Syntax highlighting broken for perl

[Andrew Hood]

Michael Muratet wrote:
> Greetings
> 
> I am using the Mac OS X version of nedit v5.4 with Motif 2.1. When I 
> try to edit perl code I get the error message:
> 
> Style "Text Escape" named in pattern "dq here doc esc chars" does not 
> match any existing style
> 
> I've looked through all the menus under Default Settings and I don't 
> see any reference to 'Text Escape' to even change. The problem occurs 
> in OS X 10.4 as well as 10.5.
> 
> I don't see this behavior documented anywhere. Does anybody have any 
> suggestions of things to try?

How did you get to the version of NEdit you are using?

Suppose you started with, say version 5.3, then installed a beta of 5.4
and then the 5.4 release.

The preferences file would have been upgraded from 5.3 to 5.4 by the
beta. Then when you installed the release, it would see the preferences
were already at 5.4 and leave them alone. This behaviour has bitten
other people before.

Some styles have been added between versions, including between betas.
This could be one of those.

One fix is to use the "Preference"->"Default Settings"->"Syntax
Highlighting"->"Text Drawing Styles" and use "New" to add:

Name: Text Escape
Foreground Color: gray30
Font: Bold

and then save the preferences.

Another method would be back up and then edit ~/.nedit/nedit.rc (or it
could be ~/.neditrc) and change the line:

nedit.fileVersion: 5.4

to:

nedit.fileVersion: 5.3

and then start nedit. Autoupgrade would add any styles which were added
after 5.3 and ask if you wanted to save the upgraded version.

-- 
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
                -- Dr. Who