nedit.doc

nedit 是一款linux下的开发源码的功能强大的编辑器

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

NEdit 5.4                                               November 20, 2003

  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: