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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), Calltips, 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.

Backlighting [EXPERIMENTAL]

NEdit can be made to set the background color of particular classes of characters to allow easy identification of those characters. This is particularly useful if you need to be able to distinguish between tabs and spaces in a file where the difference is important. The colors used for backlighting are specified by a resource, "nedit*backlightCharTypes". You can turn backlighting on and off through the Preferences -> Apply Backlighting menu entry.

If you prefer to have backlighting turned on for all new windows, use the Preferences -> Default Settings -> Apply Backlighting menu entry. This settings can be saved along with other preferences using Preferences -> Save Defaults.

Important: In future versions of NEdit, the backlighting feature will be extended and reworked such that it becomes easier to configure. The current way of controlling it through a resource is generally considered to be below NEdit's usability standards. These future changes are likely to be incompatible with the current format of the "nedit*backlightCharTypes" resource, though. Therefore, it is expected that there will be no automatic migration path for users who customize the resource.

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.

To go to a specific column on a given line, choose Goto Line #... from the Search menu and enter a line number and a column number separated by a comma. (e.g. Enter "100,12" for line 100 column 12.) If you want to go to a column on the current line just leave out the line number. (e.g. Enter ",45" to go the column 45 on the current line.)

Matching Parentheses

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

When syntax highlighting is enabled, the matching routines can optionally make use of the syntax information for improved accuracy. In that case, a brace inside a highlighted string will not match a brace inside a comment, for instance.

Opening Included Files

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

Interface to Programming Tools

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

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

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