to get saved when I
   select Save Defaults.
S: NEdit has two kinds of preferences: 1) per-window preferences, in the
   Preferences menu, and 2) default settings for preferences in newly created
   windows, in the Default Settings sub-menu of the Preferences menu.  Per-
   window preferences are not saved by Save Defaults, only Default Settings.

P: Columns and indentation don't line up.
S: NEdit is using a proportional width font.  Set the font to a fixed style
   (see PREFERENCES).

P: NEdit performs poorly on very large files.
S: Turn off Incremental Backup.  With Incremental Backup on, NEdit periodically
   writes a full copy of the file to disk.

P: Commands added to the Shell Commands menu (Unix only) don't output anything
   until they are finished executing.
S: If the command output is directed to a dialog, or the input is from a
   selection, output is collected together and held until the command
   completes.  De-select both of the options and the output will be shown
   incrementally as the command executes.

P: Dialogs don't automatically get keyboard focus when they pop up.
S: Most X Window managers allow you to choose between two categories of
   keyboard focus models: pointer focus, and explicit focus.  Pointer focus
   means that as you move the mouse around the screen, the window under the
   mouse automatically gets the keyboard focus.  NEdit users who use this focus
   model should set "Popups Under Pointer" in the Default Settings sub menu of
   the preferences menu in NEdit.  Users with the explicit focus model, in some
   cases, may have problems with certain dialogs, such as Find and Replace.  In
   MWM this is caused by the mwm resource startupKeyFocus being set to False
   (generally a bad choice for explicit focus users).  NCDwm users should use
   the focus model "click" instead of "explicit", again, unless you have set it
   that way to correct specific problems, this is the appropriate setting for
   most explicit focus users.

P: The Delete key doesn't forward-delete.
S: See the X Resources section on nedit.remapDeleteKey.

P: NEdit crashes when I try to paste text in to a text field in a dialog (like
   Find or Replace) on my SunOS system.
S: On many SunOS systems, you have to set up an nls directory before various
   inter-client communication features of Motif will function properly.  There
   are instructions in ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/v5_0_2/individual/README.sun, as
   well as a tar file containing a complete nls directory in
   ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/v5_0_2/nls.tar.  This contains directions for
   setting up an nls directory, which is required by Motif for handling copy
   and paste to Motif text fields.


KNOWN BUGS

Below is the list of known bugs which affect NEdit.  The bugs your copy of
NEdit will exhibit depend on which system you are running and with which Motif
libraries it was built.

BUG: Operations between rectangular selections on overlapping lines do nothing.
WORKAROUND: None.  These operations are very complicated and you probably
     wouldn't get what you expected anyhow.

BUG: Cut and Paste menu items fail, or possibly crash, for very large
     (multi-megabyte) selections.
WORKAROUND: Use selection copy (middle mouse button click) for transferring
     larger quantities of data.  Cut and Paste save the copied text in server
     memory, which is usually limited.


REPORTING BUGS

The NEdit developers subscribe to both [e-mail] and [e-mail],
either of which may be used for reporting bugs.  If you're not sure, or you
think the report might be of interest to the general NEdit user community, send
the report to [e-mail].  If it's something obvious and boring, like we
misspelled "anemometer" in the on-line help, send it to develop.  If you don't
want to subscribe to these lists, please add a note to your mail about cc'ing
you on responses.


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 bugs and communicate
with the 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.  The lists are:

    [e-mail]  -- General discussion, questions and answers among
                          NEdit users and developers.

    [e-mail] -- A low-volume mailing list for announcing new
                          versions.

    [e-mail]  -- Communication among and with NEdit developers.

            [... List subscription information goes here ...]



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
General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to
distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish),
that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change
the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you
can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny
you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions
translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the
software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for
a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You 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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Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that
everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the
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Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish
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this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's
free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification
follow.

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 of
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or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any
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Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by
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restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents
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running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the 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
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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
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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
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(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
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its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate
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Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your
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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
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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:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code,
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4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as
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This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a
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8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain
countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original
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geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that
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case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of
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General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in
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write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this.
Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of
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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 MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO 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 CORRECTION.

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