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|
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE faq SYSTEM "faq.dtd" >
<!-- $Id: faq.xml,v 1.5 2002/12/13 17:20:25 edg Exp $ -->
<!--
A quick note on the syntax of this file
========================================
This XML file is based on the DTD specified in "faq.dtd". See "faq.dtd" for
a rigourous definition; a simple overview is given here, to help in making
quick additions and modifications.
The FAQ is composed of two parts : a <head> and a <body>. The <head>
contains the title (in our case, "NEdit Frequently Asked Questions"), the
list of <maintainers>, a <summary> which gets displayed ahead of all
questions, a section showing how to download the FAQ (<download>) and
other, less important stuff.
The <body> part is composed of many FAQ <section>s. A section has a title
and groups several FAQ entries. A particular section exists, called
<about-section>, which contains the description of the FAQ itself.
A section is generally composed of several "Question 'N' Answer" entries
(<qna>). A <qna> contains a question (<q>) and the answer to that question
(<a>). An identifier must be given to each <qna>, via the attribute "id". A
longer version of the question may be specified via <long-q> as another
element of <qna>; in this case, the <q> is displayed in a table of
questions, while the longer and more complete version, <long-q>, is
displayed along with the answer.
The <long-q> and <a> elements contain text paragraphs. The <q> doesn't
contain paragraphs and behaves like a single paragraph itself.
A text paragraph is indicated by one of the elements <p>, <blockquote>,
<ul>, <ol> and <pre> (which, in the DTD, are collectively referred to as
%paragraph-styles;).
The <p> denotes a basic paragraph and contains text.
The <blockquote> indicates an indent, and it contains other paragraphs
inside. A nested <blockquote> will indent relative to the previous one.
The <ul> and <ol> indicate respectively an unnumbered and a numbered
list. Both <ul> and <ol> contain one or many <li> elements. A <li>
element contains text.
The <pre> indicates a preformatted piece of text, which will be output
with no further modifications.
Paragraphs of type <p> and <li>, as well as <q> and a few other elements of
the <head>, contain text. Text is composed of free text and style elements.
The style elements are the following :
<email> indicates an e-mail address.
<img> indicates an image. It has a required attribute "src" which must
be a URL referring to the image, and a "alt" attribute containing
alternate text, used for non-image-capable formats.
<site> indicates a web site. The text between <site> and </site> must be
a URL.
<link> indicates a HTTP hyperlink. Its required attribute "href" must be
the URL to link to. An attribute "alt" may contain alternate text.
<em> stands for emphasized text.
<strong> stands for strong text.
<tt> is used for terminal output and for the contents of configuration
files.
<code> is used for command names, when included inline within text.
Generally, <pre> paragraphs are used for several lines of code.
The distinction between <tt> and <code> and furthermore <pre> is not so
clear. A clearer and better definition is needed.
========================================
-->
<faq>
<head>
<title>NEdit Frequently Asked Questions</title>
<version>2001/10/01</version>
<maintainers>
<!-- several maintainers can be added -->
<maintainer>
<name>Florian Xhumari</name>
<email>Florian.Xhumari@free.fr</email>
<subject>NEdit FAQ</subject>
</maintainer>
</maintainers>
<summary>
<p>NEdit is a popular GUI-style text editor for Unix and VMS systems.
These are answers to the most frequently asked questions to
discuss@nedit.org. This information is also available from:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/</site><current>/FAQ,</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and from the NEdit web page at:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><site>http://nedit.org</site>.</p>
</blockquote>
</summary>
<download>
<p>The FAQ is available for download in a variety of formats.</p>
<ul>
<li>HTML pages: <site>faq.tar.gz</site>
or <site>faq.zip</site>.</li>
<li>Plain text: <site>faq.txt</site>.</li>
<li>XML source: <site>faq.xml</site>
as well as its DTD <site>faq.dtd</site>.</li>
</ul>
</download>
</head>
<body>
<about-section id="about">
<title>About the NEdit FAQ</title>
<p>This FAQ is written in XML and translated to HTML using
an XSL stylesheet. The XML source is processed using
<link href="http://www.jclark.com/">James Clark's</link> XSLT processor
<link href="http://www.jclark.com/xml/xt.html">XT</link> and
XML parser <link href="http://www.jclark.com/xml/xp">XP</link>.
</p>
<p>The XSL stylesheet used to generate the HTML version is
<link href="faq.xsl">here</link>.</p>
<p>The text version is generated in three steps: first,
<link href="faq-txt.xsl">an XSL stylesheet</link>
is used to generate a simple HTML. Then,
<link href="faq-txt-pass2.xsl">a second XSL stylesheet</link> transforms
the HTML into plain text.
<link href="faq-txt.awk">An awk script</link>
then performs the word wrapping.</p>
<p>For any questions about or contributions to the FAQ, please
send a mail to the
<link href="mailto:Florian.Xhumari@free.fr">maintainers</link>.
</p>
</about-section>
<section id="sect_information">
<title>Where to get information</title>
<qna id="first-info">
<q>Where can I get information about NEdit?</q>
<a>
<p>The NEdit web page is at:</p>
<blockquote><p><site>http://nedit.org</site></p></blockquote>
<p>and it is mirrored in Australia at:</p>
<blockquote><p><site>http://www.au.nedit.org/</site></p></blockquote>
<p>The primary ftp site for NEdit is:</p>
<blockquote><p><site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub</site></p></blockquote>
<p>which has a mirror in The Netherlands:</p>
<blockquote><p><site>ftp://ftp.nl.nedit.org/pub/mirror/NEdit</site></p></blockquote>
<p>The NEdit ftp site has executables for most Unix and VMS
systems, sources, documentation, and contributed software.</p>
<p>The first and easiest place to look for help with NEdit is the NEdit Help
menu. The bottom item in the menu (Problems/Bugs) has answers to the most
commonly asked questions about NEdit, which are not duplicated here. Also
check the platform specific information in the README file packaged in
the NEdit distribution kits.</p>
<p>If you have a problem that you really can't figure out, send mail
to <email>discuss@nedit.org</email>, and see if anyone else might be
having the same trouble. The nedit developers also subscribe to this
list, and hopefully someone will be able to answer your question.
If you are a Silicon Graphics user and NEdit
came bundled on your system, you can also contact SGI's technical support.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="mailing-lists">
<q>Are there any mailing lists for NEdit users?</q>
<a>
<p>There are two separate mailing lists for nedit users, and one for
developers. Users may post to the developer mailing list to report
bugs and communicate with the nedit developers.</p>
<p>The lists are:</p>
<ul>
<li><email>discuss@nedit.org</email>: general discussion, questions and
answers among nedit users and developers.</li>
<li><email>develop@nedit.org</email>: communication among and with
nedit developers. Developers should also subscribe to the discuss
list.</li>
<li><email>announce@nedit.org</email>: a low-volume mailing list for
announcing new versions.</li>
</ul>
<p>Please note that only subscribers can send mail to the list. </p>
<p>The nedit developers subscribe to both
<email>discuss@nedit.org</email> and <email>develop@nedit.org</email>,
either of which may be used for reporting bugs. If you're not sure,
or you think the report might be of interest to the general nedit
user community, send the report to <email>discuss@nedit.org</email>. If it's
something obvious and boring, like we misspelled "anemometer" in the
on-line help, send it to <email>develop@nedit.org</email>.</p>
<p>Please do not cross post to both lists!</p>
<p>In order to subscribe to a list, send mail to <email>majordomo@nedit.org</email>
with one or more of the following in the body of the message:</p>
<pre>
subscribe announce
subscribe discuss
subscribe develop
</pre>
<p>To unsubscribe do the same with the keyword <strong>unsubscribe</strong>.</p>
<pre>
unsubscribe announce
unsubscribe discuss
unsubscribe develop
</pre>
<p>After subscribing, you will receive copies of all of the email
submitted to the lists. You may submit mail to the discussion list by
sending it to the appropriate list: <email>discuss@nedit.org</email>,
<email>develop@nedit.org</email> or
<email>announce@nedit.org</email>.</p>
<p>The archives of the old mailing lists (nedit_discuss@fnal_gov and
nedit_announce@fnal.gov) can be found on egroups.com:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><site>http://www.egroups.com/group/nedit_discuss/</site></li>
<li><site>http://www.egroups.com/group/nedit_announce/</site></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>For more information about the mailing lists, refer to the <link
href="http://nedit.org/community/mailing.shtml">mailing lists
section</link> in the NEdit site.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N44">
<q>Where can I get binaries / executables for machines other than
those available at NEdit site?</q>
<a>
<p>In past versions, we separated "supported" and "unsupported" executables
and divided them between the binary and contrib directories. With more
supported systems, you're less likely to find executables in the contrib
directory, but it's worth a peek, anyhow. If you can't find anything
appropriate, you can try asking in a usenet news group appropriate to your
system. Other places to try are, the
<email>discuss@nedit.org</email> mailing list, or
<site>news:comp.windows.x.apps</site>
or <site>news:comp.editors</site>.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="info_contrib">
<q>What can I contribute?</q>
<a>
<p>If you use and enjoy NEdit, and feel like giving something
back to the NEdit user community, contact
<email>develop@nedit.org</email>. If you have ported NEdit to a new
machine, written a useful set of macros, or would like to contribute
to an ongoing development project, we'd love to hear from you.</p>
</a>
</qna>
</section>
<section id="sect_reporting">
<title>Diagnosing and reporting problems</title>
<qna id="N124">
<q>How do I report problems I've encountered using NEdit ?</q>
<a>
<p>If you have a problem which is not covered in the on-line help, in this FAQ,
or in the README file specific to your system, you can report it to
<email>discuss@nedit.org</email> (usage questions) or,
<email>develop@nedit.org</email> (error reports). Note that these lists only
allow members to post, and if you are not a member, your post will probably de
delayed in reaching the list. Alternatively you can use the bug tracker on
Sourceforge (<site>http://sourceforge.net/projects/nedit/</site>) to report
bugs and make feature requests. Below are some suggestions for information you
can provide to help in diagnosing your problem.</p>
<p>Because NEdit runs on a large number of different platforms and environments,
many problems are platform-specific. It's always helpful to know what kind of
system it's being run on. Sometimes, strange behavior can also be traced to
the X server software or window manager, so you may want to include information
on these as well.</p>
<p>The origin of the NEdit executable is often important, particularly, whether
it came from the NEdit site (<site>http://www.nedit.org</site>), was built
locally, or came from some other ftp server or freeware distribution CD.
Despite the fact that Motif appears on almost all Unix platforms, the Motif
libraries still vary from one machine to another. Be sure to mention whether
you're using Lesstif or Motif. As of version 5.2 a summary with build
information is present under 'Version' in the Help menu.</p>
<p>If you are having configuration or appearance problems, you should probably
look at the output from the command:</p>
<pre>
appres NEdit nedit
</pre>
<p>The <code>appres</code> command will show you the resources that
NEdit actually sees when it runs, including "stray" resources
intended for other programs but not properly qualified by the program
name. It will also give you a final objective check as to whether
resource settings that you have made are actually readable by
NEdit.</p>
</a>
</qna>
</section>
<section id="sect_building">
<title>Building</title>
<qna id="N162">
<q>
When I build NEdit on my SunOS system, I get undefined
symbols: <tt>_memmove</tt>, <tt>_atexit</tt>,
<tt>_strerror</tt>.
</q>
<long-q>
<p>When I build NEdit on my SunOS system, I get the fillowing undefined
symbols:</p>
<pre>
ld: Undefined symbol
_memmove
_atexit
_strerror
*** Error code 1
make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `nedit'
</pre>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>Older versions of the gcc C runtime library were missing these functions. You
can either upgrade gcc, or get sources for these functions from
<site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/contrib/misc</site>
(which someone else with your very same problem kindly contributed).</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N196">
<q>I'd like to build NEdit, but my system seems to be missing the Xm...
include files and libXm.a</q>
<a>
<p>Xm means Motif, which is an important part of NEdit's GUI interface. Motif
is standard on commercial Unix workstations, but not on free Unix platforms
like Linux and FreeBSD. On these systems, you can now use LessTif, the
GPL clone of Motif, or purchase a copy of Motif, which is usually relatively
inexpensive, but not free. You can find a list of companies selling Motif
for Linux at:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<site>http://www.cen.com/mw3/#providers</site>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As of this writing LessTif is very close to being a fully reliable and
complete replacement for Motif, so it's definitely worth trying before
shelling out any money for a commercial copy. Also remember that in most
cases, you don't really need Motif libraries to use NEdit. There
are plenty of versions available pre-built with the Motif libraries
linked in statically. If you can't find one for your system, ask around,
and you may find that someone else has already built one for you. Motif
licensing allows free distribution of statically linked binaries.
Executables for NEdit are available from
<site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/</site><current-version>/executables.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N221">
<q>When I build NEdit, I get the yacc error: <tt>conflicts: 36 shift/reduce</tt></q>
<long-q>
<p>When I build NEdit, I get the yacc error:</p>
<pre>
conflicts: 36 shift/reduce
</pre>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>That's normal. NEdit's macro language has a very conflicted grammar, but the
conflicts all resolve themselves correctly. The conflicts stem from allowing
awk-style no-operator concatenation of strings.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N255">
<q>I built NEdit on my Linux system, and it's full of bugs. What a horrible
editor!</q>
<a>
<p>Several of the Linux distributions began including LessTif (a free
version of the Motif GUI library) before it was really ready for
general use (particularly for something which needs to be as reliable
as a text editor). If you have a version of Lesstif prior to 0.92.26,
you have to upgrade it, before it will support NEdit reliably. To get
the newest version, go to <site>http://lesstif.org</site>. Alternatively,
you can get pre-built, statically linked, executables from
<site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/</site><current-version>/executables.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id='tmpnam'>
<author><name>Thorsten Haude</name></author>
<q> While compiling NEdit on Linux, I get a warning about
<code>tmpnam</code> being dangerous. </q>
<long-q>
<p>While compiling NEdit on Linux, I get the following warning:</p>
<pre>
file.o: In function `PrintString':
file.o(.text+0x17b7): the use of `tmpnam' is dangerous, better use `mkstemp'
</pre>
<p>Is NEdit insecure?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>Not if you are using the glibc. The algorithm of mkstemp(3) consists of
two parts: the first part is the one used in tmpnam(3) -- this is what
NEdit accomplishes by calling tmpnam(3); the second part is done directly
in NEdit. </p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id='Xp'>
<author><name>Joor Loohuis</name></author>
<q>NEdit fails to build on Linux, with messages about `XpGetDocumentData'</q>
<long-q>
<p>NEdit fails to build on Linux, with messages</p>
<pre>
undefined reference to `XpGetDocumentData'
undefined reference to `XpGetPageDimensions'
...
</pre>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>Edit makefiles/Makefile.Linux, and add '-lXp' to the line starting with
'LIB', right before '-lXext'. At this time we are not sure whether libXp
(the X print library) is installed on all Linux systems.</p>
</a>
</qna>
</section>
<section id="sect_customization">
<title>Customization</title>
<qna id="N277">
<q>I can't get the delete key to remap to a forward delete</q>
<long-q><p>I can't get the delete key to remap to a forward delete. I
have re-bound it in my .Xdefaults file, and that doesn't
help.</p></long-q>
<a>
<p>In your .Xdefaults file, add:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><tt>nedit.remapDeleteKey: False</tt></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is now the default, so you likely have an old resource file
sitting around somewhere with this setting. When <tt>remapDeleteKey</tt> is
<tt>True</tt>), NEdit forcibly maps the delete to
backspace. This can be used when the X server and the client
machine have different expectations about whether the key in the
backspace position on the keyboard is a backspace key or a delete
key. It also saves users in very heterogeneous environments
from having to re-map keys on nearly every system they use
just to be able to backspace.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N299">
<q>My X resource settings don't work.</q>
<a>
<p>It's harder to explain how to specify X resources than you might
expect, since how they are set is often configured by your local
system manager. They are either automatically attached to the server
(your screen) by an X startup or login script, or they are left
unspecified, and read from the .Xdefaults file whenever you run an X
application. If they are attached to the server, you should find out
the "normal" method for setting them on your system. If it's not the
.Xdefaults file, then it is usually a file called .Xresources (also
in your home directory). To make a change, you have to either run
xrdb, or re-invoke the startup script that originally attached them,
usually by exiting and re-starting X, or logging out and back in to
your X session.</p>
<p>Since setting resources is tricky, it's usually better to start with
something simple, like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><tt>nedit*foreground:green</tt></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then, once you have that working, try the more subtle or difficult ones.
You can also use the appres command to find out what resources nedit
actually sees (<code>appres NEdit nedit</code>).</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N324">
<q>I am setting some X defaults in my $HOME/.nedit file but some of
them don't work.</q>
<a>
<p>The .nedit file holds the NEdit Preferences menu options and is
automatically overwritten whenever you select "Save Defaults". You
really shouldn't put X resource settings there. Also, as you may have
discovered, resources other than Preferences resources don't always
work from there.</p>
<p>How you set X resources depends on local system conventions. You
usually put them in the .Xdefaults or .Xresources file in your home
directory. You may also need to run xrdb to install them in the server.
It depends on how your local system has been configured, so it's best
to talk to the person who configured your system. If you're not sure
whether your resources are set up correctly, the command:</p>
<pre>
appres NEdit nedit
</pre>
<p>will tell you what settings NEdit will see when it runs.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N342">
<q>If I install an "app-defaults" file for NEdit (empty too), all default
shortcuts are reset</q>
<long-q>
<p>If I install an "app-defaults" file for NEdit (empty too), all default
shortcuts are reset (only "Alt+B" and "Alt+Z" works). Without that file
all works fine. Now, how can I customize nedit with this problem ? Or,
how can I get a copy of all default shortcuts to add on my NEdit
"app-defaults" file ?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>NEdit uses the X fallback resources mechanism to provide default values
for user-settable resources. When you provide a system-wide app-
defaults file, it overrides the entire contents of the fallback
resources, meaning all of the program defaults are lost, except for
those which are also represented in the app-defaults file. To use an
app-defaults file, therefore, you need to start from a complete one
which provides all of the necessary default values. There is a complete
app-defaults file in:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/contrib/misc/nedit.app-defaults</site></p>
</blockquote>
<p>We strongly discourage users from using system-wide app-defaults because
once you install the file, you have to keep it up to date with every new
release of the software. If you don't update it, users might not even
notice the difference, but things will be increasingly wrong with each
new release.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N364">
<q>Where can I get the complete list of nedit resources?</q>
<a>
<p>The way X is designed, there are a LOT of user settable resources in NEdit,
most of them quite useless. You can see them all using the editres tool,
which is available on most Unix systems. A more useful subset are the
application default resources, which you can look at either in the source code
(near the beginning of nedit.c, in the variable called fallbackResources) or
in the app-defaults file in:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/contrib/misc/nedit.app-defaults</site></p>
</blockquote>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N386"> <q>Can I use <code>ispell</code> with NEdit instead of the less
capable Unix <code>spell</code> command?</q>
<a>
<p><code>ispell</code> is actually the default spell checker for NEdit on Linux systems where
<code>spell</code> is not available. On other systems, enter the following in the Shell
Commands dialog:</p>
<pre>
Command Input: Either
Command Output: Same Window
Output Replaces Input: ON
Shell Command: cat>spellTmp; xterm -e ispell -x spellTmp; cat spellTmp; rm spellTmp
</pre>
<p>If you want to get fancy, the following puts the temporary file in the /tmp
directory, and uses $$ (the process ID of the shell) in the file name so you
don't have to worry about clashes between simultaneous ispell sessions:</p>
<pre>
cat > /tmp/ispell.$$; xterm -title "Spell Check" -e
ispell -S /tmp/ispell.$$; cat /tmp/ispell.$$; rm /tmp/ispell.$$
</pre>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N415">
<q>How can the display of hidden (eg .login) files in dialog boxes be
suppressed</q>
<long-q>
<p>How can the display of hidden (eg .login) files in dialog boxes be
suppressed? We use nedit with for teaching programming with very naive
and inexperienced students. The display of these in dialogs such as the
"Save as..." one encourages them to screw up important login stuff, state
files etc.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>It depends on the system you are running how easy this is to do. Under
Motif 2.0, which I think is still only found on Linux and Free-BSD systems,
it's a simple resource setting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><tt>nedit*XmFileSelectionBox.fileFilterStyle: FILTER_HIDDEN_FILES</tt></p>
</blockquote>
<p>On other systems, unfortunately, it's a rather difficult source code change,
involving creating a replacement file searching procedure to be spliced in
to the file selection box widget.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N437">
<q>Why, in the 'open file' dialog, there is no text field where to
type in the file name?</q>
<long-q>
<p>Most Motif applications allow you to type in the file name in a separate
text field (as in the 'open file' dialog). Why doesn't NEdit? Can
I make it do that?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>Set the X resource nedit.stdOpenDialog to True. The field is disabled by
default to get new users accustomed to typing the file name directly in to
the list widget, which is not standard Motif behavior.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N452">
<q>I would like to change NEdit's cursor from a
bar to a block</q>
<long-q>
<p>I would like to change NEdit's cursor from a
bar to a block. I seem to lose it sometimes in my text.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>The block cursor in NEdit is used to indicate overstrike mode, but
you can turn on a resource to make the cursor thicker:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><tt>nedit*text.heavyCursor: true</tt></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The only way to get a permanent block cursor, though is to hack the source
code. This shouldn't be too difficult, since the code for drawing a block
cursor is already there.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N474">
<q>I'd like to see more than 8 files in the file selection dialogs (Open,
Save As, etc.)</q>
<long-q>
<p>I'd like to see more than 8 files in the file selection dialogs (Open,
Save As, Include, etc.). I've tried to set the X-resources like
nedit*XmList.visibleItemCount: 20, but this did not work.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>The only effective way I've found to control the number of items in
the highly temperamental Motif FileSelectionBox widget is through the
height resource:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><tt>nedit*FileSelect.height: 900</tt></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The X resource line above will make the file selection box 900 pixels
tall.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N496">
<q>I am trying to do key bindings such that, for example, Find is Alt+F rather
than Ctrl+F, but this clashes with the find menu mnemonic</q>
<long-q>
<p>I am trying to do key bindings such that, for example, Find is Alt+F rather
than Ctrl+F. However, this clashes with the find menu mnemonic. I realize
that the menu mnemonics can be changed to any letter, but they are always
bound to Alt-letter. I would like to just remove all menu mneumonics. Is
there any way to do this in an .Xdefaults file?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>You can turn mnemonics off by setting them to the ascii null character, for
example:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><tt>nedit*fileMenu.mnemonic: \0</tt></p>
</blockquote>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N515">
<q>I have a PC-style 2-button mouse and I would like to switch the 2nd and 3rd
(emulated) mouse buttons</q>
<long-q>
<p>I have a PC-style 2-button mouse. Can I switch the 2nd and 3rd mouse
buttons so the more important functions like secondary selection are on
the right button instead of the middle (which is emulated by pressing 1+3
buttons simultaneously under Linux), like they were in version 4?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>It's somewhat involved and hard to figure out from the documentation, but
yes you can. You have to reverse the translation table bindings for mouse
buttons 2 and 3, AND reset the bgMenuButton resource. The translation table
bindings can either be found in the source file source/text.c, or by adding
and activating a temporary translation to the text widget for dumping the
translation table itself (XtDisplayTranslations()).</p>
<p>What it boils down to, though, is just add the following lines to your X
resource file (.Xdefaults or .Xresources depending on your system):</p>
<pre>
NEdit*text.Translations: #override \n\
<Btn3Down>: secondary_or_drag_start()\n\
Shift Ctrl Button3<MotionNotify>: \
secondary_or_drag_adjust("rect", "copy", "overlay")\n\
Shift Button3<MotionNotify>: secondary_or_drag_adjust("copy")\n\
Ctrl Button3<MotionNotify>: secondary_or_drag_adjust("rect", "overlay")\n\
Button3<MotionNotify>: secondary_or_drag_adjust()\n\
Shift Ctrl<Btn3Up>: move_to_or_end_drag("copy", "overlay")\n\
Shift <Btn3Up>: move_to_or_end_drag("copy")\n\
Alt<Btn3Up>: exchange()\n\
Meta<Btn3Up>: exchange()\n\
Ctrl<Btn3Up>: copy_to_or_end_drag("overlay")\n\
<Btn3Up>: copy_to_or_end_drag()\n\
Ctrl~Meta~Alt<Btn2Down>: mouse_pan()\n\
Ctrl~Meta~Alt Button2<MotionNotify>: mouse_pan()\n\
<Btn2Up>: end_drag()
nedit.bgMenuButton: ~Shift~Ctrl~Meta~Alt<Btn2Down>
</pre>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N537">
<q>How can I make a shell command prompt me for input?</q>
<long-q>
<p>I'd like to send mail directly from my nedit window, but there's no good
way to make a shell command prompt me for input (for entering the recipient
and subject).</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>Use a macro command instead to do the prompting:</p>
<pre>
to = string_dialog("Send mail to: (enter name below, along with any\n" \
"additional Unix Mail command parameters, -s for subject)", \
"Send", "Cancel")
if ($string_dialog_button == 2 || $string_dialog_button == 0)
return
if ($selection_start == -1)
body = get_range(0, $text_length)
else
body = get_selection()
cmdOutput = shell_command("Mail " to, body)
if ($shell_cmd_status != 0)
dialog("mail command returned failed exit status\n" cmdOutput)
else if (cmdOutput != "")
dialog(cmdOutput)
</pre>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N556">
<q>How I can set the foreground color for selected
text when syntax highlighting is applied?</q>
<long-q>
<p>How I can set the foreground color for selected
text to be always say grey1 even when syntax highlighting is applied?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>There's no equivalent to the
<tt>nedit*text.selectForeground</tt> resource when you turn on
syntax highlighting. You just have to choose a selection color that
is compatible with all of your highlighting colors.</p>
</a>
</qna>
</section>
<section id="sect_features">
<title>Features</title>
<qna id="N578">
<q>Why NEdit does not support drag and drop?</q>
<long-q>
<p>I'm a little confused about what happend to drag and drop.
I thought drag-N-drop was supported by the Motif library.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>NEdit no longer uses the Motif text widget, so all of the functionality
had to be duplicated in the new widget. Drag and drop between windows got
left off due to time pressure of getting out the new release, but it will
be back some day.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N593">
<q>Why don't you integrate Max Vohlken's / Yunliang Yu's versions into the
official release of NEdit</q>
<a>
<p>Many of their changes will eventually find their way in to the "official"
version, but some will not. Max has really done quite a lot of stuff.
I appreciate it, and I think it's kind of neat to have a "bleeding edge"
version of NEdit around to try out new features. </p>
<p>I can't just apply Max's patches to our version and release it. Some of
them break the VMS version, some interfere with existing commands that
are important to other users, and some are just customizations that I
don't particularly agree with. Mostly, I want to do a lot of testing to
make sure the changes are safe on all platforms, and I just don't have
time right now. (Mark Edel)</p>
<p><strong>Update as of NEdit version 5.2RC1:</strong> The forthcoming
NEdit version 5.2 contains several functionalities of Max's patches.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N611">
<q>Is it possible to use NEdit on windows 95 or NT?</q>
<long-q>
<p>I really like nedit and it would be nice to use on windows 95 or NT
instead of word or notepad. Is this possible?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>There is an NT version of NEdit, available at
<site>http://nedit.org/download/win32.shtml</site>. A mini-FAQ is also
available.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N644">
<q>Why aren't there pre-entered default values in text fields of dialogs?</q>
<long-q>
<p>A feature which is found in in some Macintosh and PC programs, which I
like, is to provide pre-entered default values in text fields. For example,
the find and replace dialogs could show the last search/replace string, or
the currently selected text. These programs select the text, so simply
typing in the field automatically replaces the default without any extra
work from the user.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>X has a strict convention that there can be only one selection at
a time on the whole display. This means that some of the tricks used
in PC and Macintosh programs don't work in X. On PCs and Macs,
programs can fill in default values in text fields, and select the
text that they have inserted such that If the user types over the
selection, it will automatically be erased. Under X, there is a
price to pay for making an automatic selection. The selection must
be "stolen" from some other window, maybe some other program. If the
user's intent was to paste a selection that existed before the dialog
popped up, once the automatic selection is made, they are out of
luck.</p>
<p>If NEdit automatically transferred the selection to the Find or Replace
dialog, it would either have to steal the selection, or users would
have to click or drag the mouse over the text to delete it before they
could type anything different. Instead, NEdit has a "Find Selection"
command, as well as various methods of pasting and copying the
selection into dialog fields. It also allows you to recall of previous
search strings in the Find and Replace dialogs via the up-arrow and
down-arrow keys.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N662">
<q>I would like to use (multiple fonts, special symbols) in my file, but
NEdit seems to allow just one single font.</q>
<a>
<p>NEdit is a plain text editor, not a word processor. Plain text files have
no font or formatting information contained in them, they are just a string
of ascii characters. While you might find a font with limited symbols and
greek letters, your troubles would just be beginning. You'd still have
trouble getting the printer to agree and print out the characters as they
appeared in NEdit. For anything involving font changes or special symbols,
you need a word processor, such as Microsoft Word, or a text
formatting program like LaTEX.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N677">
<q>Auto-wrap doesn't work well</q>
<long-q>
<p>Auto-wrap doesn't work very well. When I type in the middle of a line, I
can push the end of the line beyond the right margin, and when I delete,
It doesn't keep the right edge of the text lined up.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>You probably want continuous wrap mode (Preferences -> Wrap
-> Continuous).</p>
<p>Because NEdit is not a word processor, it is stuck with the limits
of the plain text format. In the default, auto-newline, wrapping
mode, nedit does wrapping by inserting newline characters. Because
there is only one newline character, NEdit can't distinguish a
newline which can be "unwrapped" from one which the user intended to
be permanent. While it might be possible for NEdit to temporarily
make that distinction, for example while the cursor is on a
particular line that the user is typing, ultimately, NEdit will have
to forget this information, because there is no way to save it in the
file. Users who work in auto-newline wrap mode tend to make liberal
use of the Fill paragraph command.</p>
<p>In continuous wrapping mode, you can intentionally leave out the
newlines within paragraphs, and lines will be wrapped as needed to
fit within the page. When you edit in the middle of a paragraph, the
text will be continuously adjusted. However, continuous wrap mode
has it's limitations too. All paragraphs must be lined up against
the right margin to take advantage of continuous wrapping, and Unix
systems have limited support for files of that format. You may have
trouble printing and viewing the files outside of NEdit.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N698">
<q>NEdit scrolls too fast when I extend a selection by dragging the mouse
outside of the window.</q>
<a>
<p>NEdit features proportional auto-scrolling, where the
speed is controlled by how far your mouse is beyond the edge of the
window. If you want it to scroll slower, bring the mouse back closer
to the text.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N713">
<q>Is there a special symbol that represents the selected text,
usable in shell commands?</q>
<long-q>
<p>Is there a special symbol (as % for filename in the shell commands)
that can be used to represent the text that is selected, which can then
be used as an argument to a command? For instance, I want to feed the
selection to a script so that it can be used as the expression to a
'grep' command. Is there any other way that I can accomplish this goal?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>Below is an example from the NEdit discussion list (from David L. Paterline)
of a "Find All" command implemented by using the selection as an argument to
the grep command:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I set up a command to list all lines in a file which contain the
highlighted selection as follows, using the Preferences -> Shell
Commands menu:</p>
<pre>
Menu Entry: all <selection>
Command Input: selection
Command Output: new window
Save file before: yes
Shell Command: grep -n -- "`cat -`" %
</pre>
<p>The <code>cat -</code> portion of the command echoes the selected text to the
<code>grep -n</code> command, which lists the lines containing the selection
with line numbers. The output of the command appears in a new
window; I can then highlight a line number in the new window and
use the Search -> Goto Selected menu in the original window to jump
to the line in the original file.</p>
</blockquote>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N741">
<q>How can I print highlighted text on my printer as it appears in NEdit.</q>
<a>
<p>In the current version, that's not possible, but there are external tools
for highlighting, which are specifically designed for printing, including
a2ps, enscript, and genscript.</p>
</a>
</qna>
</section>
<section id="sect_server_mode">
<title>Server mode and nc</title>
<qna id="N763">
<q>I want to use <code>nc</code> as an external
editor from my mailer, but my mailer doesn't wait for the editor
to finish</q>
<long-q>
<p>I use a mailer
which can invoke an external editor, but if I use nc, the mailer process
continues and assumes the editor has finished, when in fact it hasn't.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>nc is actually finished communicating with the NEdit server when it
returns. It's possible to create a shell command that invokes nc and
then goes to sleep, and a second script to be run from the NEdit Shell
menu, which looks for the sleeping process with a matching file name
and kills it. Try the shell scripts in:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/contrib/misc/</site>nc_and_wait.tar
</p>
</blockquote>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N788">
<q>I started nedit as root, then tried later to edit a file as myself with
<code>nc</code>; the file was opened in the root's nedit</q>
<long-q> <p>I started nedit (via <code>nc</code>) as root, and then
later tried to edit a file as myself with <code>nc</code>. I was very
suprised to see that a new nedit wasn't started--rather, I was given
the old nedit window, with root permissions. Isn't this a security
hole?</p> </long-q>
<a>
<p>Actually, NEdit does check who the user is. When you use the su
command, however, several Unix variants return the original user name
in response to the standard C library calls for getting a user name,
rather than the name to which you have su'd. Starting with version 5.1,
a different mechanism is used for getting this information, so you shouldn't
see this problem any more.</p>
<p>In your case, my guess is that you used su to become root, then
started an nedit server as root. On a system which returns the
original user name, both the new server and the nc client program
think the user name is your original user name, so the server accepts
requests from both you as root and you as you.</p>
<p>The security of an nedit session, depends upon the security of your X
server. Only those with access to your screen can send commands to an
nedit server, but they can also send keystrokes to any nedit, or a shell
window, etc... Anyhow, just upgrade to the latest NEdit version.</p>
</a>
</qna>
</section>
<section id="sect_techniques">
<title>Editing techniques</title>
<qna id="N816">
<q>I'd like to select a large expanse of text
without dragging all the way through it with the mouse.</q>
<a>
<p>Using the shift key with the left mouse button, you can select all of the text
between the cursor (or an existing selection) and the mouse.</p>
<ul>
<li>Position the cursor at one end of the desired selection</li>
<li>Use the scroll bar to make the other end visible</li>
<li>Shift+Click with the left mouse button to select the text between
the cursor and the mouse</li>
</ul>
<p>Alternatively, using only keyboard navigation:</p>
<ul>
<li>Position the cursor at one end of the desired selection</li>
<li>Type Alt-m and a letter to mark the position</li>
<li>Use the keyboard to go to the other end of the desired selection</li>
<li>Type Shift-Alt-g and the letter you used to mark the first end
of the selection</li>
</ul>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N847">
<q>How can I select the text between two marks?</q>
<a>
<ul>
<li>Go to the first mark (Goto Mark).</li>
<li>Hold the shift key while selecting Goto Mark or Alt+Shift+G to
select the text.</li>
</ul>
</a>
</qna>
</section>
<section id="sect_bugs">
<title>Bugs</title>
<qna id="N900">
<q>The keyboard shortcuts (accelerator keys) are not
working when 'Caps' or 'Num Lock' are switched on.</q>
<long-q>
<p>The keyboard shortcuts (accelerator keys) are not
working when 'Caps' or 'Num Lock' are switched on. Have I
overlooked something obvious?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>You haven't overlooked anything, it's a Motif design flaw. Netscape
painfully works around this and the Alt/Meta key reversal on Sun
workstations by internally re-implementing the Motif menu accelerator
mechanism. NEdit will likely follow suit with the release of version 5.2.</p>
<p>Another possibility (writes Peter Daifuku of SGI):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There's another answer which unfortunately isn't widespread as yet.
For an X11R6.3 X server supporting the XKB extension, there is a
mechanism to ignore the NumLock and CapsLock key as modifiers. The
file /usr/lib/X11/xkb/X0-config.keyboard should contain the string
IgnoreLockMods=NumLock+Lock . For systems with multiple displays,
display 1 would be controlled by the file X1-config.keyboard, etc.</p>
<p>On SGI systems, this mechanism is support on IRIX 6.2 with X server
patch 1574 or later, on IRIX 6.3 and IRIX 6.4 and all later releases.</p>
</blockquote>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="NumLockBis">
<q>Sometimes NEdit inserts <dc3> instead of saving the
file when I type ^S</q>
<long-q>
<p>Sometimes NEdit inserts <dc3> instead of saving the
file when I type ^S. Other keyboard shortcuts (accelerator keys) don't
work either.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
You have probably NumLock or CapsLock ON. See the answer to
<link href="#N900">this</link> question.
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="Keypad">
<author><name>Joor Loohuis</name></author>
<q>I use the numeric keypad really often, so I keep NumLock on.
But NEdit shortcuts don't work when NumLock is on.</q>
<a>
<p>The bug is not in NEdit, but in Motif. This is fixed as of NEdit 5.2, but
that might not help you much. Older versions have the same problem.</p>
<p>Here's how you tell X to interpret the keypad keys as numbers without
turning NumLock on. Create a file .Xmodmap in your home directory, and put the
following lines in it:</p>
<pre>
keycode 79 = KP_7
keycode 80 = KP_8
keycode 81 = KP_9
keycode 83 = KP_4
keycode 84 = KP_5
keycode 85 = KP_6
keycode 87 = KP_1
keycode 88 = KP_2
keycode 89 = KP_3
keycode 90 = KP_0
keycode 91 = KP_Decimal
</pre>
<p>Then make sure the script that starts your X session parses this file with
the command:</p>
<pre>
xmodmap -merge ~/.Xmodmap
</pre>
<p>This script can be ~/.xinitrc (called by startx) or something like Xsession
if you use xdm/kdm/gdm. Then again, it might be an entirely different script on
some systems.</p>
<p>Then turn off numlock, and just continue using the keypad. The only thing
is, you loose the alternate set of functions (cursor/home/pgdown/etc).</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N927">
<q>NEdit crashes I try to paste text in to a text field in a dialog
(like Find or Replace) on my SunOS system.</q>
<a>
<p>On many SunOS systems, you have to set up an nls directory before
various inter-client communication features of Motif will function
properly. Before NEdit 4.0 this wasn't much of a problem, because
users couldn't cut and paste at all, and Motif would sometimes
print a warning about not finding an nls directory, so most users
figured it out right away. But with 4.0, everything seems to be
working fine, except when someone tries to move text in or out of
a dialog field, then blamo.</p>
<p>There are instructions in README.sun in
<site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/</site><current-version<,
as well as a tar file containg a complete nls directory:
<site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/</site><current-version</individual/README.sun
</p>
<p>It contains directions for setting up an nls directory, which is
required by Motif for handling copy and paste to Motif text fields.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N955">
<q>NEdit crashes frequently, particularly on window closing.</q>
<a>
<p>There is an obsolete resource in Motif called defaultFontList, which
does nothing but cause random crashing. I don't know why NEdit users
keep popping up with this resource set, maybe it looks enticing when
you look at widget resources with editres. Anyhow, setting it to
anything, whether it be a valid font or just garbage, causes random
crashing in both Motif 1.2 and 2.0, so just don't set it.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N970">
<q>NEdit sometimes crashes when I execute a shell command menu item I
just added.</q>
<a>
<p>Check the "Command Input" setting, in the Preferences->Shell Commands
dialog for that menu item. If the shell command being executed does
not take input, but "Command Input" is set to "selection" or "window",
NEdit tries to write the input anyhow, and fails. Set "Command Input"
to "none" to prevent this possibility. This is fixed in version 5.1 and later.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N985">
<q>When NEdit starts up, I get errors like:
<tt>Cannot allocate colormap entry for "#b3b3b3".</tt>
</q>
<long-q>
<p>When NEdit starts up, I get errors:</p>
<pre>
Cannot allocate colormap entry for "#b3b3b3"
Cannot allocate colormap entry for "#e5e5e5"
</pre>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>Most X displays are set up to operate in a mode which allocates 8
bits of video memory per-pixel, and requires a color mapping table to
translate pixel values to screen colors. With just 8 bits there are
only 256 possible colors, and programs must either allocate and share
these pixel values, or swap in their own colormap and make all other
windows flash to strange colors while their window is focused. Some
programs, Netscape in particular, are bad neighbors in this
environment and snarf up every free entry in the shared colormap,
such that every program that runs after them gets the errors you're
asking about.</p>
<p>The solution is either to start Netscape last, after all other applications
that you might want to run, or better, tell Netscape how many colors it is
allowed to allocate. Fortunately, you can do this with a resource setting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><tt>Netscape*maxImageColors: 80</tt></p>
</blockquote>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1011">
<q>Sometimes when I use regular expression replacement inside of a
rectangular selection, NEdit fails to match text.</q>
<long-q>
<p>Sometimes when I use regular expression replacement inside of a
rectangular selection, NEdit fails to match text which does legally
match the expression.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>The problem with REs and rectangular selections is that matching is
bounded by the rectangular selection, but text outside of the selection
is still fed to the matching routines, so ^, $, don't refer to the
edges of the selection, they still refer to the beginning and ending of
the line, and some legal matches are excluded because they continue
outside of the selection are thereby excluded, or are shadowed by
matches which begin or end outside of the selection.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1026">
<q>When ever I execute a nedit shell command (such as spell or wc) I get
extra junk.</q>
<long-q>
<p>When ever I execute an nedit shell command (such as spell or wc) I get
(extra junk, error messages, complaints from stty) inserted into my text,
or an Information dialog with (extra junk, error messages, complaints
from stty).</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>You probably have printing commands in your shell startup file (.cshrc, or
equivalent). These should either be skipped in non-interactive mode, or
moved to your .login file. You can often see the problem outside of nedit
by typing:</p>
<pre>
csh -c ls
</pre>
<p>Error messages from stty are a result of it being executed from a process
which isn't attached to a terminal. You can safely move stty statements
and most other interactive commands to your .login file (calling stty from
a .cshrc file is redundant because the terminal device doesn't change for
each sub-shell). If you can't remove interactive commands, you should
skip around them in non-interactive shells, I think the usual method is to
put them at the end, preceded by something like:</p>
<pre>
if ($?prompt == 0) exit
</pre>
<p>The manual entry on csh has more information on this.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1055">
<q>On a Solaris system, the right part of the 'file open' dialog
is too narrow, I can't see the complete file names.</q>
<long-q>
<p>On a Solaris system, when trying to open a file within nedit, you get the
listing of available file names. However, the sub-window (on the right)
containing the file names (not directory names) sometimes is too narrow so
that you can't see the filename part (i.e. /usr/people/rainer/sometextfile.txt
shows up as /usr/people/rain or so). When resizing the dialog box, the
filenames sub-window on the right doesn't become larger. I know I can use
nedit.stdOpenDialog to type a filename, but that's annoying.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>It's a bug in the shared Motif library. Depending on your system, the patch
is one of ID# 103461-07, # 102226-19, or # 103186-21. If you can't patch
your system, you can set the resource:</p>
<pre>
nedit*XmFileSelectionBox.pathMode: XmPATH_MODE_RELATIVE
</pre>
<p>This will stop the dialog from displaying the path component of
file names. Another possible workaround is to use the nedit_sunos
executable (from <site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/</site>), which is
statically linked with a good Motif.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1077">
<q>When I try to open a file from the "Open" dialog nothing appears in
the "Filter" textfield</q>
<long-q>
<p>When I try to open a file from the "Open" dialog nothing appears in
the "Filter" textfield. Instead, I get repeated message like:</p>
<pre>
Name: Text
Class: XmTextField
Character '/' not supported in font. Discarded.
</pre>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>In some versions of S.u.S.E. Linux, there's apparently something wrong
with their builds of NEdit and other Motif apps. I've been told you
can make nedit work by seting the environment variable LD_PRELOAD to
/lib/libBrokenLocale.so.1 before launching it. You can also use the
statically linked version of NEdit for Linux from
<site>ftp://ftp.nedit.org/pub/</site>
</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1103">
<q>NEdit seems to be running very slowly on my Solaris 2.6 system.</q>
<a>
<p>If you're running NEdit on a Solaris 2.6 system and experiencing performance
problems (windows come up slowly), the patch for Sun's shared Motif library
is ID# 105284-04. Installing the patch alone will improve the performance
dramatically. The patch also enables a resource, *XmMenuReduceGrabs.
Setting this to True will eliminate the delay completely.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1118">
<q>I can't seem to enter accented characters on my system.</q>
<a>
<p>This should be working properly on most systems as of NEdit 5.1 or later. If it's
not, try re-building NEdit with -DNO_XMIM. If it still doesn't work, send
mail to <email>develop@nedit.org</email></p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1140">
<q>When I try to use nc to start an nedit server, I receive a message
<tt>(filename): forward host lookup failed: ...</tt></q>
<long-q>
<p>When I try to use nc to start an nedit server, for instance using</p>
<pre>
nc (filename)
</pre>
<p>I receive the following error message:</p>
<pre>
(filename): forward host lookup failed:
Host name lookup failure: Connection refused
</pre>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>There is another program called <code>nc</code> which is installed on
some systems. In this case, <code>nc</code> is for <code>netcat</code>,
some kind of network diagnostic tool. You can safely rename NEdit's
<code>nc</code> to something else (we recommend ncl), or put it first in
your path before <code>netcat</code>.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1166">
<q>Whenever I try to open existing files by using menu, nedit crashes; but
if I type <code>nedit filename</code> command, it works.</q>
<long-q>
<p>Whenever I try to open existing files by using menu, nedit crashes, and
sometimes I get the following error message:</p>
<pre>
X Error of failed request: BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 53 (X_CreatePixmap)
</pre>
<p>But if I type <code>nedit filename</code> command, it works. So
how can I open file by using menu bar?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>Several users have reported this problem. Most of them were using
S.u.S.E. Linux . A few others had different
distributions, but always European. The problem appears to be related
to how Motif searches for named pixmaps and bitmaps. My guess is that on
some systems, this search encounters a match with a bad pixmap file, or
tries to load something which is not a pixmap at all. One solution was
to set the environment variable XBMLANGPATH to a random directory. For
example:</p>
<pre>
XBMLANGPATH=.
export XBMLANGPATH
</pre>
<p>The solution on S.u.S.E Linux systems was to remove an unnecessary line
in the global /etc/profile (provided by S.u.S.E.):</p>
<pre>
export XAPPLRESDIR=
"$XAPPLRESDIR:/var/X11R6/app-defaults:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults"
</pre>
<p>Another user who had the problem reported that the root cause appeared to
be insufficient read permissions on some xm_* (e.g. xm_warning) pixmaps in
"/usr/X11R6/include/X11/bitmaps". (Could someone else confirm this?)</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1202">
<q>I want to be able to spawn a command from NEdit.</q>
<long-q>
<p>I want to be able to spawn a command from NEdit. By this I mean that I
want to NEdit to launch another program without waiting for the program
to return. At the moment I'd like to be able to launch
<code>mctags</code>, but I
also have a variety of other things I'd like to do. The shell command:
<code>mctags &</code> continues to wait
for mctags to finish, despite the "&". Is
there any way to do what I want?</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>It's a bug/feature of NEdit that it considers a shell command process
alive as long as any of it's file descriptors remain open. Forked
processes generally copy and keep open the stdout and stderr descriptors
from their parent process, so you have to add
<code>>& /dev/null</code> to your shell
command, so it reads:</p>
<pre>
mctags >& /dev/null &
</pre>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1221">
<q>NEdit flashes or matches the wrong parenthesis, bracket, or brace if there
is an intervening paren/bracket/brace quoted in between.</q>
<a>
<p>Until version 5.0, NEdit had no way of even knowing what
language you were operating in when making the flash/match decision, so it
simply counted opening and closing instances, disregarding language syntax
context (strings, comments, etc.) completely. Now that the feature is more
possible to implement, it may be included in a future version, but I'm not
entirely sure how best to do it yet.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1236">
<q>I'd like to edit a file which is about 50 Megabytes long,
but I get errors.</q>
<long-q>
<p>I'd like to edit a file which is about 50 Megabytes long.
Whenever I try to read this file, there was always a message as following:</p>
<pre>
Error: Cannot perform realloc
</pre>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>How large a file you can edit with NEdit depends on how much swap space + RAM
you have, since it loads your file into virtual memory and occasionally does a
full copy of that memory space. NEdit can handle a 100MB file reasonably well
if you increase your swap space, but I don't know how far beyond that it can
go. To work with a 100MB file, you must have at least 200MB of virtual memory
available. Many Unix systems can be set up to temporarily increase swap space
by creating a temporary swap file.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1255">
<q>We installed NEdit Version 5.0 recently, and the
accelerators Ctrl-G (Find again) and Ctrl-L (Goto Line Number) are now
missing</q>
<a>
<p>You have an out-of-date app-defaults file. We strongly recommend not using
such files for this exact reason. When you use an app-defaults file, it
replaces ALL of the program defaults. If you do install an app-defaults file,
it is your responsibility to keep it up to date with each new release of the
executable. Otherwise, as you have observed, certain features will degrade
with each release, as the app-defaults file and the executable get further and
further out of sync with eachother.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1270">
<q>On our PCs we have Windows 3.1 and we run XVision as X-Server and
we cannot mark with the mouse within NEdit.</q>
<long-q>
<p>On our PCs we have Windows 3.1 and we run XVision as X-Server. The problem
that we have is, that we cannot mark with the mouse within NEdit.</p>
<p>When you click and hold the left mouse button and then move the mouse, you
can see the mark-area flickering during the movement of the mouse. When
stopping the movement nothing is highlighted and nothing is marked.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>XVision is grabbing the selection immediately, as soon as it is made, not
allowing applications to own it. This behavior is completely wrong, and I
have no idea what they might have been thinking when they implemented it. It
may be possible to turn it off, ask their technical support people if they're
not already out of business.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1288">
<q>My regular expression replacement got truncated!</q>
<long-q>
<p>My regular expression replacement got truncated! I wrote
a regular expression to nest additional braces around blocks of code
(replace <tt>{([^{}]|\n)*}</tt> with <tt>{\0}</tt>), which works for
small blocks of text, but it fails on large ones, truncating the
replacement at around 512 bytes.</p>
</long-q>
<a>
<p>A remnant of pre-regular-expression, pre-macro-language NEdit, is that
replacement strings are limited to 511 bytes. This is high on the list
to fix in a future upgrade.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1303">
<q>NEdit is slow and pages continuously on my 8MB Linux system</q>
<a>
<p>On most Unix workstations, 8MB of RAM is actually insufficient to run X
and Motif properly. Some Linux users get by with it and Linux itself
seems to be quite memory efficient, but you really should have 12 or 16
if you're going to be using X much. NEdit would not be my first choice
in editors on an 8MB system.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1318">
<q>Some of the special keys on my keyboard don't do what I expect.</q>
<a>
<p>X systems are rife with this kind of problem because are just too many
levels of re-settable bindings between the keyboard and the application
program that reads it. Sun systems are the worst offenders, combining
poor Motif support with a variety of strange keyboard arrangements.</p>
<p>To diagnose these problems, you have to look at all three levels of key
binding that affect Motif programs.</p>
<p>At the bottom level are the modifier map and keymap table, where
hardware key codes are bound to X keysyms. You can see the bindings on
this level with the xmodmap program (see man xmodmap). A useful tool
in debugging the xmodmap level is a program like xev, which can show
you the keysyms it receives.</p>
<p>The next level up from that is the motif virtual binding level
(see man VirtualBindings). You can (usually) view the bindings at
this level by looking at the value of the root window property:
_MOTIF_DEFAULT_BINDINGS, using the xprop -root command, however what
you see is not necessarily what you'll get. The defaults for these
bindings are determined by an unbelievably complicated process
involving not just the application in question, but Motif
applications which have run before it attached to the same server.
This process is described in detail in the VirtualBindings manual
page (which is often not available on systems where the bindings are
messed up). While it's usually better to attack system configuration
problems at the source, this one is so contorted that you're better
off with a patch. Luckily, the default Motif virtual bindings can be
overridden by an application resource called defaultVirtualBindings.
If you think the problem is at the Motif virtual binding level,
define a defaultVirtualBindings resource in your .Xresources or
.Xdefaults file, using the example below as a template, replacing the
keysym names (to the right of the colon) with the keysyms shown by
xev when you press the desired key:</p>
<pre>
!
! Motif Virtual Key Bindings
!
nedit*defaultVirtualBindings: \
osfActivate : <Key>KP_Enter\n\
osfCancel : <Key>Escape\n\
osfHelp : <Key>Help\n\
osfMenu : <Key>F4\n\
osfMenuBar : <Key>F10\n\
osfLeft : <Key>Left\n\
osfUp : <Key>Up\n\
osfRight : <Key>Right\n\
osfDown : <Key>Down\n\
osfBeginLine : <Key>Home\n\
osfEndLine : <Key>End\n\
osfPageUp : <Key>Prior\n\
osfPageDown : <Key>Next\n\
osfBackSpace : <Key>BackSpace\n\
osfDelete : <Key>Delete\n\
osfInsert : <Key>Insert\n\
osfUndo : <Key>F14\n\
osfAddMode :Shift <Key>F8\n\
osfCopy : <Key>F16\n\
osfCut : <Key>F20\n\
osfPaste : <Key>F18\n
</pre>
<p>If NEdit is having binding problems, chances are that other Motif-based
programs are also having trouble. Removing the "nedit" from the resource
name above (just *defaultVirtualBindings), will apply it to the other
Motif programs that you run as well.</p>
<p>The top level bindings in the key binding hierarchy, are the X toolkit
translation tables (see the NEdit Help section called X Resources). To
show the translations in use, you can add a binding which dumps the table
itself:</p>
<pre>
nedit*text.Translations: #override \
Alt<Key>t: XtDisplayTranslations()\n
</pre>
<p>Typing Alt+T will then display the contents of the translation table to
stdout (the terminal from which you started NEdit). If you have the NEdit
source, you can also look at the default bindings in the module text.c.</p>
<p>Sometimes, even if you don't understand the problem, you can patch around it
by supplying translations for the keysyms that NEdit actually sees, binding
them to the action routines that you want activated when you press that
key.</p>
</a>
</qna>
<qna id="N1319">
<q>KP Enter does no longer executes the current line or selected text as
a shell command. How can I get this behavior back?</q>
<a>
<p>It was considered dangerous to have a commonly used key potentially
execute arbitrary shell commands unintentionally (think rm -Rf). Therefore
the shortcut was changed to Ctrl+KP Enter.
In case you want the old binding back, you can add the following lines
to your .Xdefaults or .Xresources file:</p>
<pre>
nedit*shellMenu.executeCommandLine.accelerator: <Key>KP_Enter",
nedit*shellMenu.executeCommandLine.acceleratorText: KP Enter",
</pre>
</a>
</qna>
</section>
</body>
</faq>
|
