xedit V1.0 2000 Eric Baudais baudais@okstate.edu GNOME Documentation Project xedit Manual V2.0 March 2002 Sun GNOME Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project xedit Manual V2.1 June 2002 Sun GNOME Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project xedit Manual V2.2 August 2002 Sun GNOME Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project xedit Manual V2.3 September 2002 Sun GNOME Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project xedit Manual V2.4 January 2003 Sun GNOME Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project xedit Manual V2.5 March 2003 Sun GNOME Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project xedit Manual V2.6 September 2003 Sun GNOME Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project xedit Manual V2.7 March 2004 Sun GNOME Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project &app; Manual V2.8 &date; Sun Java Desktop System Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project &app; Manual V2.9; July 2006; GNOME Documentation Team GNOME Documentation Project &app; Manual V&manrevision; &date; MATE Documentation Team MATE Documentation Project This manual describes version &appversion; of &app;. xedit text editor The &app; application enables you to create and edit text files. The aim of &app; is to be a simple and easy to use text editor. More powerful features can be enabled with different plugins, allowing a variety of tasks related to text-editing. You can start &app; in the following ways: Applications menu Choose AccessoriesText Editor. Command line Execute the following command: xedit By default, when you open a text document in the file manager, xedit will start, and display the document. When you start &app;, the following window is displayed:

Shows xedit main window.

The &app; window contains the following elements: Menubar The menus on the menubar contain all of the commands you need to work with files in &app;. Toolbar The toolbar contains a subset of the commands that you can access from the menubar. Display area The display area contains the text of the file that you are editing. Statusbar The statusbar displays information about current &app; activity and contextual information about the menu items. The statusbar also displays the following information: Cursor position: the line number and column number where the cursor is located. Edit mode: If the editor is in insert mode, the statusbar contains the text INS. If the editor is in overwrite mode, the statusbar contains the text OVR. Press the Insert key to change edit mode. Side Pane The side pane displays a list of open documents, and other information depending on which plugins are enabled. By default the side pane is not shown. To show it, choose ViewSide Pane. Bottom Pane By default the bottom pane is not shown. To show it, choose ViewBottom Pane. When you right-click in the &app; window, the application displays a popup menu. The popup menu contains the most common text editing commands. You can run &app; from a command line and open a single file or multiple files. To open multiple files from a command line, type the following command, then press Return: xedit file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt Alternatively, you can specify a URI instead of a filename. For more information on how to run &app; from a command line, see the unix manual page for &app;, &app;1. To create a new document, choose FileNew. The application displays a new blank document in the &app; window. To open a file, choose FileOpen to display the Open File dialog. Select the file that you want to open, then click Open. The file is displayed in the &app; window. The application records the paths and filenames of the five most recent files that you edited and displays the files as menu items on the File menu. You can also click on the Shows Recent Files menu icon. icon on the toolbar to display the list of recent files. You can open multiple files in &app;. The application adds a tab for each open file to the window. For more on this see . You can save files in the following ways: To save changes to an existing file, choose FileSave. To save a new file or to save an existing file under a new filename, choose File Save As . Enter a name for the file in the Save As dialog, then click Save. To save all of the files that are currently open in &app;, choose Documents Save All . To close all of the files that are currently open in &app;, choose Documents Close All . To open a file from a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), perform the following steps: Choose File Open Location to display the Open Location dialog. Enter the URI of the file that you want to open. Use the Character coding drop-down list to select the appropriate character coding. Click Open. Valid types of URI include http:, ftp:, file:, and all of the methods supported by gvfs. Files from some types of URI are opened as read-only, and any changes you make must be saved to a different location. HTTP only allows files to be read. Files opened from FTP are read-only because because not all FTP servers may correctly work with saving remote files. When more than one file is open, &app; shows a tab for each document above the display area. To switch to another document, click on its tab. To move a document to another &app; window, drag the tab corresponding to the file to the window you want to move it to. To move a document to a new &app; window, either drag its tab to the desktop, or choose Documents Move to New Window . You can edit the text of a file in the following ways: Type new text from the keyboard. The blinking insertion cursor marks the point where new text appears. To change this, use the arrow keys on the keyboard or click with the mouse. To copy the selected text to the clipboard, choose Edit Copy . To delete the selected text from the file and move the selected text to the clipboard, choose Edit Cut . To permanently delete the selected text from the file, choose Edit Delete . To insert the contents of the clipboard at the cursor position, choose Edit Paste . You must cut or copy text before you can paste text into the file, either from &app; or another application. To select all of the text in a file, choose Edit Select All . To undo a change you have made, choose Edit Undo . To reverse this action, choose Edit Redo . In &app;, there are two ways of searching for text. You can use the Find dialog to search for a specific piece of text, or Incremental Search to highlight matching text as you type it. To search a file for a string of text, perform the following steps: Choose Search Find to display the Find dialog. Type the string that you want to find in the Search for field. You can include special characters such as a new line or tab: see . Click Find to search the file for the first occurrence of the string after your current cursor position. If &app; finds the string, the application selects first occurrence of the string. Other occurrences of the string are highlighted. To find the next occurrence of the string, click Find or choose Search Find Next . To find the previous occurrence of the text, choose Search Find Previous . After you have closed the Find dialog, you can still move the selection to other occurrences of the text by choosing Search Find Next and Search Find Previous . To remove the highlighting from the text, choose Search Clear Highlight . Incremental search highlights matching text in the document as you type it letter by letter. (This is similar to the search feature in several web browsers.) To start an incremental search, choose Search Incremental Search . The search box appears at the top of the display area. Begin typing, and text that matches will be highlighted in the document. The first instance after the cursor position is also selected. To advance the selection to the next match while keeping the incremental search box open, press CtrlG. Press CtrlShiftG to go back to the previous match. You can also use the up and down arrow keys or the mouse wheel to move the selection between matches. To search a file for a string, and replace the string with an alternative string, perform the following steps: Choose Search Replace to display the Replace dialog. Type the string that you want to find, in the Search for field. You can include special characters such as a new line or tab: see . Type the string that you want to use to replace the string that you find, in the Replace with field. To examine each occurrence of the string before replacing it, click Find. If &app; finds the string, the application selects the string. Click Replace to replace the selected occurrence of the string. To find the next occurrence of the string, click Find again. To replace all occurrences of the string throughout the document, click Replace All. The Find dialog and the Replace dialog both have the following options: Select the Match case option to only find occurrences of the string that match the case of the text that you type. For example, with Match case selected, "TEXT" will not match "text". Select the Match entire word only option to only find occurrences of the string that match the entire words of the text that you type. For example, with Match entire word only selected, "text" will not match "texture". Select the Search backwards option to search backwards towards the beginning of the document. Select the Wrap around option to search to one end of the document and then continue the search from the other end of the file. You can include the following escape sequences in the text to find or replace to represent special characters: \n Specifies a new line. \t Specifies a tab character. \r Specifies a carriage return. \\ The backslash character itself must be escaped if it is being searched for. For example, if you are looking for the "\n" literal, you will have to type "\\n" in the Search for field. Or if you are looking for a sequence of backslashes, you will have to double the number of searched backslashes. To position the cursor on a specific line in the current file, choose Search Go to Line . The line number box appears at the top of the display area. Begin typing the number of the line that you want to move the cursor to and the document will scroll to the specified line. To dismiss the box and move the cursor to the specified line, press Return. To set the page options, choose File Page Setup to display the Page Setup dialog. The Page Setup dialog enables you to specify the following print options: Print syntax highlighting Select this option to print syntax highlighting. For more information about syntax highlighting, see . Print page headers Select this option to include a header on each page that you print. You cannot configure the header. Line Numbers Select the Print line numbers option to include line numbers when you print a file. Use the Number every ... lines spin box to specify how often to print the line numbers, for example every 5 lines, every 10 lines, and so on. Text Wrapping Select the Enable text wrapping option to wrap text onto the next line, at a character level, when you print a file. The application counts wrapped lines as one line for line numbering purposes. Select the Do not split words over two lines option to wrap text onto the next line, at a word level, when you print a file. Body Click on this button to select the font to use to print the body text of a file. Line numbers Click on this button to select the font to use to print line numbers. Headers and footers Click on this button to select the font to use to print the headers and footers in a file. To reset the fonts to the default fonts for printing a file from &app;, click Restore Default Fonts. You can use &app; to perform the following print operations: Print a document to a printer. Print the output of the print command to a file. If you print to a file, &app; sends the output of the file to a pre-press format file. The most common pre-press formats are PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF). To preview the pages that you want to print, choose File Print Preview . To print the current file to a printer or a file, choose File Print to display the Print dialog. The Print dialog enables you to specify the following print options: Print range Select one of the following options to determine how many pages to print: All Select this option to print all of the pages in the file. Lines Select this option to print the specified lines only. Use the From and To spin boxes to specify the line range. Selection Select this option to print the selected text only. This option is only available if you select text. Copies Use the Number of copies spin box to specify the number of copies of the file that you want to print. If you print multiple copies of the file, select the Collate option to collate the printed copies. Printer Use this drop-down list to select the printer to which you want to print the file. Settings Use this drop-down list to select the printer settings. To configure the printer, click Configure. For example, you can enable or disable duplex printing, or schedule delayed printing, if this functionality is supported by the printer. Location Use this drop-down list to select one of the following print destinations: CUPS Print the file to a CUPS printer. If the selected printer is a CUPS printer, CUPS is the only entry in this drop-down list. lpr Print the file to a printer. File Print the file to a PostScript file. Click Save As to display a dialog where you specify the name and location of the PostScript file. Custom Use the specified command to print the file. Type the name of the command in the text box. Include all command-line arguments. State This functionality is not supported in this version of &app;. Type This functionality is not supported in this version of &app;. Comment This functionality is not supported in this version of &app;. Paper size Use this drop-down list to select the size of the paper to which you want to print the file. Width Use this spin box to specify the width of the paper. Use the adjacent drop-down list to change the measurement unit. Height Use this spin box to specify the height of the paper. Feed orientation Use this drop-down list to select the orientation of the paper in the printer. Page orientation Use this drop-down list to select the page orientation. Layout Use this drop-down list to select the page layout. A preview of each layout that you select is displayed in the Preview area. Paper tray Use this drop-down list to select the paper tray. Several of &app;'s features for programming are provided with plugins. For example, the Tag List plugin provides a list of commonly-used tags for different markup languages: see . Syntax highlighting makes source code easier to read by showing different parts of the text in different colors. &app; chooses an appropriate syntax highlighting mode based on a document's type. To override the syntax highlighting mode, choose View Highlight Mode , then choose one of the following menu items: Normal Do not display any syntax highlighting. Sources Display syntax highlighting to edit source code. Use the Sources submenu to select the source code type. Markup Display syntax highlighting to edit markup code. Use the Markup submenu to select the markup code type. Scripts Display syntax highlighting to edit script code. Use the Scripts submenu to select the script code type. Others Display syntax highlighting to edit other types of code. Use the Others submenu to select the code type. You can use &app; to pipe the output of a command to a text file. For example, to pipe the output of an ls command to a text file, type ls | xedit, then press Return. The output of the ls command is displayed in a new text file in the &app; window. Alternatively, you can use the External tools plugin to pipe command output to the current file. Use shortcut keys to perform common tasks more quickly than with the mouse and menus. The following tables list all of &app;'s shortcut keys. Tabs Shortcuts for tabs: Shortcut Key Command Ctrl + Alt + PageUp Switches to the next tab to the left. Ctrl + Alt + PageDown Switches to the next tab to the right. Ctrl + W Close tab. Ctrl + Shift + L Save all tabs. Ctrl + Shift + W Close all tabs. Alt + n Jump to nth tab. Files Shortcuts for working with files: Shortcut Key Command Ctrl + N Create a new document. Ctrl + O Open a document. Ctrl + L Open a location. Ctrl + S Save the current document to disk. Ctrl + Shift + S Save the current document with a new filename. Ctrl + P Print the current document. Ctrl + Shift + P Print preview. Ctrl + W Close the current document. Ctrl + Q Quit Xedit. Edit Shortcuts for editing documents: Shortcut Key Command Ctrl + Z Undo the last action. Ctrl + Shift + Z Redo the last undone action . Ctrl + X Cut the selected text or region and place it on the clipboard. Ctrl + C Copy the selected text or region onto the clipboard. Ctrl + V Paste the contents of the clipboard. Ctrl + A Select all. Ctrl + D Delete current line. Alt + Up Move the selected line up one line. Alt + Down Move the selected line down one line. Panes Shortcuts for showing and hiding panes: Shortcut Key Command F9 Show/hide the side pane. Ctrl + F9 Show/hide the bottom pane. Search Shortcuts for searching: Shortcut Key Command Ctrl + F Find a string. Ctrl + G Find the next instance of the string. Ctrl + Shift + G Find the previous instance of the string. Ctrl + K Interactive search. Ctrl + H Search and replace. Ctrl + Shift + K Clear highlight. Ctrl + I Goto line. Tools Shortcuts for tools: Shortcut Key Command Shift + F7 Check spelling (with plugin). Alt + F12 Remove trailing spaces (with plugin). Ctrl + T Indent (with plugin). Ctrl + Shift + T Remove Indent (with plugin). F8 Run "make" in current directory (with plugin). Ctrl + Shift + D Directory listing (with plugin). Help Shortcuts for help: Shortcut Key Command F1 Open &app;'s user manual. To configure &app;, choose Edit Preferences . The Preferences dialog contains the following categories: Text Wrapping Select the Enable text wrapping option to have long lines of text flow into paragraphs instead of running off the edge of the text window. This avoids having to scroll horizontally Select the Do not split words over two lines option to have the text wrapping option preserve whole words when flowing text to the next line. This makes text easier to read. Line Numbers Select the Display line numbers option to display line numbers on the left side of the &app; window. Current Line Select the Highlight current line option to highlight the line where the cursor is placed. Right Margin Select the Display right margin option to display a vertical line that indicates the right margin. Use the Right margin at column spin box to specify the location of the vertical line. Bracket Matching Select the Highlight matching bracket option to highlight the corresponding bracket when the cursor is positioned on a bracket character. Tabs Use the Tab width spin box to specify the width of the space that &app; inserts when you press the Tab key. Select the Insert spaces instead of tabs option to specify that &app; inserts spaces instead of a tab character when you press the Tab key. Auto Indentation Select the Enable auto indentation option to specify that the next line starts at the indentation level of the current line. File Saving Select the Create a backup copy of files before saving option to create a backup copy of a file each time you save the file. The backup copy of the file contains a ~ at the end of the filename. Select the Autosave files every ... minutes option to automatically save the current file at regular intervals. Use the spin box to specify how often you want to save the file. Font Select the Use default theme font option to use the default system font for the text in the &app; text window. The Editor font field displays the font that &app; uses to display text. Click on the button to specify the font type, style, and size to use for text. Color Scheme You can choose a color scheme from the list of color schemes. By default, the following color schemes are installed: Classic Classic color scheme based on the gvim color scheme. Cobalt Blue based color scheme. Kate Color scheme used in the Kate text editor. Oblivion Dark color scheme using the Tango color palette. Tango Color scheme using the Tango color scheme. You can add a new color scheme by clicking on Add..., and selecting a color scheme file You can remove the selected color scheme by clicking on Remove Plugins add extra features to &app;. For more information on plugins and how to use the built-in plugins, see . To enable a &app; plugin, perform the following steps: Choose Edit Preferences . Select the Plugins tab. Select the check box next to the name of the plugin that you want to enable. Click Close to close the Preferences dialog. A plugin remains enabled when you quit &app;. To disable a &app; plugin, perform the following steps: Choose Edit Preferences . Select the Plugins tab. Deselect the check box next to the name of the plugin that you want to disable. Click Close to close the Preferences dialog. You can add extra features to &app; by enabling plugins. A plugin is a supplementary program that enhances the functionality of an application. Plugins add new items to the &app; menus for the new features they provide. Several plugins come built-in with &app;, and you can install more. The xedit website lists third-party plugins. To enable and disable plugins, or see which plugins are currently enabled, use the Plugins Preferences. The following plugins come built-in with &app;: Change Case allows you to change the case of the selected text. Document Statistics shows the number of lines, words, and characters in the document. File Browser allows you to browse your files and folders in the side pane. Indent Lines adds or removes indentation from the selected lines. Insert Date/Time adds the current date and time into a document. Modelines allows you to set editing preferences for individual documents, and supports Emacs, Kate and Vim-style modelines. Sort arranges selected lines of text into alphabetical order. Spell Checker corrects the spelling in the selected text, or marks errors automatically in the document. Tag List lets you insert commonly-used tags for HTML and other languages from a list in the side pane. The Change Case plugin changes the case of the selected text. The following items are added to the Edit menu when the Change Case plugin is enabled: Menu Item Action Example Edit Change CaseAll Upper Case Change each character to uppercase. This text becomes THIS TEXT Edit Change CaseAll Lower Case Change each character to lowercase. This Text becomes this text Edit Change CaseInvert Case Change each lowercase character to uppercase, and change each uppercase character to lowercase. This Text becomes tHIS tEXT Edit Change CaseTitle Case Change the first character of each word to uppercase. this text becomes This Text The Document Statistics plugin counts the number of lines, words, characters with spaces, characters without spaces, and bytes in the current file. The plugin displays the results in a Document Statistics dialog. To use the Document Statistics plugin, perform the following steps: Choose Tools Document Statistics to display the Document Statistics dialog. The Document Statistics dialog displays the following information about the file: Number of lines in the current document. Number of words in the current document. Number of characters, including spaces, in the current document. Number of characters, not including spaces, in the current document. Number of bytes in the current document. You can continue to update the &app; file while the Document Statistics dialog is open. To refresh the contents of the Document Statistics dialog, click Update. The File Browser Plugin shows your files and folders in the side pane, allowing you to quickly open files. To view the File Browser, choose View Side Pane and then click on the tab showing the File Browser icon at the bottom of the side pane. The File Browser tab initially shows your file manager bookmarks. To browse the contents of any item, double-click it. To show a parent folder, choose from the drop-down list, or press the up arrow on the File Browser's toolbar. To show the folder that contains the document you are currently working on, right-click in the file list and choose Set root to active document. To open a file in &app;, double-click it in the file list. To create a new, empty text file in the current folder shown in the browser, right-click in the file list and choose New File. To create a new folder in the current folder shown in the browser, right-click in the file list and choose New Folder. The Indent Lines plugin adds or removes space from the beginning of lines of text. To indent or unindent text, perform the following steps: Select the lines that you want to indent. To indent or unindent a single line, place the cursor anywhere on that line. To indent the text, choose Edit Indent . To remove the indentation, choose Edit Unindent . The amount of space used, and whether tab character or space characters are used, depends on the Tab Stops settings in the Editor Preferences: see . The Insert Date/Time plugin inserts the current date and time into a document. To use the Insert Date/Time plugin, perform the following steps: Choose Edit Insert Date and Time . If you have not configured the Insert Date/Time plugin to automatically insert the date/time without prompting you for the format, &app; displays the Insert Date and Time dialog. Select the appropriate date/time format from the list. Click Insert to close the Insert Date and Time dialog. &app; inserts the date/time at the cursor position in the current file. If you have configured &app; to use one particular date/time format, the Insert Date and Time dialog is not displayed. The date/time is automatically entered at the cursor position in the current file. To configure the Insert Date/Time plugin, perform the following steps: Choose Edit Preferences . Select the Plugins tab. Select the Insert Date/Time plugin. Click Configure Plugin to display the Configure insert date/time plugin dialog. Select one of the options, as follows: To specify the date/time format each time you insert the date/time, select the Prompt for a format option. To use the same &app;-provided date/time format each time you insert the date/time, select the Use the selected format option, then select the appropriate format from the list. When you select this option, &app; does not prompt you for the date/time format when you choose Edit Insert Date and Time . To use the same customized date/time format each time you insert the date/time, select the Use custom format option, then enter the appropriate format in the text box. For more information about how to specify a custom format, see strftime3. When you select this option, &app; does not prompt you for the date/time format when you choose Edit Insert Date and Time . Click OK to close the Configure insert date/time plugin dialog. To close the Preferences dialog, click Close. The Modelines plugin allows you to set preferences for individual documents. A modeline is a line of text at the start or end of the document with settings that &app; recognises. Preferences set using modelines take precedence over the ones specified in the preference dialog. You can set the following preferences with modelines: Tab width Indent width Insert spaces instead of tabs Text Wrapping Right margin width The Modelines plugin supports a subset of the options used by other text editors Emacs, Kate and Vim. The first two lines of a document are scanned for Emacs modelines. The Emacs options for tab-width, indent-offset, indent-tabs-mode and autowrap are supported. For more information, see the GNU Emacs Manual. The first and last ten lines a document are scanned for Kate modelines. The Kate options for tab-width, indent-width, space-indent, word-wrap and word-wrap-column are supported. For more information, see the Kate website. The first and last three lines a document are scanned for Vim modelines. The Vim options for et, expandtab, ts, tabstop, sw, shiftwidth, wrap, and textwidth are supported. For more information, see the Vim website. The Sort plugin arranges selected lines of text into alphabetical order. You cannot undo the Sort operation, so you should save the file before performing the sort. To revert to the saved version of the file after the sort operation, choose File Revert . To use the Sort plugin, perform the following steps: Select the lines of text you want to sort. Choose Edit Sort . The Sort dialog opens. Choose the options you want for the sort: To arrange the text in reverse order, select Reverse order. To delete duplicate lines, select Remove duplicates. To ignore case sensitivity, select Ignore case. To have the sort ignore the characters at the start of the lines, set the first character that should be used for sorting in the Start at column spin box. To perform the sort operation, click Sort. The Spell Checker plugin checks the spelling in the selected text. You can configure &app; to check the spelling automatically, or you can check the spelling manually, in the specified language. The language setting, and the autocheck spelling properties, apply per document. To use the Spell checker plugin, perform the following steps: Choose Tools Set Language to display the Set language dialog. Select the appropriate language from the list. Click OK to close the Set language dialog. To check the spelling automatically, choose Tools Autocheck Spelling . To unset the automatic spell check, choose Tools Autocheck Spelling again. When automatic spell checking is set, an icon is displayed beside the Autocheck Spelling menu item. Automatic spell checking is unset by default, each time &app; starts. Unknown spellings are displayed in a different color, and underlined. Right-click on an unknown spelling, then select Spelling Suggestions from the popup menu: To replace the unknown spelling with another spelling in the list, select the replacement spelling from the Spelling Suggestions popup menu. To add the unknown spelling to your personal dictionary, select Spelling Suggestions Add . To ignore all occurrences of the unknown spelling, so that they are no longer flagged as unknown but are not added to your personal dictionary, select Spelling Suggestions Ignore All . The unknown word is ignored in the current &app; session only. To check the spelling manually, choose Tools Check Spelling . If there are no spelling errors, an Information dialog displays a message stating that the document does not contain misspelled words. Click OK to close the Information dialog. If there are spelling errors, the Check Spelling dialog is displayed: The Misspelled word is displayed at the top of the dialog. A suggested known spelling is displayed in the Change to text box. You can replace this with another known spelling by selecting a spelling from the Suggestions list, or you can enter text directly into the Change to text box. To check the spelling of the text in the Change to text box, click Check Word. If this is a known word, the Suggestions list is replaced with the text (correct spelling). If the word is not known, new entries appear in the Suggestions list. To ignore the current occurrence of the unknown word, click Ignore. To ignore all occurrences of the unknown word, click Ignore All. The unknown word is ignored in the current &app; session only. To change the current occurrence of the unknown word to the text in the Change to text box, click Change. To change all occurrences of the unknown word to the text in the Change to text box, click Change All. To add the unknown word to your personal dictionary, click Add word. To close the Check Spelling dialog, click Close. The Tag List plugin allows you to insert common tags from a list in the side pane. To use the Tag List plugin, perform the following steps: Choose View Side Pane . By default, the side pane shows a tab containing a list of open documents. Click on the tab showing a + icon at the bottom of the side pane to show the tag list tab. Select the appropriate tag category from the drop-down list. For example, HTML - Tags. Scroll through the tag list to find the required tag. To insert a tag at the cursor position in the current file, double-click on the tag in the tag list. You can also insert a tag as follows: To insert a tag in the current file and change the focus from the side pane to the display area, press Return. To insert a tag in the current file and maintain the focus on the Tag list plugin window, press ShiftReturn.