Fix incorrect array size that crashes on platforms where sizeof(char*) != sizeof...

[nedit.git] / doc / nedit.doc

               =========================================
               Nirvana Editor (NEdit) Help Documentation
               =========================================

NEdit release of Dec 13, 2001                                               December 13, 2001

  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://www.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. 


  EDITING AN EXISTING FILE

  To open an existing file, choose Open... from the file menu. Select the file 
  that you want to open in the pop-up dialog that appears and click on OK. You 
  may open any number of files at the same time. Each file will appear in its 
  own editor window. Using Open... rather than re-typing the NEdit command and 
  running additional copies of NEdit, will give you quick access to all of the 
  files you have open via the Windows menu, and ensure that you don't 
  accidentally open the same file twice. NEdit has no "main" window. It 
  remains running as long as at least one editor window is open. 


  CREATING A NEW FILE

  If you already have an empty (Untitled) window displayed, just begin typing 
  in the window. To create a new Untitled window, choose New from the File 
  menu. To give the file a name and save its contents to the disk, choose Save 
  or Save As... from the File menu. 


  BACKUP FILES

  NEdit maintains periodic backups of the file you are editing so that you can 
  recover the file in the event of a problem such as a system crash, network 
  failure, or X server crash. These files are saved under the name `~filename` 
  (on Unix) or `_filename` (on VMS), where filename is the name of the file 
  you were editing. If an NEdit process is killed, some of these backup files 
  may remain in your directory. (To remove one of these files on Unix, you may 
  have to prefix the `~' (tilde) character with a (backslash) to prevent the 
  shell from interpreting it as a special character.) 


  SHORTCUTS

  As you become more familiar with NEdit, substitute the control and function 
  keys shown on the right side of the menus for pulling down menus with the 
  mouse. 

  Dialogs are also streamlined so you can enter information quickly and 
  without using the mouse*. To move the keyboard focus around a dialog, use 
  the tab and arrow keys. One of the buttons in a dialog is usually drawn with 
  a thick, indented, outline. This button can be activated by pressing Return 
  or Enter. The Cancel or Dismiss button can be activated by pressing escape. 
  For example, to replace the string "thing" with "things" type: 

      <ctrl-r>thing<tab>things<return>

  To open a file named "whole_earth.c", type: 

      <ctrl-o>who<return>

  (how much of the filename you need to type depends on the other files in the 
  directory). See the section called "Keyboard Shortcuts" for more details. 

  * Users who have set their keyboard focus mode to "pointer" should set 
  "Popups Under Pointer" in the Default Settings menu to avoid the additional 
  step of moving the mouse into the dialog. 

===============
BASIC OPERATION
===============

--------------
SELECTING TEXT
--------------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--------------------------
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. 

-------------
CUT AND PASTE
-------------

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

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

---------------
USING THE MOUSE
---------------

  Mouse-based editing is what NEdit is all about, and learning to use the more 
  advanced features like secondary selections and primary selection dragging 
  will be well worth your while. 

  If you don't have time to learn everything, you can get by adequately with 
  just the left mouse button: Clicking the left button moves the cursor. 
  Dragging with the left button makes a selection. Holding the shift key while 
  clicking extends the existing selection, or begins a selection between the 
  cursor and the mouse. Double or triple clicking selects a whole word or a 
  whole line. 

  This section will make more sense if you also read the section called, 
  "Selecting Text", which explains the terminology of selections, that is, 
  what is meant by primary, secondary, rectangular, etc. 


  BUTTON AND MODIFIER KEY SUMMARY

  General meaning of mouse buttons and modifier keys: 


    Buttons

      Button 1 (left)    Cursor position and primary selection

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

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


    Modifier keys

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

      Ctrl    Makes selection rectangular or insertion
              columnar

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


  LEFT MOUSE BUTTON

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

    Click         Moves the cursor

    Double Click  Selects a whole word

    Triple Click  Selects a whole line

    Quad Click    Selects the whole file

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

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

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

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


  RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON

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

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

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


  MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON

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

    Click         Copies the primary selection to the
                  clicked position.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Alt*          Exchange the primary and secondary
                  selections.

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

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

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

    Escape        Cancels drag in progress.

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

  Mouse buttons 4 and 5 are usually represented by a mouse wheel nowadays. 
  They are used to scroll up or down in the text window. 

  * The Alt key may be labeled Meta or Compose-Character on some keyboards. 
  Some window managers, including default configurations of mwm, bind 
  combinations of the Alt key and mouse buttons to window manager operations. 
  In NEdit, Alt is only used on button release, so regardless of the window 
  manager bindings for Alt-modified mouse buttons, you can still do the 
  corresponding NEdit operation by using the Alt key AFTER the initial mouse 
  press, so that Alt is held while you release the mouse button. If you find 
  this difficult or annoying, you can re-configure most window managers to 
  skip this binding, or you can re-configure NEdit to use a different key 
  combination. 

------------------
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
------------------

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


  MENU ACCELERATORS

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


  MENU MNEMONICS

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


  KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS WITHIN DIALOGS

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

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

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

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

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

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


  LABELED FUNCTION KEYS

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

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

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

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


  MODIFIER KEYS (IN GENERAL)

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

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

    Alt    When modifying a selection, makes the selection
           rectangular.

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


  ALL KEYBOARDS

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

    Backspace     Delete the character before the cursor

    Ctrl+BS       Delete the word before the cursor

    Arrows --

      Left        Move the cursor to the left one character

      Ctrl+Left   Move the cursor backward one word
                  (Word delimiters are settable, see
                  "Customizing NEdit", and "X_Resources_")

      Right       Move the cursor to the right one character

      Ctrl+Right  Move the cursor forward one word

      Up          Move the cursor up one line

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

      Down        Move the cursor down one line.

      Ctrl+Down   Move the cursor down one paragraph.

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

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

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

    Alt+Ctrl+<c>  Insert the control-code equivalent of
                  a key <c>

    Ctrl+/        Select everything (same as Select
                  All menu item or ^A)

    Ctrl+\        Unselect

    Ctrl+U        Delete to start of line


  PC STANDARD KEYBOARD

    Ctrl+Insert   Copy the primary selection to the
                  clipboard (same as Copy menu item or ^C)
                  for compatibility with Motif standard key
                  binding
    Shift+Ctrl+
    Insert        Copy the primary selection to the cursor
                  location.

    Delete        Delete the character before the cursor.
                  (Can be configured to delete the character
                  after the cursor, see "Customizing NEdit",
                  and "X Resources")

    Ctrl+Delete   Delete to end of line.

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

    Home          Move the cursor to the beginning of the
                  line

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

    End           Move the cursor to the end of the line

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

    PageUp        Scroll and move the cursor up by one page.

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

    PageDown      Scroll and move the cursor down by one
                  page.

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

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


  SPECIALTY KEYBOARDS  

  On machines with different styles of keyboards, generally, text editing 
  actions are properly matched to the labeled keys, such as Remove, 
  Next-screen, etc.. If you prefer different key bindings, see the section 
  titled "Key Binding" under the Customizing heading in the Help menu. 

--------------------
SHIFTING AND FILLING
--------------------


  SHIFT LEFT, SHIFT RIGHT

  While shifting blocks of text is most important for programmers (See 
  Features for Programming), it is also useful for other tasks, such as 
  creating indented paragraphs. 

  To shift a block of text one tab stop to the right, select the text, then 
  choose Shift Right from the Edit menu. Note that the accelerator keys for 
  these menu items are Ctrl+9 and Ctrl+0, which correspond to the right and 
  left parenthesis on most keyboards. Remember them as adjusting the text in 
  the direction pointed to by the parenthesis character. Holding the Shift key 
  while selecting either Shift Left or Shift Right will shift the text by one 
  character. 

  It is also possible to shift blocks of text by selecting the text 
  rectangularly, and dragging it left or right (and up or down as well). Using 
  a rectangular selection also causes tabs within the selection to be 
  recalculated and substituted, such that the non-whitespace characters remain 
  stationary with respect to the selection. 


  FILLING  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The third, and most versatile, way to use Fill Paragraph is with a 
  rectangular selection. Fill Paragraph treats rectangular selections 
  differently from other commands. Instead of simply filling the text inside 
  the rectangular selection, NEdit interprets the right edge of the selection 
  as the requested wrap margin. Text to the left of the selection is not 
  disturbed (the usual interpretation of a rectangular selection), but text to 
  the right of the selection is included in the operation and is pulled in to 
  the selected region. This method enables you to fill text to an arbitrary 
  right margin, without going back and forth to the wrap-margin dialog, as 
  well as to exclude text to the left of the selection such as comment bars or 
  other text columns. 

-----------
FILE FORMAT
-----------

  While plain-text is probably the simplest and most interchangeable file 
  format in the computer world, there is still variation in what plain-text 
  means from system to system. Plain-text files can differ in character set, 
  line termination, and wrapping. 

  While character set differences are the most obvious and pose the most 
  challenge to portability, they affect NEdit only indirectly via the same 
  font and localization mechanisms common to all X applications. If your 
  system is set up properly, you will probably never see character-set related 
  problems in NEdit. NEdit can not display Unicode text files, or any 
  multi-byte character set. 

  The primary difference between an MS DOS format file and a Unix format file, 
  is how the lines are terminated. Unix uses a single newline character. MS 
  DOS uses a carriage-return and a newline. NEdit can read and write both file 
  formats, but internally, it uses the single character Unix standard. NEdit 
  auto-detects MS DOS format files based on the line termination at the start 
  of the file. Files are judged to be DOS format if all of the first five line 
  terminators, within a maximum range, are DOS-style. To change the format in 
  which NEdit writes a file from DOS to Unix or visa versa, use the Save As... 
  command and check or un-check the MS DOS Format button. 

  Wrapping within text files can vary among individual users, as well as from 
  system to system. Both Windows and MacOS make frequent use of plain text 
  files with no implicit right margin. In these files, wrapping is determined 
  by the tool which displays them. Files of this style also exist on Unix 
  systems, despite the fact that they are not supported by all Unix utilities. 
  To display this kind of file properly in NEdit, you have to select the wrap 
  style called Continuous. Wrapping modes are discussed in the sections: 
  Customizing -> Preferences, and Basic Operation -> Shifting and Filling. 

  The last and most minute of format differences is the terminating newline. 
  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. 

========================
FEATURES FOR PROGRAMMING
========================

----------------------
PROGRAMMING WITH NEDIT
----------------------

  Though general in appearance, NEdit has many features intended specifically 
  for programmers. Major programming-related topics are listed in separate 
  sections under the heading: "Features for Programming": Syntax Highlighting, 
  Tabs/Emulated Tabs, Finding_Declarations_(ctags)_, and Auto/Smart_Indent_. 
  Minor topics related to programming are discussed below: 


  LANGUAGE MODES

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

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


  LINE NUMBERS

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

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


  MATCHING PARENTHESES

  To help you inspect nested parentheses, brackets, braces, quotes, and other 
  characters, NEdit has both an automatic parenthesis matching mode, and a 
  Goto Matching command. Automatic parenthesis matching is activated when you 
  type, or move the insertion cursor after a parenthesis, bracket, or brace. 
  It momentarily highlights either the opposite character ('Delimiter') or the 
  entire expression ('Range') when the opposite character is visible in the 
  window. To find a matching character anywhere in the file, select it or 
  position the cursor after it, and choose Goto Matching from the Search menu. 
  If the character matches itself, such as a quote or slash, select the first 
  character of the pair. NEdit will match {, (, [, <, ", ', `, /, and \. 
  Holding the Shift key while typing the accelerator key (Shift+Ctrl+M, by 
  default), will select all of the text between the matching characters. 


  OPENING INCLUDED FILES

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


  INTERFACE TO PROGRAMMING TOOLS

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

  There are also some simple compile/review, grep, ctree, and ctags browsers 
  available in the NEdit contrib directory on ftp.nedit.org. 

------------------
TABS/EMULATED TABS
------------------


  CHANGING THE TAB DISTANCE

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

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

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

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


  EMULATED TABS

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

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

-----------------
AUTO/SMART INDENT
-----------------

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


  SMART INDENT

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

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


  AUTO-INDENT

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


  BLOCK INDENTATION ADJUSTMENT

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

-------------------
SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING
-------------------

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

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

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

  If no highlighting patterns are available for the language that you want to 
  use, you can create new patterns relatively quickly. The Help section 
  "Highlighting Patterns" under "Customizing", has details. 

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

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

----------------------------
FINDING DECLARATIONS (CTAGS)
----------------------------

  NEdit can process tags files generated using the Unix ctags command or the 
  Exuberant Ctags program. Ctags creates index files correlating names of 
  functions and declarations with their locations in C, Fortran, or Pascal 
  source code files. (See the ctags manual page for more information). Ctags 
  produces a file called "tags" which can be loaded by NEdit. NEdit can manage 
  any number of tags files simultaneously. Tag collisions are handled with a 
  popup menu to let the user decide which tag to use. In 'Smart' mode NEdit 
  will automatically choose the desired tag based on the scope of the file or 
  module. Once loaded, the information in the tags file enables NEdit to go 
  directly to the declaration of a highlighted function or data structure name 
  with a single command. To load a tags file, select "Load Tags File" from the 
  File menu and choose a tags file to load, or specify the name of the tags 
  file on the NEdit command line: 

      nedit -tags tags

  NEdit can also be set to load a tags file automatically when it starts up. 
  Setting the X resource nedit.tagFile to the name of a tag file tells NEdit 
  to look for that file at startup time (see "Customizing NEdit"). The file 
  name can be either a complete path name, in which case NEdit will always 
  load the same tags file, or a file name without a path or with a relative 
  path, in which case NEdit will load it starting from the current directory. 
  The second option allows you to have different tags files for different 
  projects, each automatically loaded depending on the directory you're in 
  when you start NEdit. Setting the name to "tags" is an obvious choice since 
  this is the name that ctags uses. 

  To unload a tags file, select "Un-load Tags File" from the File menu and 
  choose from the list of tags files. NEdit will keep track of tags file 
  updates by checking the timestamp on the files, and automatically update the 
  tags cache. 

  To find the definition of a function or data structure once a tags file is 
  loaded, select the name anywhere it appears in your program (see "Selecting 
  Text") and choose "Find Definition" from the Search menu. 

===================
REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
===================

-------------------------------
BASIC REGULAR EXPRESSION SYNTAX
-------------------------------

  Regular expressions (regex's) are useful as a way to match inexact sequences 
  of characters. They can be used in the `Find...' and `Replace...' search 
  dialogs and are at the core of Color Syntax Highlighting patterns. To 
  specify a regular expression in a search dialog, simply click on the 
  `Regular Expression' radio button in the dialog. 

  A regex is a specification of a pattern to be matched in the searched text. 
  This pattern consists of a sequence of tokens, each being able to match a 
  single character or a sequence of characters in the text, or assert that a 
  specific position within the text has been reached (the latter is called an 
  anchor.) Tokens (also called atoms) can be modified by adding one of a 
  number of special quantifier tokens immediately after the token. A 
  quantifier token specifies how many times the previous token must be matched 
  (see below.) 

  Tokens can be grouped together using one of a number of grouping constructs, 
  the most common being plain parentheses. Tokens that are grouped in this way 
  are also collectively considered to be a regex atom, since this new larger 
  atom may also be modified by a quantifier. 

  A regex can also be organized into a list of alternatives by separating each 
  alternative with pipe characters, `|'. This is called alternation. A match 
  will be attempted for each alternative listed, in the order specified, until 
  a match results or the list of alternatives is exhausted (see Alternation 
  section below.) 


  THE 'ANY' CHARACTER

  If a dot (`.') appears in a regex, it means to match any character exactly 
  once. By default, dot will not match a newline character, but this behavior 
  can be changed (see help topic Parenthetical Constructs, under the heading, 
  Matching Newlines). 


  CHARACTER CLASSES

  A character class, or range, matches exactly one character of text, but the 
  candidates for matching are limited to those specified by the class. Classes 
  come in two flavors as described below: 

     [...]   Regular class, match only characters listed.
     [^...]  Negated class, match only characters NOT listed.

  As with the dot token, by default negated character classes do not match 
  newline, but can be made to do so. 

  The characters that are considered special within a class specification are 
  different than the rest of regex syntax as follows. If the first character 
  in a class is the `]' character (second character if the first character is 
  `^') it is a literal character and part of the class character set. This 
  also applies if the first or last character is `-'. Outside of these rules, 
  two characters separated by `-' form a character range which includes all 
  the characters between the two characters as well. For example, `[^f-j]' is 
  the same as `[^fghij]' and means to match any character that is not `f', 
  `g', `h', `i', or `j'. 


  ANCHORS

  Anchors are assertions that you are at a very specific position within the 
  search text. NEdit regular expressions support the following anchor tokens: 

     ^    Beginning of line
     $    End of line
     <    Left word boundary
     >    Right word boundary
     \B   Not a word boundary

  Note that the \B token ensures that the left and right characters are both 
  delimiter characters, or that both left and right characters are 
  non-delimiter characters. Currently word anchors check only one character, 
  e.g. the left word anchor `<' only asserts that the left character is a word 
  delimiter character. Similarly the right word anchor checks the right 
  character. 


  QUANTIFIERS

  Quantifiers specify how many times the previous regular expression atom may 
  be matched in the search text. Some quantifiers can produce a large 
  performance penalty, and can in some instances completely lock up NEdit. To 
  prevent this, avoid nested quantifiers, especially those of the maximal 
  matching type (see below.) 

  The following quantifiers are maximal matching, or "greedy", in that they 
  match as much text as possible. 

     *   Match zero or more
     +   Match one  or more
     ?   Match zero or one

  The following quantifiers are minimal matching, or "lazy", in that they 
  match as little text as possible. 

     *?   Match zero or more
     +?   Match one  or more
     ??   Match zero or one

  One final quantifier is the counting quantifier, or brace quantifier. It 
  takes the following basic form: 

     {min,max}  Match from `min' to `max' times the
                previous regular expression atom.

  If `min' is omitted, it is assumed to be zero. If `max' is omitted, it is 
  assumed to be infinity. Whether specified or assumed, `min' must be less 
  than or equal to `max'. Note that both `min' and `max' are limited to 65535. 
  If both are omitted, then the construct is the same as `*'. Note that `{,}' 
  and `{}' are both valid brace constructs. A single number appearing without 
  a comma, e.g. `{3}' is short for the `{min,min}' construct, or to match 
  exactly `min' number of times. 

  The quantifiers `{1}' and `{1,1}' are accepted by the syntax, but are 
  optimized away since they mean to match exactly once, which is redundant 
  information. Also, for efficiency, certain combinations of `min' and `max' 
  are converted to either `*', `+', or `?' as follows: 

     {} {,} {0,}    *
     {1,}           +
     {,1} {0,1}     ?

  Note that {0} and {0,0} are meaningless and will generate an error message 
  at regular expression compile time. 

  Brace quantifiers can also be "lazy". For example {2,5}? would try to match 
  2 times if possible, and will only match 3, 4, or 5 times if that is what is 
  necessary to achieve an overall match. 


  ALTERNATION

  A series of alternative patterns to match can be specified by separating 
  them with vertical pipes, `|'. An example of alternation would be 
  `a|be|sea'. This will match `a', or `be', or `sea'. Each alternative can be 
  an arbitrarily complex regular expression. The alternatives are attempted in 
  the order specified. An empty alternative can be specified if desired, e.g. 
  `a|b|'. Since an empty alternative can match nothingness (the empty string), 
  this guarantees that the expression will match. 


  COMMENTS

  Comments are of the form `(?#<comment text>)' and can be inserted anywhere 
  and have no effect on the execution of the regular expression. They can be 
  handy for documenting very complex regular expressions. Note that a comment 
  begins with `(?#' and ends at the first occurrence of an ending parenthesis, 
  or the end of the regular expression... period. Comments do not recognize 
  any escape sequences. 

--------------
METACHARACTERS
--------------


  ESCAPING METACHARACTERS

  In a regular expression (regex), most ordinary characters match themselves. 
  For example, `ab%' would match anywhere `a' followed by `b' followed by `%' 
  appeared in the text. Other characters don't match themselves, but are 
  metacharacters. For example, backslash is a special metacharacter which 
  'escapes' or changes the meaning of the character following it. Thus, to 
  match a literal backslash would require a regular expression to have two 
  backslashes in sequence. NEdit provides the following escape sequences so 
  that metacharacters that are used by the regex syntax can be specified as 
  ordinary characters. 

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


  SPECIAL CONTROL CHARACTERS

  There are some special characters that are difficult or impossible to type. 
  Many of these characters can be constructed as a sort of metacharacter or 
  sequence by preceding a literal character with a backslash. NEdit recognizes 
  the following special character sequences: 

     \a  alert (bell)
     \b  backspace
     \e  ASCII escape character (***)
     \f  form feed (new page)
     \n  newline
     \r  carriage return
     \t  horizontal tab
     \v  vertical tab

     *** For environments that use the EBCDIC character set,
         when compiling NEdit set the EBCDIC_CHARSET compiler
         symbol to get the EBCDIC equivalent escape
         character.)


  OCTAL AND HEX ESCAPE SEQUENCES

  Any ASCII (or EBCDIC) character, except null, can be specified by using 
  either an octal escape or a hexadecimal escape, each beginning with \0 or \x 
  (or \X), respectively. For example, \052 and \X2A both specify the `*' 
  character. Escapes for null (\00 or \x0) are not valid and will generate an 
  error message. Also, any escape that exceeds \0377 or \xFF will either cause 
  an error or have any additional character(s) interpreted literally. For 
  example, \0777 will be interpreted as \077 (a `?' character) followed by `7' 
  since \0777 is greater than \0377. 

  An invalid digit will also end an octal or hexadecimal escape. For example, 
  \091 will cause an error since `9' is not within an octal escape's range of 
  allowable digits (0-7) and truncation before the `9' yields \0 which is 
  invalid. 


  SHORTCUT ESCAPE SEQUENCES

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

     \d  digits            0-9
     \l  letters           a-z 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. 

------------------------
PARENTHETICAL CONSTRUCTS
------------------------


  CAPTURING PARENTHESES

  Capturing Parentheses are of the form `(<regex>)' and can be used to group 
  arbitrarily complex regular expressions. Parentheses can be nested, but the 
  total number of parentheses, nested or otherwise, is limited to 50 pairs. 
  The text that is matched by the regular expression between a matched set of 
  parentheses is captured and available for text substitutions and 
  backreferences (see below.) Capturing parentheses carry a fairly high 
  overhead both in terms of memory used and execution speed, especially if 
  quantified by `*' or `+'. 


  NON-CAPTURING PARENTHESES

  Non-Capturing Parentheses are of the form `(?:<regex>)' and facilitate 
  grouping only and do not incur the overhead of normal capturing parentheses. 
  They should not be counted when determining numbers for capturing 
  parentheses which are used with backreferences and substitutions. Because of 
  the limit on the number of capturing parentheses allowed in a regex, it is 
  advisable to use non-capturing parentheses when possible. 


  POSITIVE LOOK-AHEAD

  Positive look-ahead constructs are of the form `(?=<regex>)' and implement a 
  zero width assertion of the enclosed regular expression. In other words, a 
  match of the regular expression contained in the positive look-ahead 
  construct is attempted. If it succeeds, control is passed to the next 
  regular expression atom, but the text that was consumed by the positive 
  look-ahead is first unmatched (backtracked) to the place in the text where 
  the positive look-ahead was first encountered. 

  One application of positive look-ahead is the manual implementation of a 
  first character discrimination optimization. You can include a positive 
  look-ahead that contains a character class which lists every character that 
  the following (potentially complex) regular expression could possibly start 
  with. This will quickly filter out match attempts that can not possibly 
  succeed. 


  NEGATIVE LOOK-AHEAD

  Negative look-ahead takes the form `(?!<regex>)' and is exactly the same as 
  positive look-ahead except that the enclosed regular expression must NOT 
  match. This can be particularly useful when you have an expression that is 
  general, and you want to exclude some special cases. Simply precede the 
  general expression with a negative look-ahead that covers the special cases 
  that need to be filtered out. 


  CASE SENSITIVITY

  There are two parenthetical constructs that control case sensitivity: 

     (?i<regex>)   Case insensitive; `AbcD' and `aBCd' are
                   equivalent.

     (?I<regex>)   Case sensitive;   `AbcD' and `aBCd' are
                   different.

  Regular expressions are case sensitive by default, that is, `(?I<regex>)' is 
  assumed. All regular expression token types respond appropriately to case 
  insensitivity including character classes and backreferences. There is some 
  extra overhead involved when case insensitivity is in effect, but only to 
  the extent of converting each character compared to lower case. 


  MATCHING NEWLINES

  NEdit regular expressions by default handle the matching of newlines in a 
  way that should seem natural for most editing tasks. There are situations, 
  however, that require finer control over how newlines are matched by some 
  regular expression tokens. 

  By default, NEdit regular expressions will NOT match a newline character for 
  the following regex tokens: dot (`.'); a negated character class (`[^...]'); 
  and the following shortcuts for character classes: 

     `\d', `\D', `\l', `\L', `\s', `\S', `\w', `\W', `\Y'

  The matching of newlines can be controlled for the `.' token, negated 
  character classes, and the `\s' and `\S' shortcuts by using one of the 
  following parenthetical constructs: 

     (?n<regex>)  `.', `[^...]', `\s', `\S' match newlines

     (?N<regex>)  `.', `[^...]', `\s', `\S' don't match
                                            newlines

  `(?N<regex>)' is the default behavior. 


  NOTES ON NEW PARENTHETICAL CONSTRUCTS

  Except for plain parentheses, none of the parenthetical constructs capture 
  text. If that is desired, the construct must be wrapped with capturing 
  parentheses, e.g. `((?i<regex))'. 

  All parenthetical constructs can be nested as deeply as desired, except for 
  capturing parentheses which have a limit of 50 sets of parentheses, 
  regardless of nesting level. 


  BACK REFERENCES

  Backreferences allow you to match text captured by a set of capturing 
  parenthesis at some later position in your regular expression. A 
  backreference is specified using a single backslash followed by a single 
  digit from 1 to 9 (example: \3). Backreferences have similar syntax to 
  substitutions (see below), but are different from substitutions in that they 
  appear within the regular expression, not the substitution string. The 
  number specified with a backreference identifies which set of text capturing 
  parentheses the backreference is associated with. The text that was most 
  recently captured by these parentheses is used by the backreference to 
  attempt a match. As with substitutions, open parentheses are counted from 
  left to right beginning with 1. So the backreference `\3' will try to match 
  another occurrence of the text most recently matched by the third set of 
  capturing parentheses. As an example, the regular expression `(\d)\1' could 
  match `22', `33', or `00', but wouldn't match `19' or `01'. 

  A backreference must be associated with a parenthetical expression that is 
  complete. The expression `(\w(\1))' contains an invalid backreference since 
  the first set of parentheses are not complete at the point where the 
  backreference appears. 


  SUBSTITUTION

  Substitution strings are used to replace text matched by a set of capturing 
  parentheses. The substitution string is mostly interpreted as ordinary text 
  except as follows. 

  The escape sequences described above for special characters, and octal and 
  hexadecimal escapes are treated the same way by a substitution string. When 
  the substitution string contains the `&' character, NEdit will substitute 
  the entire string that was matched by the `Find...' operation. Any of the 
  first nine sub-expressions of the match string can also be inserted into the 
  replacement string. This is done by inserting a `\' followed by a digit from 
  1 to 9 that represents the string matched by a parenthesized expression 
  within the regular expression. These expressions are numbered left-to-right 
  in order of their opening parentheses. 

  The capitalization of text inserted by `&' or `\1', `\2', ... `\9' can be 
  altered by preceding them with `\U', `\u', `\L', or `\l'. `\u' and `\l' 
  change only the first character of the inserted entity, while `\U' and `\L' 
  change the entire entity to upper or lower case, respectively. 

---------------
ADVANCED TOPICS
---------------


  SUBSTITUTIONS

  Regular expression substitution can be used to program automatic editing 
  operations. For example, the following are search and replace strings to 
  find occurrences of the `C' language subroutine `get_x', reverse the first 
  and second parameters, add a third parameter of NULL, and change the name to 
  `new_get_x': 

     Search string:   `get_x *\( *([^ ,]*), *([^\)]*)\)'
     Replace string:  `new_get_x(\2, \1, NULL)'


  AMBIGUITY

  If a regular expression could match two different parts of the text, it will 
  match the one which begins earliest. If both begin in the same place but 
  match different lengths, or match the same length in different ways, life 
  gets messier, as follows. 

  In general, the possibilities in a list of alternatives are considered in 
  left-to-right order. The possibilities for `*', `+', and `?' are considered 
  longest-first, nested constructs are considered from the outermost in, and 
  concatenated constructs are considered leftmost-first. The match that will 
  be chosen is the one that uses the earliest possibility in the first choice 
  that has to be made. If there is more than one choice, the next will be made 
  in the same manner (earliest possibility) subject to the decision on the 
  first choice. And so forth. 

  For example, `(ab|a)b*c' could match `abc' in one of two ways. The first 
  choice is between `ab' and `a'; since `ab' is earlier, and does lead to a 
  successful overall match, it is chosen. Since the `b' is already spoken for, 
  the `b*' must match its last possibility, the empty string, since it must 
  respect the earlier choice. 

  In the particular case where no `|'s are present and there is only one `*', 
  `+', or `?', the net effect is that the longest possible match will be 
  chosen. So `ab*', presented with `xabbbby', will match `abbbb'. Note that if 
  `ab*' is tried against `xabyabbbz', it will match `ab' just after `x', due 
  to the begins-earliest rule. (In effect, the decision on where to start the 
  match is the first choice to be made, hence subsequent choices must respect 
  it even if this leads them to less-preferred alternatives.) 


  REFERENCES

  An excellent book on the care and feeding of regular expressions is 

          "Mastering Regular Expressions"
          Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
          (c) 1997, O'Reilly & Associates
          ISBN 1-56592-257-3

---------------------------
EXAMPLE REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
---------------------------

  The following are regular expression examples which will match: 

    * An entire line.
        ^.*$
 
    * Blank lines.
        ^$
 
    * Whitespace on a line.
        \s+
 
    * Whitespace across lines.
        (?n\s+)
 
    * Whitespace that spans at least two lines. Note minimal matching `*?' quantifier.
        (?n\s*?\n\s*)
 
    * IP address (not robust).
        (?:\d{1,3}(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})
 
    * Two character US Postal state abbreviations (includes territories).
        [ACDF-IK-PR-W][A-Z]
 
    * Web addresses.
        (?:http://)?www\.\S+
 
    * Case insensitive double words across line breaks.
        (?i(?n<(\S+)\s+\1>))
 
    * Upper case words with possible punctuation.
        <[A-Z][^a-z\s]*>

======================
MACRO/SHELL EXTENSIONS
======================

--------------------------
SHELL COMMANDS AND FILTERS
--------------------------

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

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

  Execute Command... prompts you for a Unix command and replaces the current 
  selection with the output of the command. If there is no selection, it 
  deposits the output at the current insertion point. In the Shell Command 
  field, the % character expands to the name (including directory path), and 
  the # character expands to the current line number of the file in the 
  window. To include a % or # character in the command, use %% or ##, 
  respectively. 

  Execute Command Line uses the position of the cursor in the window to 
  indicate a line to execute as a shell command line. The cursor may be 
  positioned anywhere on the line. This command allows you to use an NEdit 
  window as an editable command window for saving output and saving commands 
  for re-execution. Note that the same character expansions described above in 
  Execute Command also occur with this command. 

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

------------
LEARN/REPLAY
------------

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

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

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


  REPEATING ACTIONS AND LEARN/REPLAY SEQUENCES

  You can repeat the last (keyboard-based) command, or learn/replay sequence 
  with the Repeat... command in the Macro menu. To repeat an action, first do 
  the action (that is, insert a character, do a search, move the cursor), then 
  select Repeat..., decide how or how many times you want it repeated, and 
  click OK. For example, to move down 30 lines through a file, you could type: 
  <Down Arrow> Ctrl+, 29 <Return>. To repeat a learn/replay sequence, first 
  learn it, then select Repeat..., click on Learn/Replay and how you want it 
  repeated, then click OK. 

  If the commands you are repeating advance the cursor through the file, you 
  can also repeat them within a range of characters, or from the current 
  cursor position to the end of the file. To iterate over a range of 
  characters, use the primary selection (drag the left mouse button over the 
  text) to mark the range you want to operate on, and select "In Selection" in 
  the Repeat dialog. 

  When using In "Selection" or "To End" with a learned sequence, try to do 
  cursor movement as the last step in the sequence, since testing of the 
  cursor position is only done at the end of the sequence execution. If you do 
  cursor movement first, for example searching for a particular word then 
  doing a modification, the position of the cursor won't be checked until the 
  sequence has potentially gone far beyond the end of your desired range. 

  It's easy for a repeated command to get out of hand, and you can easily 
  generate an infinite loop by using range iteration on a command which 
  doesn't progress. To cancel a repeating command in progress, type Ctrl+. 
  (period), or select Cancel Macro from the Macro menu. 

--------------
MACRO LANGUAGE
--------------

  Macros can be called from Macro menu commands, window background menu 
  commands, within the smart-indent framework, and from the .neditmacro file. 
  Macro menu and window background menu commands are defined under Preferences 
  -> Default Settings -> Customize Menus. Help on creating items in these 
  menus can be found in the section, Help -> Customizing -> Preferences. The 
  .neditmacro file is a file of macro commands and definitions which you can 
  create in your home directory, and which NEdit will automatically load when 
  it is first started. 

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


  SYNTAX

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

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

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


  DATA TYPES

  The NEdit macro language recognizes only three data types, dynamic character 
  strings, integer values and associative arrays. In general strings and 
  integers can be used interchangeably. If a string represents an integer 
  value, it can be used as an integer. Integers can be compared and 
  concatenated with strings. Arrays may contain integers, strings, or arrays. 
  Arrays are stored key/value pairs. Keys are always stored as strings. 


  Integer Constants

  Integers are non-fractional numbers in the range of -2147483647 to 
  2147483647. Integer constants must be in decimal. For example: 

    a = -1
    b = 1000


  Character String Constants

  Character string constants are enclosed in double quotes. For example: 

     a = "a string"
     dialog("Hi there!", "Dismiss")

  Strings may also include C-language style escape sequences: 

     \\ Backslash     \t Tab              \f Form feed
     \" Double quote  \b Backspace        \a Alert
     \n Newline       \r Carriage return  \v Vertical tab

  For example, to send output to the terminal from which NEdit was started, a 
  newline character is necessary because, like printf, t_print requires 
  explicit newlines, and also buffers its output on a per-line basis: 

     t_print("a = " a "\n")


  VARIABLES

  Variable names must begin either with a letter (local variables), or a $ 
  (global variables). Beyond the first character, variables may also contain 
  numbers and underscores `_'. Variables are called in to existence just by 
  setting them (no explicit declarations are necessary). 

  Local variables are limited in scope to the subroutine (or menu item 
  definition) in which they appear. Global variables are accessible from all 
  routines, and their values persist beyond the call which created them, until 
  reset. 


  Built-in Variables

  NEdit has a number of permanently defined variables, which are used to 
  access global editor information and information about the the window in 
  which the macro is executing. These are listed along with the built in 
  functions in the section titled "Macro Subroutines". 


  FUNCTIONS AND SUBROUTINES

  The syntax of a function or subroutine call is: 

     function_name(arg1, arg2, ...)

  where arg1, arg2, etc. represent up to 9 argument values which are passed to 
  the routine being called. A function or subroutine call can be on a line by 
  itself, as above, or if it returns a value, can be invoked within a 
  character or numeric expression: 

     a = fn1(b, c) + fn2(d)
     dialog("fn3 says: " fn3())

  Arguments are passed by value. This means that you can not return values via 
  the argument list, only through the function value or indirectly through 
  agreed-upon global variables. 


  Built-in Functions

  NEdit has a wide range of built in functions which can be called from the 
  macro language. These routines are divided into two classes, macro-language 
  functions, and editor action routines. Editor action routines are more 
  flexible, in that they may be called either from the macro language, or 
  bound directly to keys via translation tables. They are also limited, 
  however, in that they can not return values. Macro language routines can 
  return values, but can not be bound to keys in translation tables. 

  Nearly all of the built-in subroutines operate on an implied window, which 
  is initially the window from which the macro was started. To manipulate the 
  contents of other windows, use the focus_window subroutine to change the 
  focus to the ones you wish to modify. focus_window can also be used to 
  iterate over all of the currently open windows, using the special keyword 
  names, "last" and "next". 

  For backwards compatibility, hyphenated action routine names are allowed, 
  and most of the existing action routines names which contain underscores 
  have an equivalent version containing hyphens ('-') instead of underscores. 
  Use of these names is discouraged. The macro parser resolves the ambiguity 
  between '-' as the subtraction/negation operator, and - as part of an action 
  routine name by assuming subtraction unless the symbol specifically matches 
  an action routine name. 


  User Defined Functions

  Users can define their own macro subroutines, using the define keyword: 

     define subroutine_name {
        < body of subroutine >
     }

  Macro definitions can not appear within other definitions, or within macro 
  menu item definitions (usually they are found in the .neditmacro file). 

  The arguments with which a user-defined subroutine or function was invoked, 
  are presented as $1, $2, ... , $9. The number of arguments can be read from 
  $n_args. 

  To return a value from a subroutine, and/or to exit from the subroutine 
  before the end of the subroutine body, use the return statement: 

     return <value to return>


  OPERATORS AND EXPRESSIONS

  Operators have the same meaning and precedence that they do in C, except for 
  ^, which raises a number to a power (y^x means y to the x power), rather 
  than bitwise exclusive OR. The table below lists operators in decreasing 
  order of precedence. 

     Operators                Associativity
     ()
     ^                        right to left
     - ! ++ --                (unary)
     * / %                    left to right
     + -                      left to right
     > >= < <= == !=          left to right
     &                        left to right
     |                        left to right
     &&                       left to right
     ||                       left to right
     (concatenation)          left to right
     = += -= *= /= %=, &= |=  right to left

  The order in which operands are evaluated in an expression is undefined, 
  except for && and ||, which like C, evaluate operands left to right, but 
  stop when further evaluation would no longer change the result. 


  Numerical Operators

  The numeric operators supported by the NEdit macro language are listed 
  below: 

     + addition
     - subtraction or negation
     * multiplication
     / division
     % modulo
     ^ power
     & bitwise and
     | bitwise or

  Increment (++) and decrement (--) operators can also be appended or 
  prepended to variables within an expression. Prepended increment/decrement 
  operators act before the variable is evaluated. Appended increment/decrement 
  operators act after the variable is evaluated. 


  Logical and Comparison Operators

  Logical operations produce a result of 0 (for false) or 1 (for true). In a 
  logical operation, any non-zero value is recognized to mean true. The 
  logical and comparison operators allowed in the NEdit macro language are 
  listed below: 

     && logical and
     || logical or
     !  not
     >  greater
     <  less
     >= greater or equal
     <= less or equal
     == equal (integers and/or strings)
     != not equal (integers and/or strings)


  Character String Operators

  The "operator" for concatenating two strings is the absence of an operator. 
  Adjoining character strings with no operator in between means concatenation: 

     d = a b "string" c
     t_print("the value of a is: " a)

  Comparison between character strings is done with the == and != operators, 
  (as with integers). There are a number of useful built-in routines for 
  working with character strings, which are listed in the section called 
  "Macro Subroutines". 


  Arrays and Array Operators

  Arrays may contain either strings, integers, or other arrays. Arrays are 
  associative, which means that they relate two pieces of information, the key 
  and the value. The key is always a string; if you use integers they are 
  converted to strings. 

  To determine if a given key is in an array, use the in keyword. 

      if ("6" in x)
          <body>

  If the left side of the in keyword is an array, the result is true if every 
  key in the left array is in the right array. Array values are not compared. 

  To iterate through all the keys of an array use the for looping construct. 
  Keys are not guaranteed in any particular order: 

      for (aKey in x)
          <body>

  Elements can be removed from an array using the delete command: 

      delete x[3] # deletes element with key 3
      delete x[]  # deletes all elements

  The number of elements in an array can be determined by referencing the 
  array with no indices: 

      dialog("array x has " x[] " elements", "OK")

  Arrays can be combined with some operators. All the following operators only 
  compare the keys of the arrays. 

      result = x + y   (Merge arrays)

  The 'result' is a new array containing keys from both x and y. If duplicates 
  are present values from y are used. 

      result = x - y   (Remove keys)

  The 'result' is a new array containing all keys from x that are not in y. 

      result = x & y   (Common keys)

  The 'result' is a new array containing all keys which are in both x and y. 
  The values from y are used. 

      result = x | y   (Unique keys)

  The 'result' is a new array containing keys which exist in either x or y, 
  but not both. 

  When duplicate keys are encountered using the + and & operators, the values 
  from the array on the right side of the operators are used for the result. 
  All of the above operators are array only, meaning both the left and right 
  sides of the operator must be arrays. The results are also arrays. 

  Array keys can also contain multiple dimensions: 

      x[1, 1, 1] = "string"

  These are used in the expected way, e.g.: 

      for (i = 1; i < 3; i++)
      {
          for (j = 1; j < 3; j++)
          {
              x[i, j] = k++
          }
      }

  gives the following array: 

      x[1, 1] = 0
      x[1, 2] = 1
      x[2, 1] = 2
      x[2, 2] = 3

  Internally all indices are part of one string, separated by the string 
  $sub_sep (ASCII 0x18). The first key in the above example is in fact 

      ["1" $sub_sep "1"]

  If you need to extract one of the keys, you can use split(), using $sub_sep 
  as the separator. 

  You can also check for the existence of multi-dimensional array by looking 
  for $sub_sep in the key. 

  Last, you need $sub_sep if you want to use the 'in' keyword. 

      if ((1,2) in myArray)
      {..}

  doesn't work, but 

      if (("1" $sub_sep "2") in myArray)
      {..}

  does work. 


  LOOPING AND CONDITIONALS

  NEdit supports looping constructs: for and while, and conditional 
  statements: if and else, with essentially the same syntax as C: 

     for (<init>, ...; <condition>; <increment>, ...) <body>

     while (<condition>) <body>

     if (<condition>) <body>

     if (<condition>) <body> else <body>

  <body>, as in C, can be a single statement, or a list of statements enclosed 
  in curly braces ({}). <condition> is an expression which must evaluate to 
  true for the statements in <body> to be executed. for loops may also contain 
  initialization statements, <init>, executed once at the beginning of the 
  loop, and increment/decrement statements (or any arbitrary statement), which 
  are executed at the end of the loop, before the condition is evaluated 
  again. 

  Examples: 

    for (i=0; i<100; i++)
       j = i * 2

    for (i=0, j=20; i<20; i++, j--) {
       k = i * j
       t_print(i, j, k)
    }

    while (k > 0)
    {
       k = k - 1
       t_print(k)
    }

    for (;;) {
       if (i-- < 1)
           break
    }

  Loops may contain break and continue statements. A break statement causes an 
  exit from the innermost loop, a continue statement transfers control to the 
  end of the loop. 

-----------------
MACRO SUBROUTINES
-----------------


  BUILT IN VARIABLES

  These variables are read-only and can not be changed. 

$active_pane
  Index of the current pane. 

$auto_indent
  Contains the current preference for auto indent. Can be "off", "on" or 
  "auto". 

$cursor
  Position of the cursor in the current window. 

$column
  Column number of the cursor position in the current window. 

$display_width
  Width of the current pane in pixels. 

$em_tab_dist
  If tab emulation is turned on in the Tabs... dialog of the Preferences menu, 
  value is the distance between emulated tab stops. If tab emulation is turned 
  off, value is -1. 

$empty_array
  An array with no elements. This can be used to initialize an array to an 
  empty state. 

$file_format
  Current newline format that the file will be saved with. Can be "unix", 
  "dos" or "macintosh". 

$file_name
  Name of the file being edited in the current window, stripped of directory 
  component. 

$file_path
  Directory component of file being edited in the current window. 

$font_name
  Contains the current plain text font name. 

$font_name_bold
  Contains the current bold text font name. 

$font_name_bold_italic
  Contains the current bold-italic text font name. 

$font_name_italic
  Contains the current italic text font name. 

$highlight_syntax
  Whether syntax highlighting is turned on. 

$incremental_backup
  Contains 1 if incremental auto saving is on, otherwise 0. 

$incremental_search_line
  Has a value of 1 if the preference is selected to always show the 
  incremental search line, otherwise 0. 

$language_mode
  Name of language mode set in the current window. 

$line
  Line number of the cursor position in the current window. 

$locked
  True if the file has been locked by the user. 

$make_backup_copy
  Has a value of 1 if original file is kept in a backup file on save, 
  otherwise 0. 

$max_font_width
  The maximum font width of all the active styles. Syntax highlighting styles 
  are only considered if syntax highlighting is turned on. 

$min_font_width
  The minimum font width of all the active styles. Syntax highlighting styles 
  are only considered if syntax highlighting is turned on. 

$modified
  True if the file in the current window has been modified and the 
  modifications have not yet been saved. 

$n_display_lines
  The number of lines visible in the currently active pane. 

$n_panes
  The number of panes in the current window. 

$overtype_mode
  True if in Overtype mode. 

$read_only
  True if the file is read only. 

$selection_start, $selection_end   
  Beginning and ending positions of the primary selection in the current 
  window, or -1 if there is no text selected in the current window. 

$selection_left, $selection_right  
  Left and right character offsets of the rectangular (primary) selection in 
  the current window, or -1 if there is no selection or it is not rectangular. 

$server_name
  Name of the current NEdit server. 

$show_line_numbers
  Whether line numbers are shown next to the text. 

$show_matching
  Contains the current preference for showing matching pairs, such as "[]" and 
  "{}" pairs. Can be "off", "delimiter", or "range". 

$statistics_line
  Has a value of 1 if the statistics line is shown, otherwise 0. 

$sub_sep
  Contains the value of the array sub-script separation string. 

$tab_dist
  The distance between tab stops for a hardware tab character, as set in the 
  Tabs... dialog of the Preferences menu. 

$text_length
  The length of the text in the current window. 

$top_line
  The line number of the top line of the currently active pane. 

$use_tabs
  Whether the user is allowing the NEdit to insert tab characters to maintain 
  spacing in tab emulation and rectangular dragging operations. (The setting 
  of the "Use tab characters in padding and emulated tabs" button in the 
  Tabs... dialog of the Preferences menu.) 

$wrap_margin
  The right margin in the current window for text wrapping and filling. 

$wrap_text
  The current wrap text mode. Values are "none", "auto" or "continuous". 


  BUILT-IN SUBROUTINES

append_file( string, filename )
  Appends a string to a named file. Returns 1 on successful write, or 0 if 
  unsuccessful. 

beep()
  Ring the bell. 

clipboard_to_string()  
  Returns the contents of the clipboard as a macro string. Returns empty 
  string on error. 

dialog( message, btn_1_label, btn_2_label, ... )  
  Pop up a dialog for querying and presenting information to the user. First 
  argument is a string to show in the message area of the dialog. Up to eight 
  additional optional arguments represent labels for buttons to appear along 
  the bottom of the dialog. Returns the number of the button pressed (the 
  first button is number 1), or 0 if the user closed the dialog via the window 
  close box. 

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

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

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

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

getenv( name )
  Gets the value of an environment variable. 

length( string )
  Returns the length of a string 

list_dialog( message, text, btn_1_label, btn_2_label, ... )  
  Pop up a dialog for prompting the user to choose a line from the given text 
  string. The first argument is a message string to be used as a title for the 
  fixed text describing the list. The second string provides the list data: 
  this is a text string in which list entries are separated by newline 
  characters. Up to seven additional optional arguments represent labels for 
  buttons to appear along the bottom of the dialog. Returns the line of text 
  selected by the user as the function value (without any newline separator) 
  or the empty string if none was selected, and number of the button pressed 
  (the first button is number 1), in $list_dialog_button. If the user closes 
  the dialog via the window close box, the function returns the empty string, 
  and $list_dialog_button returns 0. 

max( n1, n2, ... )
  Returns the maximum value of all of its arguments 

min( n1, n2, ... )
  Returns the minimum value of all of its arguments 

read_file( filename )  
  Reads the contents of a text file into a string. On success, returns 1 in 
  $read_status, and the contents of the file as a string in the subroutine 
  return value. On failure, returns the empty string "" and an 0 $read_status. 

replace_in_string( string, search_for, replace_with [, type] )  
  Replaces all occurrences of a search string in a string with a replacement 
  string. Arguments are 1: string to search in, 2: string to search for, 3: 
  replacement string. Argument 4 is an optional search type, one of "literal", 
  "case", "word", "caseWord", "regex", or "regexNoCase". The default search 
  type is "literal". Returns a new string with all of the replacements done, 
  or an empty string ("") if no occurrences were found. 

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

replace_selection( string )  
  Replaces the primary-selection selected text in the current window. 

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

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

search_string( string, search_for, start [, search_type, direction] ) 

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

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

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

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

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

split(string, separation_string [, search_type])
  Splits a string using the separator specified. Optionally the search_type 
  argument can specify how the separation_string is interpreted. The default 
  is "literal". The returned value is an array with keys beginning at 0. 

string_dialog( message, btn_1_label, btn_2_label, ... )  
  Pops up a dialog prompting the user to enter information. The first argument 
  is a string to show in the message area of the dialog. Up to nine additional 
  optional arguments represent labels for buttons to appear along the bottom 
  of the dialog. Returns the string entered by the user as the function value, 
  and number of the button pressed (the first button is number 1), in 
  $string_dialog_button. If the user closes the dialog via the window close 
  box, the function returns the empty string, and $string_dialog_button 
  returns 0. 

string_compare(string1, string2 [, consider-case])
  Compare two strings and return 0 if they are equal, -1 if string1 is less 
  than string2 or 1 if string1 is greater than string2. The values for the 
  optional consider-case argument is either "case" or "nocase". The default is 
  to do a case sensitive comparison. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

---------------
ACTION ROUTINES
---------------

  All of the editing capabilities of NEdit are represented as a special type 
  of subroutine, called an action routine, which can be invoked from both 
  macros and translation table entries (see "Key Binding" in the Customizing 
  section of the Help menu). 


  ACTIONS REPRESENTING MENU COMMANDS

    File Menu                 Search Menu
    -----------------------   -------------------------
    new()                     find()
    open()                    find_dialog()
    open_dialog()             find_again()
    open_selected()           find_selection()
    close()                   replace()
    save()                    replace_dialog()
    save_as()                 replace_all()
    save_as_dialog()          replace_in_selection()
    revert_to_saved()         replace_again()
    include_file()            goto_line_number()
    include_file_dialog()     goto_line_number_dialog()
    load_macro_file()         goto_selected()
    load_macro_file_dialog()  mark()
    load_tags_file()          mark_dialog()
    load_tags_file_dialog()   goto_mark()
    unload_tags_file()        goto_mark_dialog()
    print()                   goto_matching()
    print_selection()         select_to_matching()
    exit()                    find_definition()

    Edit Menu                 Shell Menu
    -----------------------   -------------------------
    undo()                    filter_selection_dialog()
    redo()                    filter_selection()
    delete()                  execute_command()
    select_all()              execute_command_dialog()
    shift_left()              execute_command_line()
    shift_left_by_tab()       shell_menu_command()
    shift_right()
    shift_right_by_tab()      Macro Menu
    uppercase()               -------------------------
    lowercase()               macro_menu_command()
    fill_paragraph()          repeat_macro()
    control_code_dialog()     repeat_dialog()

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

  An action representing a menu command is named the same as its corresponding 
  menu item except that all punctuation is removed, all letters are changed to 
  lower case, and spaces are replaced with underscores. To present a dialog to 
  ask the user for input, use the actions with the `_dialog` suffix. Actions 
  without the `_dialog` suffix take the information from the routine's 
  arguments (see below). 


  MENU ACTION ROUTINE ARGUMENTS

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

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

    execute_command( shell-command )

    filter_selection( shell-command )

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

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

    find_definition( [tag-name] )

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

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

    goto_line_number( [line-number] )

    goto_mark( mark-letter )

    include_file( filename )

    load_tags_file( filename )

    macro_menu_command( macro-menu-item-name )

    mark( mark-letter )

    open( filename )

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

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

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

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

    save_as( filename )

    shell_menu_command( shell-menu-item-name )

    unload_tags_file( filename )

    ----------- Some notes on argument types above -----------

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

    keep-dialog    Either "keep" or "nokeep".

    mark-letter    The mark command limits users to single 
                   letters. Inside of macros, numeric marks are
                   allowed, which won't interfere with marks set
                   by the user.

    macro-menu-item-name
                   Name of the command exactly as specified in 
                   the Macro Menu dialogs.

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

    search-direction
                   Either "forward" or "backward".

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

    search-wrap    Either "wrap" or "nowrap".

    shell-menu-item-name
                   Name of the command exactly as specified in 
                   the Shell Menu dialogs.


  WINDOW PREFERENCES ACTIONS

set_auto_indent( "off" | "on" | "smart" )
  Set auto indent mode for the current window. 

set_em_tab_dist( em-tab-distance )
  Set the emulated tab size. An em-tab-distance value of 0 or -1 translates to 
  no emulated tabs. Em-tab-distance must be smaller than 1000. 

set_fonts( font-name, italic-font-name, bold-font-name, bold-italic-font-name )
  Set all the fonts used for the current window. 

set_highlight_syntax( [0 | 1] )
  Set syntax highlighting mode for the current window. A value of 0 turns it 
  off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option 
  is toggled. 

set_incremental_backup( [0 | 1] )
  Set incremental backup mode for the current window. A value of 0 turns it 
  off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option 
  is toggled. 

set_incremental_search_line( [0 | 1] )
  Show or hide the incremental search line for the current window. A value of 
  0 turns it off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied 
  the option is toggled. 

set_language_mode( language-mode )
  Set the language mode for the current window. If the language mode is "" or 
  unrecognized, it will be set to Plain. 

set_locked( [0 | 1] )
  This only affects the locked status of a file, not it's read-only status. 
  Permissions are NOT changed. A value of 0 turns it off and a value of 1 
  turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option is toggled. 

set_make_backup_copy( [0 | 1] )
  Set whether backup copies are made during saves for the current window. A 
  value of 0 turns it off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are 
  supplied the option is toggled. 

set_overtype_mode( [0 | 1] )
  Set overtype mode for the current window. A value of 0 turns it off and a 
  value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option is toggled. 

set_show_line_numbers( [0 | 1] )
  Show or hide line numbers for the current window. A value of 0 turns it off 
  and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option is 
  toggled. 

set_show_matching( "off" | "delimiter" | "range" )
  Set show matching (...) mode for the current window. 

set_statistics_line( [0 | 1] )
  Show or hide the statistics line for the current window. A value of 0 turns 
  it off and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the 
  option is toggled. 

set_tab_dist( tab-distance )
  Set the size of hardware tab spacing. Tab-distance must must be a value 
  greater than 0 and no greater than 20. 

set_use_tabs( [0 | 1] )
  Set whether tabs are used for the current window. A value of 0 turns it off 
  and a value of 1 turns it on. If no parameters are supplied the option is 
  toggled. 

set_wrap_margin( wrap-width )
  Set the wrap width for text wrapping of the current window. A value of 0 
  means to wrap at window width. 

set_wrap_text( "none" | "auto" | "continuous" )
  Set wrap text mode for the current window. 


  KEYBOARD-ONLY ACTIONS

  In addition to the arguments listed in the call descriptions below, any 
  routine involving cursor movement can take the argument "extend", meaning, 
  adjust the primary selection to the new cursor position. Routines which take 
  the "extend" argument as well as mouse dragging operations for both primary 
  and secondary selections can take the optional keyword "rect", meaning, make 
  the selection rectangular. Any routine that accepts the "scrollbar" argument 
  will move the display but not the cursor or selection. Routines that accept 
  the "nobell" argument will fail silently without beeping, when that argument 
  is supplied. 

backward_character( ["nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor one character to the left. 

backward_paragraph(["nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor to the beginning of the paragraph, or if the cursor is 
  already at the beginning of a paragraph, moves the cursor to the beginning 
  of the previous paragraph. Paragraphs are defined as regions of text 
  delimited by one or more blank lines. 

backward_word( ["nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor to the beginning of a word, or, if the cursor is already at 
  the beginning of a word, moves the cursor to the beginning of the previous 
  word. Word delimiters are user-settable, and defined by the X resource 
  wordDelimiters. 

beginning_of_file( ["scrollbar"] )
  Moves the cursor to the beginning of the file. 

beginning_of_line()
  Moves the cursor to the beginning of the line. 

beginning_of_selection()
  Moves the cursor to the beginning of the selection without disturbing the 
  selection. 

copy_clipboard()
  Copies the current selection to the clipboard. 

copy_primary()
  Copies the primary selection to the cursor. 

copy_to()
  If a secondary selection exists, copies the secondary selection to the 
  cursor. If no secondary selection exists, copies the primary selection to 
  the pointer location. 

copy_to_or_end_drag()
  Completes either a secondary selection operation, or a primary drag. If the 
  user is dragging the mouse to adjust a secondary selection, the selection is 
  copied and either inserted at the cursor location, or, if pending-delete is 
  on and a primary selection exists in the window, replaces the primary 
  selection. If the user is dragging a block of text (primary selection), 
  completes the drag operation and leaves the text at it's current location. 

cut_clipboard()
  Deletes the text in the primary selection and places it in the clipboard. 

cut_primary()
  Copies the primary selection to the cursor and deletes it at its original 
  location. 

delete_selection()
  Deletes the contents of the primary selection. 

delete_next_character( ["nobell"] )
  If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the 
  character following the cursor. 

delete_previous_character( ["nobell"] )
  If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the 
  character before the cursor. 

delete_next_word( ["nobell"] )
  If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the 
  word following the cursor. 

delete_previous_word( ["nobell"] )
  If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the 
  word before the cursor. 

delete_to_start_of_line( ["nobell"] )
  If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the 
  characters between the cursor and the start of the line. 

delete_to_end_of_line( ["nobell"] )
  If a primary selection exists, deletes its contents. Otherwise, deletes the 
  characters between the cursor and the end of the line. 

deselect_all()
  De-selects the primary selection. 

end_of_file( ["scrollbar"] )
  Moves the cursor to the end of the file. 

end_of_line()
  Moves the cursor to the end of the line. 

end_of_selection()
  Moves the cursor to the end of the selection without disturbing the 
  selection. 

exchange( ["nobell"] )
  Exchange the primary and secondary selections. 

extend_adjust()
  Attached mouse-movement events to begin a selection between the cursor and 
  the mouse, or extend the primary selection to the mouse position. 

extend_end()
  Completes a primary drag-selection operation. 

extend_start()
  Begins a selection between the cursor and the mouse. A drag-selection 
  operation can be started with either extend_start or grab_focus. 

focus_pane( [relative-pane] | [positive-index] | [negative-index] )
  Move the focus to the requested pane. Arguments can be specified in the form 
  of a relative-pane ("first", "last", "next", "previous"), a positive-index 
  (numbers greater than 0, 1 is the same as "first") or a negative-index 
  (numbers less than 0, -1 is the same as "last"). 

forward_character()
  Moves the cursor one character to the right. 

forward_paragraph( ["nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next paragraph. Paragraphs are 
  defined as regions of text delimited by one or more blank lines. 

forward_word( ["tail"] ["nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next word. Word delimiters are 
  user-settable, and defined by the X resource wordDelimiters. If the "tail" 
  argument is supplied the cursor will be moved to the end of the current word 
  or the end of the next word, if the cursor is between words. 

grab_focus()
  Moves the cursor to the mouse pointer location, and prepares for a possible 
  drag-selection operation (bound to extend_adjust), or multi-click operation 
  (a further grab_focus action). If a second invocation of grab focus follows 
  immediately, it selects a whole word, or a third, a whole line. 

insert_string( "string" )
  If pending delete is on and the cursor is inside the selection, replaces the 
  selection with "string". Otherwise, inserts "string" at the cursor location. 

key_select( "direction" [,"nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor one character in "direction" ("left", "right", "up", or 
  "down") and extends the selection. Same as 
  forward/backward-character("extend"), or process-up/down("extend"), for 
  compatibility with previous versions. 

move-destination()
  Moves the cursor to the pointer location without disturbing the selection. 
  (This is an unusual way of working. We left it in for compatibility with 
  previous versions, but if you actually use this capability, please send us 
  some mail, otherwise it is likely to disappear in the future. 

move_to()
  If a secondary selection exists, deletes the contents of the secondary 
  selection and inserts it at the cursor, or if pending-delete is on and there 
  is a primary selection, replaces the primary selection. If no secondary 
  selection exists, moves the primary selection to the pointer location, 
  deleting it from its original position. 

move_to_or_end_drag()
  Completes either a secondary selection operation, or a primary drag. If the 
  user is dragging the mouse to adjust a secondary selection, the selection is 
  deleted and either inserted at the cursor location, or, if pending-delete is 
  on and a primary selection exists in the window, replaces the primary 
  selection. If the user is dragging a block of text (primary selection), 
  completes the drag operation and deletes the text from it's current 
  location. 

newline()
  Inserts a newline character. If Auto Indent is on, lines up the indentation 
  of the cursor with the current line. 

newline_and_indent()
  Inserts a newline character and lines up the indentation of the cursor with 
  the current line, regardless of the setting of Auto Indent. 

newline_no_indent()
  Inserts a newline character, without automatic indentation, regardless of 
  the setting of Auto Indent. 

next_page( ["stutter"] ["column"] ["scrollbar"] ["nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor and scroll forward one page. The parameter "stutter" moves 
  the cursor to the bottom of the display, unless it is already there, 
  otherwise it will page down. The parameter "column" will maintain the 
  preferred column while moving the cursor. 

page_left( ["scrollbar"] ["nobell"] )
  Move the cursor and scroll left one page. 

page_right( ["scrollbar"] ["nobell"] )
  Move the cursor and scroll right one page. 

paste_clipboard()
  Insert the contents of the clipboard at the cursor, or if pending delete is 
  on, replace the primary selection with the contents of the clipboard. 

previous_page( ["stutter"] ["column"] ["scrollbar"] ["nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor and scroll backward one page. The parameter "stutter" moves 
  the cursor to the top of the display, unless it is already there, otherwise 
  it will page up. The parameter "column" will maintain the preferred column 
  while moving the cursor. 

process_bdrag()
  Same as secondary_or_drag_start for compatibility with previous versions. 

process_cancel()
  Cancels the current extend_adjust, secondary_adjust, or 
  secondary_or_drag_adjust in progress. 

process_down( ["nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor down one line. 

process_return()
  Same as newline for compatibility with previous versions. 

process_shift_down( ["nobell"] )
  Same as process_down("extend") for compatibility with previous versions. 

process_shift_up( ["nobell"] )
  Same as process_up("extend") for compatibility with previous versions. 

process_tab()
  If tab emulation is turned on, inserts an emulated tab, otherwise inserts a 
  tab character. 

process_up( ["nobell"] )
  Moves the cursor up one line. 

raise_window([relative-window] | [positive-index] | [negative-index])
  Raise the current focused window to the front if no argument is supplied. 
  Arguments can be specified in the form of a relative-window ("first", 
  "last", "next", "previous"), a positive-index (numbers greater than 0, 1 is 
  the same as "last") or a negative-index (numbers less than 0, -1 is the same 
  as "first"). 

scroll_down(nLines)
  Scroll the display down (towards the end of the file) by nLines. 

scroll_left( nPixels )
  Scroll the display left by nPixels. 

scroll_right( nPixels )
  Scroll the display right by nPixels. 

scroll_up( nLines )
  Scroll the display up (towards the beginning of the file) by nLines. 

scroll_to_line( lineNum )
  Scroll to position line number lineNum at the top of the pane. The first 
  line of a file is line 1. 

secondary_adjust()
  Attached mouse-movement events to extend the secondary selection to the 
  mouse position. 

secondary_or_drag_adjust()
  Attached mouse-movement events to extend the secondary selection, or 
  reposition the primary text being dragged. Takes two optional arguments, 
  "copy", and "overlay". "copy" leaves a copy of the dragged text at the site 
  at which the drag began. "overlay" does the drag in overlay mode, meaning 
  the dragged text is laid on top of the existing text, obscuring and 
  ultimately deleting it when the drag is complete. 

secondary_or_drag_start()
  To be attached to a mouse down event. Begins drag selecting a secondary 
  selection, or dragging the contents of the primary selection, depending on 
  whether the mouse is pressed inside of an existing primary selection. 

secondary_start()
  To be attached to a mouse down event. Begin drag selecting a secondary 
  selection. 

select_all()
  Select the entire file. 

self_insert()
  To be attached to a key-press event, inserts the character equivalent of the 
  key pressed. 


===========
CUSTOMIZING
===========

-----------------
CUSTOMIZING NEDIT
-----------------

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

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

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

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

-----------
PREFERENCES
-----------

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


  PREFERENCES MENU

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

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

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

Incremental Search Line
  Keep the incremental search bar (Search -> Find Incremental) permanently 
  displayed at the top of the window. 

Show Line Numbers
  Display line numbers to the right of the text. 

Language Mode
  Tells NEdit what language (if any) to assume, for selecting 
  language-specific features such as highlight patterns and smart indent 
  macros, and setting language specific preferences like word delimiters, tab 
  emulation, and auto-indent. See Features for Programming -> Programming with 
  NEdit for more information. 

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

Wrap
  Choose between two styles of automatic wrapping or none. Auto Newline wrap, 
  wraps text at word boundaries when the cursor reaches the right margin, by 
  replacing the space or tab at the last word boundary with a newline 
  character. Continuous Wrap wraps long lines which extend past the right 
  margin. Continuous Wrap mode is typically used to produce files where 
  newlines are omitted within paragraphs, to make text filling automatic (a 
  kind of poor-man's word processor). Text of this style is common on Macs and 
  PCs but is not necessarily supported very well under Unix (except in 
  programs which deal with e-mail, for which it is often the format of 
  choice). 

Wrap Margin
  Set margin for Auto Newline Wrap, Continuous Wrap, and Fill Paragraph. Lines 
  may, be wrapped at the right margin of the window, or the margin can be set 
  at a specific column. 

Tabs
  Set the tab distance (number of characters between tab stops) for tab 
  characters, and control tab emulation and use of tab characters in padding 
  and emulated tabs. 

Text Font...
  Change the font(s) used to display text (fonts for menus and dialogs must be 
  set using X resources for the text area of the window). See below for more 
  information. 

Highlight Syntax
  If NEdit recognizes the language being edited, and highlighting patterns are 
  available for that language, use fonts and colors to enhance viewing of the 
  file. (See Help -> Features for Programming -> Syntax Highlighting for more 
  information. 

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

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

Show Matching (..)
  Momentarily highlight matching parenthesis, brackets, and braces, or the 
  range between them, when one of these characters is typed, or when the 
  insertion cursor is positioned after it. Delimiter only highlights the 
  matching delimiter, while Range highlights the whole range of text between 
  the matching delimiters. 

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

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


  PREFERENCES -> DEFAULT SETTINGS MENU

  Options in the Preferences -> Default Settings menu have the same meaning as 
  those in the top-level Preferences menu, except that they apply to future 
  NEdit windows and future NEdit sessions if saved with the Save Defaults 
  command. Additional options which appear in this menu are: 

Language Modes
  Define language recognition information (for determining language mode from 
  file name or content) and set language specific preferences. 

Tag Collisions
  How to react to multiple tags for the same name. Tags are described in the 
  section: Features for Programmers -> Finding Declarations (ctags). In Show 
  All mode, all matching tags are displayed in a dialog. In Smart mode, if one 
  of the matching tags is in the current window, that tag is chosen, without 
  displaying the dialog. 

Customize Menus
  Add/remove items from the Shell, Macro, and window background menus (see 
  below). 

Customize Window Title
  Opens a dialog where the information to be displayed in the windows's title 
  field can be defined and tested. The dialog contains a Help button, 
  providing further information about the options available. 

Searching
  Options for controlling the behavior of Find and Replace commands: 

  Verbose - Presents search results in dialog form, asks before wrapping a 
  search back around the beginning (or end) of the file (unless Beep On Search 
  Wrap is turned on). 

  Wrap Around - Search and Replace operations wrap around the beginning (or 
  end) of the file. 

  Beep On Search Wrap - Beep when Search and Replace operations wrap around 
  the beginning (or end) of the file (only if Wrap Around is turned on). 

  Keep Dialogs Up - Don't pop down Replace and Find boxes after searching. 

  Default Search Style - Initial setting for search type in Find and Replace 
  dialogs. 

  Default Replace Scope - [THIS OPTION IS ONLY PRESENT WHEN NEDIT WAS COMPILED 
  WITH THE 
   -DREPLACE_SCOPE FLAG TO SELECT AN ALTERNATIVE REPLACE DIALOG LAYOUT.]

  Initial setting for the scope in the Replace/Find dialog, when a selection 
  exists. It can be either "In Window", "In Selection", or "Smart". "Smart" 
  results in "In Window" if the size of the selection is smaller than 1 line, 
  and to "In Selection" otherwise. 

Syntax Highlighting
  Program and configure enhanced text display for new or supported languages 
  (See Features for Programming -> Syntax Highlighting). 

Sort Open Prev. Menu
  Option to order the File -> Open Previous menu alphabetically, versus in 
  order of last access. 

Popups Under Pointer
  Display pop-up dialogs centered on the current mouse position, as opposed to 
  centered on the parent window. This generally speeds interaction, and is 
  essential for users who users who set their window managers so keyboard 
  focus follows the mouse. 

Modification Warnings
  Pop up a warning dialog when files get changed external to NEdit. 

Exit Warnings
  Ask before exiting when two or more files are open in an NEdit session. 

Initial Window Size
  Default size for new windows. 


  CHANGING FONT(S)

  The font used to display text in NEdit is set under Preferences -> Text Font 
  (for the current window), or Preferences -> Default Settings Text Font (for 
  future windows). These dialogs also allow you to set fonts for syntax 
  highlighting. If you don't intend to use syntax highlighting, you can ignore 
  most of the dialog, and just set the field labeled Primary Font. 

  Unless you are absolutely certain about the types of files that you will be 
  editing with NEdit, you should choose a fixed-spacing font. Many, if not 
  most, plain-text files are written expecting to be viewed with fixed 
  character spacing, and will look wrong with proportional spacing. NEdit's 
  filling, wrapping, and rectangular operations will also work strangely if 
  you choose a proportional font. 

  Note that in the font browser (the dialog brought up by the Browse... 
  button), the subset of fonts which are shown is narrowed depending on the 
  characteristics already selected. It is therefore important to know that you 
  can unselect characteristics from the lists by clicking on the selected 
  items a second time. 

  Fonts for syntax highlighting should ideally match the primary font in both 
  height and spacing. A mismatch in spacing will result in similar distortions 
  as choosing a proportional font: column alignment will sometimes look wrong, 
  and rectangular operations, wrapping, and filling will behave strangely. A 
  mismatch in height will cause windows to re-size themselves slightly when 
  syntax highlighting is turned on or off, and increase the inter- line 
  spacing of the text. Unfortunately, on some systems it is hard to find sets 
  of fonts which match exactly in height. 


  CUSTOMIZING MENUS

  You can add or change items in the Shell, Macro, and window background menus 
  under Preferences -> Default Settings -> Customize Menus. When you choose 
  one of these, you will see a dialog with a list of the current 
  user-configurable items from the menu on the left. To change an existing 
  item, select it from the list, and its properties will appear in the 
  remaining fields of the dialog, where you may change them. Selecting the 
  item "New" from the list allows you to enter new items in the menu. 

  Hopefully most of the characteristics are self explanatory, but here are a 
  few things to note: 

  Accelerator keys are keyboard shortcuts which appear on the right hand side 
  of the menus, and allow you avoid pulling down the menu and activate the 
  command with a single keystroke. Enter accelerators by typing the keys 
  exactly as you would to activate the command. 

  Mnemonics are a single letter which should be part of the menu item name, 
  which allow users to traverse and activate menu items by typing keys when 
  the menu is pulled down. 

  In the Shell Command field of the Shell Commands dialog, the % character 
  expands to the name (including directory path) of the file in the window. To 
  include a % character in the command, use %%. 

  The Menu Entry field can contain special characters for constructing 
  hierarchical sub-menus, and for making items which appear only in certain 
  language modes. The right angle bracket character ">" creates a sub-menu. 
  The name of the item itself should be the last element of the path formed 
  from successive sub-menu names joined with ">". Menu panes are called in to 
  existence simply by naming them as part of a Menu Entry name. To put several 
  items in the same sub-menu, repeat the same hierarchical sequence for each. 
  For example, in the Macro Commands dialog, two items with menu entries: 
  a>b>c and a>b>d would create a single sub menu under the macro menu called 
  "a", which would contain a single sub-menu, b, holding the actual items, c 
  and d: 

      +---++---++---+
      |a >||b >||c  |
      +---++---+|d  |
                +---+

  To qualify a menu entry with a language mode, simply add an at-sign "@" at 
  the end of the menu command, followed (no space) by a language mode name. To 
  make a menu item which appears in several language modes, append additional 
  @s and language mode names. For example, an item with the menu entry: 

    Make C Prototypes@C@C++

  would appear only in C and C++ language modes, and: 

    Make Class Template@C++

  would appear only in C++ mode. 

  Menu items with no qualification appear in all language modes. 

  If a menu item is followed by the single language qualification "@*", that 
  item will appear only if there are no applicable language-specific items of 
  the same name in the same submenu. For example, if you have the following 
  three entries in the same menu: 

    Make Prototypes@C@C++
    Make Prototypes@Java
    Make Prototypes@*

  The first will be available when the language mode is C or C++, the second 
  when the language mode is Java, and for all other language modes (including 
  the "Plain" non-language mode). If the entry: 

    Make Prototypes

  also exists, this will always appear, meaning that the menu will always have 
  two "Make Prototypes" entries, whatever the language mode. 


  SHARING CUSTOMIZATIONS WITH OTHER NEDIT USERS

  If you have written macro or shell menu commands, highlight patterns, or 
  smart-indent macros that you want to share with other NEdit users, you can 
  make a file which they can load into their NEdit environment. 

  To load such a file, start NEdit with the command: 

     nedit -import <file>

  In the new NEdit session, verify that the imported patterns or macros do 
  what you want, then select Preferences -> Save Defaults. Saving incorporates 
  the changes into your own .nedit file, so the next time you run NEdit, you 
  will not have to import the distribution file. 

  Loading a customization file is automated, but creating one is not. To 
  produce a file to be imported by other users, you must make a copy of your 
  own .nedit file, and edit it, by hand, to remove everything but the few 
  items of interest to the recipient. Leave only the individual resource(s), 
  and within those resources, only the particular macro, pattern, style, etc, 
  that you wish to exchange. For example, to share a highlighting pattern set, 
  you would include the patterns, any new styles you added, and language mode 
  information only if the patterns are intended to support a new language 
  rather than updating an existing one. For example: 

     nedit.highlightPatterns:\
          My Language:1:0{\n\
                  Comment:"#":"$"::Comment::\n\
                  Loop Header:"^[ \\t]*loop:":::Loop::\n\
          }
     nedit.languageModes: My Language:.my::::::
     nedit.styles: Loop:blue:Bold

  Resources are in the format of X resource files, but the format of text 
  within multiple-item resources like highlight patterns, language modes, 
  macros, styles, etc., are private to NEdit. Each resource is a string which 
  ends at the first newline character not escaped with \, so you must be 
  careful about how you treat ends of lines. While you can generally just cut 
  and paste indented sections, if something which was originally in the middle 
  of a resource string is now at the end, you must remove the \ line 
  continuation character(s) so it will not join the next line into the 
  resource. Conversely, if something which was originally at the end of a 
  resource is now in the middle, you'll have to add continuation character(s) 
  to make sure that the resource string is properly continued from beginning 
  to end, and possibly newline character(s) (\n) to make sure that it is 
  properly separated from the next item. 

-----------
X RESOURCES
-----------

  NEdit has additional options to those provided in the Preferences menu which 
  are set using X resources. Like most other X programs, NEdit can be 
  customized to vastly unnecessary proportions, from initial window positions 
  down to the font and shadow colors of each individual button (A complete 
  discussion of how to do this is left to books on the X Windows System). Key 
  binding (see "Key Binding" is one of the most useful of these resource 
  settable options. 

  X resources are usually specified in a file called .Xdefaults or .Xresources 
  in your home directory (on VMS this is sys$login:decw$xdefaults.dat). On 
  some systems, this file is read and its information attached to the X server 
  (your screen) when you start X. On other systems, the .Xdefaults file is 
  read each time you run an X program. When X resource values are attached to 
  the X server, changes to the resource file are not available to application 
  programs until you either run the xrdb program with the appropriate file as 
  input, or re-start the X server. 


  THE .NEDIT FILE

  The .nedit (saved preferences) file is in the same format as an X resource 
  file, and its contents can be moved into your X resource file. One reason 
  for doing so would be to attach server specific preferences, such as a 
  default font to a particular X server. Another reason for moving preferences 
  into the X resource file would be to keep preferences menu options and 
  resource settable options together in one place. Though the files are the 
  same format, additional resources should not be added to the .nedit file, 
  they will not be read, and NEdit modifies this file by overwriting it 
  completely. Note also that the contents of the .nedit file take precedence 
  over the values of X resources. Using Save Defaults after moving the 
  contents of your .nedit file to your .Xdefaults file will re-create the 
  .nedit file, interfering with the options that you have moved. 


  SELECTED X RESOURCE NAMES

  The following are selected NEdit resource names and default values for NEdit 
  options not settable via the Preferences menu (for preference resource 
  names, see your .nedit file): 

nedit.tagFile: (not defined) 

  The name of a file of the type produced by Exuberant Ctags or the Unix ctags 
  command, which NEdit will load at startup time (see ctag support ). The tag 
  file provides a database from which NEdit can automatically open files 
  containing the definition of a particular subroutine or data type. 

nedit.shell: /bin/csh 

  (Unix systems only) The Unix shell (command interpreter) to use for 
  executing commands from the Shell menu 

nedit.wordDelimiters: .,/\\`'!@#%^&*()-=+{}[]":;<>?

  The characters, in addition to blanks and tabs, which mark the boundaries 
  between words for the move-by-word (Ctrl+Arrow) and select-word (double 
  click) commands. Note that this default value may be overridden by the 
  setting in Preferences -> Default Settings -> Language Modes.... 

nedit.remapDeleteKey: False

  Setting this resource to True forcibly maps the delete key to backspace. 
  This can be helpful on systems where the bindings have become tangled, and 
  in environments which mix systems with PC style keyboards and systems with 
  DEC and Macintosh keyboards. Theoretically, these bindings should be made 
  using the standard X/Motif mechanisms, outside of NEdit. In practice, some 
  environments where users access several different systems remotely, can be 
  very hard to configure. If you've given up and are using a backspace key 
  halfway off the keyboard because you can't figure out the bindings, set this 
  to True. 

nedit.stdOpenDialog: False

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

nedit.bgMenuButton: ~Shift~Ctrl~Meta~Alt<Btn3Down>

  Specification for mouse button / key combination to post the background menu 
  (in the form of an X translation table event specification). The event 
  specification should be as specific as possible, since it will override less 
  specific translation table entries. 

nedit.maxPrevOpenFiles: 30

  Number of files listed in the Open Previous sub-menu of the File menu. 
  Setting this to zero disables the Open Previous menu item and maintenance of 
  the .neditdb file. 

nedit.printCommand: (system specific)

  Command used by the print dialog to print a file, such as, lp, lpr, etc.. 
  The command must be capable of accepting input via stdin (standard input). 

nedit.printCopiesOption: (system specific)

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

nedit.printQueueOption: (system specific)

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

nedit.printNameOption: (system specific)

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

nedit.printHostOption: (system specific)

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

nedit.printDefaultQueue: (system specific)

  The name of the default print queue. Used only to display in the print 
  dialog, and has no effect on printing. 

nedit.visualID: Best

  If your screen supports multiple visuals (color mapping models), this 
  resource allows you to manually choose among them. The default value of 
  "Best" chooses the deepest (most colors) visual available. Since NEdit does 
  not depend on the specific characteristics of any given color model, Best 
  probably IS the best choice for everyone, and the only reason for setting 
  this resource would be to patch around some kind of X server problem. The 
  resource may also be set to "Default", which chooses the screen's default 
  visual (often a color-mapped, PseudoColor, visual for compatibility with 
  older X applications). It may also be set to a numeric visual-id value (use 
  xdpyinfo to see the list of visuals supported by your display), or a visual 
  class name: PseudoColor, DirectColor, TrueColor, etc.. 

nedit.installColormap: False

  Force the installation of a private colormap. If you have a humble 8-bit 
  color display, and netscape is hogging all of the color cells, you may want 
  to try turning this on. On most systems, this will result in colors flashing 
  wildly when you switch between NEdit and other applications. But a few 
  systems (SGI) have hardware support for multiple simultaneous colormaps, and 
  applications with installed colormaps are well behaved. 

nedit.findReplaceUsesSelection: False

  Controls if the Find and Replace dialogs are automatically loaded with the 
  contents of the primary selection. 

nedit.stickyCaseSenseButton: True

  Controls if the "Case Sensitive" buttons in the Find and Replace dialogs and 
  the incremental search bar maintain a separate state for literal and regular 
  expression searches. Moreover, when set to True, by default literal searches 
  are case insensitive and regular expression searches are case sensitive. 
  When set to False, the "Case Sensitive" buttons are independent of the 
  "Regular Expression" toggle. 

nedit.printDefaultHost: (system specific)

  The node name of the default print host. Used only to display in the print 
  dialog, and has no effect on printing. 

nedit.multiClickTime: (system specific)

  Maximum time in milliseconds allowed between mouse clicks within double and 
  triple click actions. 

nedit.scrollBarPlacement: BOTTOM_LEFT

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

nedit.text.autoWrapPastedText: False

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

nedit.text.heavyCursor: False

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

nedit.text.foreground: black

  Foreground color of the text editing area of the NEdit window. 

nedit.text.background: white

  Background color of the text editing area of the NEdit window. 

nedit.text.selectForeground: black

  Foreground (text) color for selections in the text editing area of the NEdit 
  window. 

nedit.text.selectBackground: gray80

  Color for selections in the text editing area of the NEdit window. 

nedit.text.highlightForeground: white

  Foreground (text) color for highlights (parenthesis flashing) in the text 
  editing area of the NEdit window. 

nedit.text.highlightBackground: red

  Color for highlights (parenthesis flashing) in the text editing area of the 
  NEdit window. 

nedit.text.cursorForeground: black

  Color for text cursor in the text editing area of the NEdit window. 

nedit.text.lineNumForeground: gray47

  Color for displaying line numbers in the NEdit window. 

nedit.text.blinkRate: 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.. 

nedit.helpFont: adobe times 14

  Font used for displaying online help. 

nedit.boldHelpFont: adobe times 14 bold

  Bold font for online help. 

nedit.italicHelpFont: adobe times 14 italic

  Italic font for online help. 

nedit.fixedHelpFont: adobe courier 12

  Fixed font for online help. 

nedit.boldFixedHelpFont: adobe courier 12 bold

  Fixed bold for online help. 

nedit.italicFixedHelpFont: adobe courier 12 italic

  Fixed italic font for online help. 

nedit.h3HelpFont: adobe times 14 bold

  Font for level-1 titles in help text (the name h3 comes from how the help 
  system maps titles between the html, text, and online help versions of the 
  help text, level one and level two headings map to menu titles). 

nedit.h4HelpFont: adobe times 14 italic

  Font for level-2 titles in help text. 

nedit.h5HelpFont: adobe courier 12 bold

  Font for level-3 titles in help text. 

nedit.helpLinkFont: adobe adobe times 14

  Font for hyperlinks in the help text 

nedit.helpLinkColor: blue2

  Color for hyperlinks in the help text 

nc.autoStart: False 

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

nc.serverCommand: nedit -server

  Command used by the nc program to start an NEdit server. 

   and other characteristics):
  The following are Selected widget names (to which you may append 
  .background, .foreground, .fontList, etc., to change colors, fonts 

nedit.statsForm

  Statistics line and incremental search bar. Use this to set statistics line 
  background color. To set attributes affecting both the statistics line and 
  the incremental search bar, use '*' rather than '.' to separate the resource 
  name. For example, to set the foreground color: nedit.statsForm.foreground. 

nedit.menuBar

  Top-of-window menu-bar. 

nedit.textHorScrollBar

  Horizontal scroll bar. 

nedit.textVertScrollBar

  Vertical scroll bar. 

-----------
KEY BINDING
-----------

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

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


  KEY BINDING IN GENERAL

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


  KEY BINDING VIA TRANSLATIONS

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

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

  The Help topic "Action Routines" lists the actions available to be bound. 

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

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

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


  CHANGING MENU ACCELERATOR KEYS

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

      nedit*editMenu.cut.accelerator: Ctrl<Key>x
      nedit*editMenu.cut.acceleratorText: Ctrl+X

  Accelerator keys with optional shift key modifiers, like Find..., have an 
  additional accelerator resource with Shift appended to the name. For 
  example: 

      nedit*searchMenu.find.acceleratorText: [Shift]Alt+F
      nedit*searchMenu.find.accelerator: Alt<Key>f
      nedit*searchMenu.findShift.accelerator: Shift Alt<Key>f

---------------------
HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS
---------------------


  WRITING SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING PATTERNS

  Patterns are the mechanism by which language syntax highlighting is 
  implemented in NEdit (see Syntax Highlighting under the heading of Features 
  for Programming). To create syntax highlighting patterns for a new language, 
  or to modify existing patterns, select "Recognition Patterns" from "Syntax 
  Highlighting" sub-section of the "Default Settings" sub-menu of the 
  "Preferences" menu. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


  Coloring Sub-Expressions

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


  Hierarchical Patterns

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

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

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

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

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


  Deferred (Pass-2) Parsing

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

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

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


  Pattern Context Requirements

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

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

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

-------------------
SMART INDENT MACROS
-------------------

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

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

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

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

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

------------------
NEDIT COMMAND LINE
------------------

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

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

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

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

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

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

-tags file
  Load a file of directions for finding definitions of program subroutines and 
  data objects. The file must be of the format gen- erated by Exuberant Ctags, 
  or the standard Unix ctags command. 

-tabs n
  Set tab stops every n characters. 

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

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

-autoindent, -noautoindent
  Maintain a running indent. 

-autosave, -noautosave
  Maintain a backup copy of the file being edited under the name '~filename'. 

-rows n
  Default height in characters for an editing window. 

-columns n
  Default width in characters for an editing window. 

-font font (or -fn font)
  Font for text being edited (Font for menus and dialogs can be set with -xrm 
  "*fontList:font"). 

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

-geometry geometry (or -g geometry)
  The initial size and/or location of editor windows. The argument geometry 
  has the form: 

   [<width>x<height>][+|-][<xoffset>[+|-]<yoffset>]

  where <width> and <height> are the desired width and height of the window, 
  and <xoffset> and <yoffset> are the distance from the edge of the screen to 
  the window, + for top or left, - for bottom or right. -geometry can be 
  specified for individual files on the command line. 

-iconic, -noiconic
  Initial window state for succeeding files. 

-display [host]:server[.screen]
  The name of the X server to use. host specifies the machine, server 
  specifies the display server number, and screen specifies the screen number. 
  host or screen can be omitted and default to the local machine, and screen 
  0. 

-background color (or -bg color)
  Background color. (background color for text can be set separately with -xrm 
  "nedit*text.background: color"). 

-foreground color (or -fg color)
  Foreground color. (foreground color for text can be set separately with -xrm 
  "nedit*text.foreground: color"). 

-xrm resourcestring 
  Set the value of an X resource to override a default value (see "Customizing 
  NEdit"). 

-svrname name
  When starting NEdit in server mode, name the server, such that it responds 
  to requests only when nc is given a corresponding -svrname argument. By 
  naming servers, you can run several simultaneously, and direct files and 
  commands specifically to any one. 

-import file
  Loads an additional preferences file on top of the existing defaults saved 
  in your .nedit file. To incorporate macros, language modes, and highlight 
  patterns and styles written by other users, run NEdit with -import <file>, 
  then re-save your .nedit file with Preferences -> Save Defaults. 

-version
  Prints out the NEdit version information. The -V option is synonymous. 

--
  Treats all subsequent arguments as file names, even if they start with a 
  dash. This is so NEdit can access files that begin with the dash character. 


------------------
CLIENT/SERVER MODE
------------------

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

  To run NEdit in server mode, type: 

      nedit -server

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

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

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

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

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

  nc also accepts one command line option of its own, -noask (or -ask), which 
  instructs it whether to automatically start a server if one is not 
  available. This is also settable via the X resource, nc.autoStart (See "X 
  Resources" section). 

  Sometimes it is useful to have more than one NEdit server running, for 
  example to keep mail and programming work separate. The option, -svrname, to 
  both nedit and nc, allows you to start, and communicate with, separate named 
  servers. A named server responds only to requests with the corresponding 
  -svrname argument. If you use ClearCase and are within a ClearCase view, the 
  server name will default to the name of the view (based on the value of the 
  CLEARCASE_ROOT environment variable). 

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

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

--------------
CRASH RECOVERY
--------------

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

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

      mv \~help.c help.c

  A minor caveat, is that if the file you were editing was in MS DOS format, 
  the backup file will be in Unix format, and you will need to open the backup 
  file in NEdit and change the file format back to MS DOS via the Save As... 
  dialog (or use the Unix unix2dos command outside of NEdit). 

-------
VERSION
-------

NEdit release of Dec 13, 2001
Dec 13, 2001

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

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

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

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

  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it 
  under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free 
  Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) 
  any later version. 

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT 
  ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or 
  FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License in the 
  Help section "Distribution Policy" for more details. 

-------------------
DISTRIBUTION POLICY
-------------------

  GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 

  Version 2, June 1991 

  Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 675 Mass Ave, 
  Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute 
  verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. 

  Preamble 

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  to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program 
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  For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or 
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  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 

-------------
MAILING LISTS
-------------

  There are two separate mailing lists for nedit users, and one for 
  developers. Users may post to the developer mailing list to report defects 
  and communicate with the nedit developers. Remember that nedit is entirely a 
  volunteer effort, so please ask questions first to the discussion list, and 
  do your share to answer other users questions as well. 

    discuss@nedit.org

  General discussion, questions and answers among NEdit users and developers. 

    announce@nedit.org

  A low-volume mailing list for announcing new versions. 

    develop@nedit.org

  Communication among and with NEdit developers. Developers should also 
  subscribe to the discuss list. 

  To subscribe, send mail to <majordomo@nedit.org> with one or more of the 
  following in the body of the message: 

    subscribe announce
    subscribe discuss
    subscribe develop

----------------
PROBLEMS/DEFECTS
----------------


  SOLUTIONS TO COMMON PROBLEMS

  For a much more comprehensive list of common problems and solutions, see the 
  NEdit FAQ. The latest version of the FAQ can always be found on the NEdit 
  web site at: 

      http://www.nedit.org.

  P: No files are shown in the "Files" list in the Open... dialog. 

  S: When you use the "Filter" field, include the file specification or a 
  complete directory specification, including the trailing "/" on Unix. (See 
  Help in the Open... dialog). 

  P: Find Again and Replace Again don't continue in the same direction as the 
  original Find or Replace. 

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

  P: Preferences specified in the Preferences menu don't seem to get saved 
  when I select Save Defaults. 

  S: NEdit has two kinds of preferences: 1) per-window preferences, in the 
  Preferences menu, and 2) default settings for preferences in newly created 
  windows, in the Default Settings sub-menu of the Preferences menu. 
  Per-window preferences are not saved by Save Defaults, only Default 
  Settings. 

  P: Columns and indentation don't line up. 

  S: NEdit is using a proportional width font. Set the font to a fixed style 
  (see Preferences menu). 

  P: NEdit performs poorly on very large files. 

  S: Turn off Incremental Backup. With Incremental Backup on, NEdit 
  periodically writes a full copy of the file to disk. 

  P: Commands added to the Shell Commands menu (Unix only) don't output 
  anything until they are finished executing. 

  S: If the command output is directed to a dialog, or the input is from a 
  selection, output is collected together and held until the command 
  completes. De-select both of the options and the output will be shown 
  incrementally as the command executes. 

  P: Dialogs don't automatically get keyboard focus when they pop up. 

  S: Most X Window managers allow you to choose between two categories of 
  keyboard focus models: pointer focus, and explicit focus. Pointer focus 
  means that as you move the mouse around the screen, the window under the 
  mouse automatically gets the keyboard focus. NEdit users who use this focus 
  model should set "Popups Under Pointer" in the Default Settings sub menu of 
  the preferences menu in NEdit. Users with the explicit focus model, in some 
  cases, may have problems with certain dialogs, such as Find and Replace. In 
  MWM this is caused by the mwm resource startupKeyFocus being set to False 
  (generally a bad choice for explicit focus users). NCDwm users should use 
  the focus model "click" instead of "explicit", again, unless you have set it 
  that way to correct specific problems, this is the appropriate setting for 
  most explicit focus users. 

  P: The Backspace key doesn't work, or deletes forward rather than backward. 

  S: While this is an X/Motif binding problem, and should be solved outside of 
  NEdit in the Motif virtual binding layer (or possibly xmodmap or 
  translations), NEdit provides an out. If you set the resource: 
  nedit.remapDeleteKey to True, NEdit will forcibly map the delete key to 
  backspace. The default setting of this resource recently changed, so users 
  who have been depending on this remapping will now have to set it explicitly 
  (or fix their bindings). 

  P: NEdit crashes when I try to paste text in to a text field in a dialog 
  (like Find or Replace) on my SunOS system. 

  S: On many SunOS systems, you have to set up an nls directory before various 
  inter-client communication features of Motif will function properly. There 
  are instructions in README.sun in /pub/v5_0_2/individual/README.sun on 
  ftp.nedit.org, as well as a tar file containing a complete nls directory: 
  ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/v5_0_2/nls.tar. README.sun contains directions for 
  setting up an nls directory, which is required by Motif for handling copy 
  and paste to Motif text fields. 


  KNOWN DEFECTS

  Below is the list of known defects which affect NEdit. The defects your copy 
  of NEdit will exhibit depend on which system you are running and with which 
  Motif libraries it was built. Note that there are now Motif 1.2 and/or 2.0 
  libraries available on ALL supported platforms, and as you can see below 
  there are far fewer defects in Motif 1.2, so it is in your best interest to 
  upgrade your system. 


  All Versions

DEFECT
  Operations between rectangular selections on overlapping lines do nothing. 

Work Around
  None. These operations are very complicated and rarely used. 

DEFECT
  Cut and Paste menu items fail, or possibly crash, for very large 
  (multi-megabyte) selections. 

Work Around
  Use selection copy (middle mouse button click) for transferring larger 
  quantities of data. Cut and Paste save the copied text in server memory, 
  which is usually limited. 


  REPORTING DEFECTS

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