Added preference to disable modifying selection on Undo.

[nedit.git] / README

                    NEdit Version 5.3RC1,  March 2002

$Id: README,v 1.29 2002/06/08 13:56:49 tringali Exp $
             

NEdit is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which combines a
standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the thorough functionality
and stability required by users who edit text eight hours a day.  It provides
intensive support for development in a wide variety of languages, text
processors, and other tools, but at the same time can be used productively by
just about anyone who needs to edit text.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
As of version 5.1, NEdit may be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU
General Public License (see the file COPYRIGHT which is also part of this
distribution).

NEdit sources, executables, additional documentation, and contributed software
are available from the NEdit web site at http://nedit.org.


AUTHORS

NEdit was written by Mark Edel, Joy Kyriakopulos, Christopher Conrad,
Jim Clark, Arnulfo Zepeda-Navratil, Suresh Ravoor, Tony Balinski, Max
Vohlken, Yunliang Yu, Donna Reid, Arne Førlie, Eddy De Greef, Steve
LoBasso, Alexander Mai, Scott Tringali, Thorsten Haude, and Steve Haehn.

The regular expression matching routines used in NEdit are adapted (with
permission) from original code written by Henry Spencer at the University of
Toronto.

Syntax highlighting patterns and smart indent macros were contributed
by: Simon T. MacDonald,  Maurice Leysens, Matt Majka, Alfred Smeenk,
Alain Fargues, Christopher Conrad, Scott Markinson, Konrad Bernloehr,
Ivan Herman, Patrice Venant, Christian Denat, Philippe Couton, Max Vohlken, 
Markus Schwarzenberg, Himanshu Gohel, Steven C. Kapp, Michael Turomsha, 
John Fieber, Chris Ross, Nathaniel Gray, Joachim Lous, Mike Duigou, 
Seak Teng-Fong, Joor Loohuis, Mark Jones, and Niek van den Berg.


VERSION 5.3

Version 5.3 is mainly a bug fix release but also offers some new features.

The most significant enhancements in this release are:

 - A revamped Help system with hyperlinked cross-references.
 - Enhanced support for Exuberant ctags.
 - Goto Line also accepts Column numbers.
 - Automatic line-feed termination when saving is now optional.
 - A customizable window title.
 - Optional syntax based parenthesis matching (iso. purely character based).
 
There are also several smaller improvements and bug fixes, see the
ReleaseNotes file for more details.


BUILDING NEDIT

Pre-built executables will be available for many operating systems, including
most major Unix and VMS systems. Check out the NEdit web page at

  http://nedit.org


The requirements to build NEdit from the sources are: 

 - ANSI C89 system (compiler, headers, libraries)
 - make utility (eg, GNU make)
 - X11R5 development stuff (headers, libraries), or newer
 - Motif 1.2 or above (Motif 1.1 might work, but is no longer supported)
   This GUI library is a standard part on most systems which have an
   X11 installation. Most commercial Unix systems feature this, others may
   require a separate installation. 
   A "free" (LGPL'ed) alternative to Motif, called LessTif, is available.
   See the LessTif section under PLATFORM SPECIFIC ISSUES for details.
 
Optionally one may use:
 
 - yacc (or GNU bison)


The two directories called 'source' and 'util' contain the sources for NEdit.
'util' should be built first, followed by 'source'. The makefile in NEdit's
root directory can be used to build both in sequence if your system is one of
the supported machines and no modifications are necessary to the makefiles. To
build NEdit from the root directory, issue the command: 'make <machine-type>';
where <machine-type> is one of suffixes of a makefile in the directory
'makefiles'. For example, to build the Silicon Graphics version, type:

        make sgi

If everything works properly, this will produce two executables called
'nedit' and 'nc' in the directory called 'source'.


The Source Directories

Since executables are already available for the supported systems, you are
probably not just rebuilding an existing configuration, and need to know more
about how the directories are organized.

The util directory builds a library file called libNUtil.a, which is later
linked with the code in the source directory to create the nedit executable.

The makefiles in both source directories consist of two parts, a machine
dependent part and a machine independent part. The machine dependent makefiles
can be found in the directory called 'makefiles', and contain machine specific
header information. They invoke a common machine independent part called
Makefile.common (which in turn includes also Makefile.dependencies).
To compile the files in either of these directories, copy or link one of the
system-specific makefiles from the directory 'makefiles' into the directory,
and issue the command:

    make -f Makefile.<machine-type>
    
(where <machine-type> is the makefile suffix).  Alternatively, you can
name the file 'Makefile' and simply type "make".

If no makefile exists for your system, you should start from Makefile.generic,
which is extensively commented. Contact the developer at develop@nedit.org for
help.

 
Building NEdit on VMS Systems

Command files are provided for compiling and linking files in the source
and util directories.  comutil.com compiles the files in the util directory
and produces two library files, vmsutils.olb and libutil.olb.  comnedit.com
compiles and links the files in the source directory to produce the nedit.exe
executable.


Additional Settings

Some C preprocessor macros may be used to en/disable certain parts
of the code. Usually this correponds to some non-important features
being selected or certain workarounds for platform-specifc problems.
Those which might be useful on more than one platform are documented
in makefiles/Makefile.generic.

Note that a special compilation flag, namely REPLACE_SCOPE, is currently
available. Its purpose is to allow the evaluation of two alternative
(but functionally equivalent) Replace/Find dialog box layouts. 
By default, NEdit is built with a Replace/Find dialog containing 2 rows
of push buttons. Compiling with the REPLACE_SCOPE flag enables an 
alternative layout with a row of radio buttons for selecting the scope of 
the replace operations. Eventually, one of these alternatives will
probably disappear, but up to now, the NEdit developers have not been able
to decide which one to drop. Please give them both a try and let us know 
which one you prefer (via the discuss mailing list, for instance).


INSTALLATION

NEdit consists of a single, stand-alone executable file which does not require
any special installation.  To install NEdit on Unix systems, simply put the
nedit executable in your path.  
On VMS systems, nedit must be defined as a foreign command so that it can
process command line arguments. For example, if nedit.exe were in the
directory mydir on the disk called mydev, adding the following line to your
login.com file would define the nedit command:

        $ ned*it :== $mydev:[mydir]nedit.exe

To use NEdit in client/server mode, you also need the nedit client program, nc,
which, again, needs no special installation, except in the VMS case, as above.
On some systems, the name nc may conflict with an existing program.  In that
case, choose a different name for the executable and simply rename it.  The
recommend alternative is 'ncl'.
Don't forget to put the man-pages for nedit and nc into a place where your
man command is able to find them (e.g. /usr/man/man1/nedit.1)


RUNNING NEDIT

To run NEdit, simply type 'nedit', optionally followed by the name of a file
or files to edit. On-line help is available from the pulldown menu on the far
right of the menu bar. For more information on the syntax of the nedit command
line, look under the heading of "NEdit Command Line".

The recommended way to use NEdit, though, is in client/server mode, invoked by
the nc executable. It allows you to edit multiple files within the same
instance of NEdit (but still in multiple windows). This saves memory (only one
process keeps running), and enables additional functionality (such as find &
replace accross multiple windows). See "Server Mode and nc" in the help menu
for more information.

If you are accessing a host Unix system from a remote workstation or X
terminal, you need to set the Unix environment variable for your display:
csh:
        % setenv DISPLAY devicename:0
sh, ksh, bash, zsh:
        % export DISPLAY=devicename:0

where devicename is the network node name (hostname) of the workstation or X
terminal where you are typing.
On VMS systems, the equivalent command is:

        $ set display/create/node=devicename



PLATFORM SPECIFIC ISSUES

Systems with LessTif, rather than Motif libraries

As of Lesstif 0.93.18, NEdit is very stable with Lesstif. 
You can get the latest LessTif version from http://www.lesstif.org.
If you are having trouble building or running NEdit with LessTif,
remember there are pre-compiled statically linked executables available
from our website.
Known bugs which might show off in NEdit linked with LessTif include:

  1) Some dialogs which are intended to be modal (prevent other activity
     while up) are not, and doing other actions while these dialogs are
     up can cause trouble (.89.9+)
     
  2) Switching to continuous wrap mode, sometimes the horizontal scroll
     remains partially drawn after the change, rather than disappearing
     completely as it should. (.89.9+)
  
  3) Secondary selection operations are not yet supported in text fields.

  4) Status bar is blank after usage of Incremental Search field
     (0.93.18+-)


Linux Systems

The default key bindings for arrow keys in fvwm interfere with some of the
arrow key bindings in NEdit, particularly, Ctrl+Arrow and Alt+Arrow.  You
may want to re-bind them either in NEdit (see Customizing -> Key Binding
in the Help menu) or in fvwm in your .fvwmrc file.

Some older Linux distributions are missing the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB
file, which is necessary for running Motif programs.  When XKeysymDB is
missing, NEdit will spew screenfulls of messages about translation table syntax
errors, and many keys won't work.  You can obtain a copy of the XKeysymDB file
from the contrib sub-directory of the NEdit distribution directory.  


SGI Systems

Beginning with IRIX 6.3, SGI is distributing a customized version of NEdit
along with their operating system releases.  Their installation uses an
app-defaults file (/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/NEdit) which overrides the
default settings in any new nedit version that you install, and may result in
missing accelerator keys or cosmetic appearance glitches.  If you are
re-installing NEdit for the entire system, just remove the existing app-
defaults file.  If you want to run a newer copy individually, get a copy of
the app-defaults file for this version the contrib sub-directory of the
distribution directory for this version on ftp.nedit.org (/pub/<version>/
contrib/nedit.app-defaults), and install it in your home directory or set
the environment variables XAPPLRESDIR or XUSERFILESEARCHPATH to point
to a directory and install it there.  In all cases, the file should be
named simply 'NEdit'.

No additional installation or resource settings are necessary on IRIX systems
before 6.3


HP-UX Systems

If you are using HPVUE and have trouble setting colors, for example part
of the menu bar stubornly remains at whatever HPVUE's default is, try setting:

   nedit*useColorObj: False

   
IBM AIX Systems

Due to an optimizer bug in IBM's C compiler, the file, textDisp.c, must be
compiled without optimization on some AIX systems.


Solaris (SunOS 5.3 and beyond) Systems

The nedit_solaris executable may require the environment variable OPENWINHOME
to be set to the directory where Open Windows is installed.  If this is not set
properly, NEdit will spew screenfulls of messages about translation table
syntax errors.

Solaris 2.4 -- Add -DDONT_HAVE_GLOB to the CFLAGS line in Makefile.solaris.

Solaris 2.5 -- Solaris 2.5 systems were shipped with a bad shared Motif
library, in which the file selection dialog (Open, Save, Save As, Include,
etc.) shows long path names in the file list, but no horizontal scroll bar,
and no way to read the actual file names.  Depending on your system, the
patch is one of ID# 103461-07, # 102226-19, or # 103186-21.  It affects all
Motif based programs which use the library.  If you can't patch your system,
you might want to just try the nedit_sunos executable (from ftp.nedit.org
/pub/<version>), which is statically linked with a good Motif.  You can also
set the X resource: nedit.stdOpenDialog to True, which at least gives you a
text field where you can enter file names by hand.

Solaris 2.6 -- If you're experiencing performance problems (windows come up
slowly), the patch for Sun's shared Motif library is ID# 105284-04.  Installing
the patch alone will improve nedit's performance dramatically.  The patch also
enables a resource, *XmMenuReduceGrabs. Setting this to True will eliminate the
delay completely.

SunOS 4.x Systems

On some SunOS systems, NEdit will also complain about translation table syntax
errors.  This happens when Motif can't access the keysym database, usually
located in the file /usr/lib/X11/XKeysymDB.  If this file exists on your
system, but NEdit fails to locate it properly, you can set the environment
variable XKEYSYMDB to point to the file.  If you can't find the file, or if
some of the errors persist despite setting XKEYSYMDB, there is a XKeysymDB
which you can use to update or replace your /usr/lib/X11/XKeysymDB file
available in the contrib sub-directory of the NEdit distribution directory.
If you don't want to change your existing XKeysymDB file, make a local copy
and set XKEYSYMDB to point to it.

If you find that some of the labeled keys on your keyboard are not properly
bound to the corresponding action in NEdit, try the following:

  1) Get a copy of motifbind.sun (for Sun standard keyboards), or
     motifbind.sun_at (for Sun PC style keyboards) from the NEdit contrib
     directory on ftp.nedit.org:/pub/<version>/contrib.
  2) Copy it to a file called .motifbind in your home directory.
  3) Shutdown and restart your X server.


COMPATIBILITY WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS

Existing .nedit Files

As of version 5.1, NEdit employs a built-in upgrade mechanism which will
automatically detects .nedit files of older versions. In general, NEdit
will try to convert and insert entries to match the latest version.
However, in certain cases where the user has customized the default entries,
NEdit will leave them untouched (except for possible syntactic conversions).
As a result, the latest syntax highlighting patterns for certain languages may
not get activated, for instance, if the user has customized the entries. The
latest default patterns can always be activated through the
Preferences->Syntax Highlighting->Recognition Patterns menu, though.

Next, some version specific upgrading issues are listed. Note that 
non-incremental upgrading (eg., from 5.0 to 5.2) is supported too.

* Upgrading from 5.2 to 5.3

  There are no major changes in the format of the .nedit file for version
  5.2. Users that have customized the X Resources syntax highlighting 
  pattern may consider restoring the default patterns, as they resolve
  a performance issue when editing the .nedit file itself, for instance.
  
* Upgrading from 5.1 to 5.2

  There are no major changes in the format of the .nedit file for version
  5.2. NEdit will try to insert additional entries for the newly supported
  language modes and syntax highlighting patterns (CSS, Regex, and XML) and
  highlight styles (Pointer, Regex, Warning).
  Moreover, the formerly boolean 'showMatching' option will silently be
  converted to a tri-state value.
  Users that have customized some of the syntax highlighting patterns may
  consider restoring the default patterns, as many of them have been improved
  considerably.
  
* Upgrading from 5.0 to 5.1
  
  NEdit 5.1 makes significant changes to the syntax of regular expressions.
  Mostly, these are upward compatible, but two changes; introducing the brace
  operator, and changing the meaning of \0; are not. Brace characters must now
  be escaped with backslash, and & must be used in place of \0 in
  substitutions.

  NEdit 5.1 employs a built-in upgrade mechanism which will automatically
  detect pre-5.1 .nedit files and fix regular expressions which appear in
  user-defined highlight patterns. The automatic upgrade mechanism, however,
  can not fix regular expression problems within user-defined macros. If you
  have a macro which is failing under NEdit 5.1, you will have to fix it by
  hand.
  
* Upgrading from pre-5.0

  If you are upgrading from a pre-5.0 version of NEdit, there are significant
  changes to the macro language, and you are best off simply editing out the
  nedit.macroCommands section of your .nedit file, generating a new .nedit
  file, and then re-introducing your user-written commands into the new file.
  Most macros written for previous versions will function properly under the
  new macro language. The most common problems with old macros is lack of a
  terminating newline on the last line of the macro, and the addition of "<",
  ">", and now "{" to the regular expression syntax. These characters must now
  be escaped with \ (backslash). Also, if you have been using a font other
  than the default for the text portion of your NEdit windows, be sure to
  check the Preferences -> Default Settings -> Text Font dialog, and select
  highlighting fonts which match your primary font in size. Matching in height
  is desirable, but not essential, and sometimes impossible to achive on some
  systems. When fonts don't match in height, turning on syntax highlighting
  will cause the window size to change slightly. NEdit can handle unmatched
  font sizes (width), but leaving them unmatched means sometimes columns and
  indentation don't line up (as with proportional fonts).

FURTHER INFORMATION

More information is available in the file nedit.doc in this kit, from NEdit's
on-line help system, the man-pages and from the enclosed FAQ file. 
There is also a web page for NEdit at: http://nedit.org.  For discussion with
other NEdit users, or to receive notification of new releases you can
subscribe to one or more of the NEdit mailing lists, announce@nedit.org,
discuss@nedit.org or develop@nedit.org.  The NEdit on-line help has information
on subscribing under Help -> Mailing Lists.


REPORTING BUGS

The NEdit developers subscribe to both discuss@nedit.org and develop@nedit.org,
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 discuss@nedit.org.  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.
An alternative way to report bugs is to submit an entry on our web-based
bug tracker at
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/nedit/