Currently, four versions of bluefish are available:

If you want the latest and greatest, read Section 4, “Latest Developmental Version” below or Section 3, “Latest Snapshot Version” if you do not want to install CVS. If you simply want to use Bluefish, read Section 2, “Latest Stable Version” for how to get the latest stable package for your system.

Many Linux distributions ship a version of Bluefish or make it available through their package systems. For example, Bluefish is available through the Debian apt-system and FreeBSD's ports. You may check if Bluefish is available through your favorite software installer.

However, the main source is the Bluefish website, where the software and a few contributions are available. The download page is reachable at http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/download.html. Here, you may download the source code and binary packages for Debian, Red Hat/Fedora, and Mandrake.

Snapshots are made regularly to provide users with the latest functionalities without having to deal with CVS. Though often not tested, they may be convenient for evaluation. They are available at http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/download.html

To get the latest version of Bluefish you will need to download the source files from our CVS repository.

CVS^[3], a version control system, is a widely used software development tool. It keeps track of changes to the source code, and allows for reversion to previous states. If you want to read more about CVS, have a look at the CVS-book by Karl Fogel, available at http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/cvsbook.html.

The Bluefish project's CVS repository is generously hosted by SourceForge.net^[4]. For more information about them, see their site. The project homepage is http://sourceforge.net/projects/bluefish. Our CVS repository contains the current Bluefish source code, including this manual. The repository is accessible by anyone, and is updated almost daily by the developers.

To access the repository, you need a few small utilities. They are likely to be available through your favorite source of software (ports, apt, etc). The above-mentioned CVS book is a great source for information.

Here's how you get the source.

Bluefish aims to be portable; that is, wherever GTK is ported. A comparatively small set of external libraries are necessary for it to work. Any recent GNU/Linux distribution or other *NIX with GTK2 installed should be sufficient. In addition to the list of requirements below, you may also want to look at Section 3, “System Specific Installation Issues”. Note that these requirements fit the GTK2 version. If you only have GTK1, you want the last GTK1-version, v0.7.

The main requirements:

Optional requirements:

Compiling Bluefish requires a few additional packages. However, binary packages exist for many platforms, so it is likely you will not need to compile. Now, let us assume you want to compile, perhaps to get the latest and greatest from CVS. The requirements are as follows:

There are two main methods for installing Bluefish: Compile from source or install a binary package. Binary installation is easiest, so we will cover that first. There are a few different approaches, caused by the differences between systems. We will start off by summarizing a few really quick and simple approaches before dealing with this problem more extensively.

Different systems have different approaches to solutions and packaging. You might find the information below interesting.

Cygwin:

Debian:

Mandrake:

Fink:

DarwinPorts:

By installing Bluefish from source, you may be able to get a newer version (from CVS) than those distributed as binaries. You may also need to compile from source if no binary is available for your system.

This section describes all the configure options available for bluefish.

5.1. Standard configuration flags

Configuration:

-h
--help

display this help and exit

--help=short

display options specific to this package

--help=recursive

display the short help of all the included packages

-V
--version

display version information and exit

-q
--quiet
--silent

do not print "checking..." messages

--cache-file=FILE

cache test results in FILE [disabled by default]

-C
--config-cache

alias for --cache-file=config.cache

-n
--no-create

do not create output files

--srcdir=DIR

find the sources in DIR [configure dir or .. by default]

Installation directories:

	By default, make install will install all the files in /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/lib, etc. You can specify an installation prefix other than /usr/local using --prefix, for instance --prefix=$HOME.

--prefix=PREFIX

install architecture-independent files in PREFIX [/usr/local by default]

--exec-prefix=EPREFIX

install architecture-dependent files in EPREFIX [PREFIX by default]

Fine tuning of the installation directories:

	For better control, use the options below. Defaults are shown within brackets.

--bindir=DIR

user executables [EPREFIX/bin]

--sbindir=DIR

system admin executables [EPREFIX/sbin]

--libexecdir=DIR

program executables [EPREFIX/libexec]

--datadir=DIR

read-only architecture-independent data [PREFIX/share]

--sysconfdir=DIR

read-only single-machine data [PREFIX/etc]

--sharedstatedir=DIR

modifiable architecture-independent data [PREFIX/com]

--localstatedir=DIR

modifiable single-machine data [PREFIX/var]

--libdir=DIR

object code libraries [EPREFIX/lib]

--includedir=DIR

C header files [PREFIX/include]

--oldincludedir=DIR

C header files for non-gcc [/usr/include]

--infodir=DIR

info documentation [PREFIX/info]

--mandir=DIR

man documentation [PREFIX/man]

Program names:

--program-prefix=PREFIX

prepend PREFIX to installed program names

--program-suffix=SUFFIX

append SUFFIX to installed program names

--program-transform-name=PROGRAM

run sed PROGRAM on installed program names

System types:

--build=BUILD

configure for building on BUILD [guessed]

--host=HOST

cross-compile to build programs to run on HOST [BUILD]

Some influential environment variables:

	Use these variables to override the choices made by configure or to help it to find libraries and programs with nonstandard names/locations.

CC

C compiler command

CFLAGS

C compiler flags

LDFLAGS

linker flags, e.g. -L<lib dir> if you have libraries in a nonstandard directory <lib dir>

CPPFLAGS

C/C++ preprocessor flags, e.g. -I<include dir> if you have headers in a nonstandard directory <include dir>

CPP

C preprocessor

5.2. Flags personal to bluefish

Optional Features:

	These work like this: --enable-feature enables the feature, --disable-feature or --enable-feature=no disables the feature. By default, the --enable-feature option is not enabled, you should pass it if you want to get it, the --disable-xxx option is not disabled, you should pass it if you want to disable it.

--enable-auto-optimization

Optimizes the build process for a given architecture if possible. It works only on a selected set of x86 platforms.

How: rely on the result of:

1. uname -p or grep "model name" /proc/cpuinfo | cut -d: -f2 to detect the architecture

2. the version of gcc to pass the arguments

Tested gcc versions: 3.2.*, 3.0.*, 2.95.*

Machines: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4CPU, Pentium III, AMD-K6 (tm) 3D, Pentium 75 - 200, Pentium II, AMD Athlon(TM) XP

Other machines are ignored

--enable-gcc3-optimization=type

optimizes the build process for a given architecture if possible

Machines: i386, i486, pentium, pentium-mmx, pentiumpro, pentium2, pentium3, pentium4, k6, k6-2, k6-3, athlon, athlon-tbird, athlon-4, athlon-xp, athlon-mp, winchip-c6, winchip2, c3

Other machines are ignored

--enable-gcc2-optimization=type

optimizes the build process for a given architecture if possible

Machines: i386, i486, pentium, pentiumpro, k6

Other machines are ignored

--enable-debugging-output

turns debugging output on (this option impacts performance)

--disable-splash-screen

suppresses the display of the splash screen at launch time (Bluefish launches faster)

--enable-highlight-profiling

outputs statistics on where the program spends most of its time when highlighting patterns

Usage: for debugging highlight patterns or trying to optimize the program

--enable-development

enables development checks (slows down the program)

--enable-gprof-profiling

outputs statistics on where the program spends most of its time by generating extra code to write profile information suitable for the analysis (slows down the program)

--enable-gcoc-coverage

Purpose: to be able to collect statistics on how many times each branch is executed and how long it has lasted. Creates data files for the gcov code-coverage utility (slows down the program)

--disable-update-databases

do not run the update-desktop-database or update-mime-database utilities after installation (mostly useful for package maintainers)

--disable-nls

disables the Native Language Support (might speed up the program)

Optional Packages:

	These work like this: --with-xxx=foo enables the flag, --without-xxx disables it. When not enabled, the default is used.

--without-libgnomeui

disable libgnomeui detection

--with-gnome1-menu

customized path for the gnome1 menu (disabled by default)

Usage: --with-gnome1-menu=customizedpath or --without-gnome1-menu

disabled by default

--with-freedesktop_org-menu

customized path for the freedesktop.org (gnome and kde) menu

Usage: --with-freedesktop_org-menu=customizedpath or --without-freedesktop_org-menu

defaults to auto-detection, which tries:

• /usr/share/applications

• PREFIX/share/applications

• /usr/X11R6/share/gnome/applications

• PREFIX/share/gnome/applications

--with-freedesktop_org-mime

customized path for the freedesktop.org (gnome and kde) mime

Usage: --with-freedesktop_org-mime=customizedpath or --without-freedesktop_org-mime

defaults to auto-detection, which tries:

• /usr/share/mime

• PREFIX/share/mime

• /usr/X11R6/share/gnome/mime

• PREFIX/share/gnome/mime

--with-gnome2_4-mime

customized path for the gnome 2.4 mime

Usage: --with-gnome2_4-mime=customizedpath or --without-gnome2_4-mime

defaults to auto-detection, which tries:

• /usr/share/mime-info

• PREFIX/share/mime-info

• /usr/X11R6/share/gnome/mime-info

• PREFIX/share/gnome/mime-info

--with-gnome2_4-appreg

customized path for the gnome 2.4 application registry

Usage: --with-gnome2_4-appreg=customizedpath or --without-gnome2_4-appreg

defaults to auto-detection, which tries:

• /usr/share/application-registry

• PREFIX/share/application-registry

• /usr/X11R6/share/gnome/application-registry

• PREFIX/share/gnome/application-registry

--with-icon-path

customized path for the icon.

Usage: --with-icon-path=customizedpath or --without-icon-path

defaults to auto-detection, which tries:

• /usr/share/pixmaps

• PREFIX/share/pixmaps

• /usr/X11R6/share/gnome/pixmaps

• PREFIX/share/gnome/pixmaps

--with-libiconv-prefix

customized path for libiconv top level installation.

Usage: --with-libiconv-prefix=customizeddir

Effect: searches for libiconv in customizeddir/include and customizeddir/lib

--with-included-gettext

use the GNU gettext library included in the package

Features specific to the CVS version:

--enable-unstable-install

enable the installation of a bluefish development version with independent directories and files. Use this for CVS snapshots

--enable-scanner

use the BfTextView scanner for editor widget

--disable-python

do not build the python plugin

--with-theme-path

customized path for the theme icons.

Usage: --with-theme-path=customizedpath or --without-theme-path

defaults to auto-detection, which tries:

• /usr/share/icons/hicolor

• PREFIX/share/icons/hicolor

• /usr/X11R6/share/gnome/icons/hicolor

• PREFIX/share/gnome/icons/hicolor

Different packages -- different installation.

We will cover only a few approaches here^[5], since the installation is very system-specific ;-). Let us have a look at some different systems:

The first time you run Bluefish it will create a directory ~/.bluefish where all Bluefish's configuration options are stored. This includes all preferences, customized menus, highlighting-patterns, file history, etc.

Bluefish will work right out of the box, but you can and should take advantage of the many customizations available. Change the font in the main text view if you do not like it, remove unused tool bars, add shortcuts to the customizable menu, and edit the list of browsers and external programs.

If you are upgrading from a previous version, perhaps CVS, you should note that the syntax highlighting may have changed. To make sure you have the latest highlighting patterns, follow the following procedure:

Note that this will also annihilate all your changes to the highlighting. Here's a more gentle approach:

If your settings become corrupted, unusable, or you simply want to revert to the defaults, you may safely delete the ~/.bluefish directory.

In GNOME, Bluefish can be started from the Applications/Programming menu. From a terminal, simply launch bluefish using the command bluefish.

In GNOME, bluefish is launched conforming to the system language. If you want to launch it with another language, first rename the directory $HOME/.bluefish to $HOME/.bluefish-xx, where xx is the previous language. This way you will retrieve your previous settings easily. Then use this command in a terminal: export LANGUAGE=fr_FR; export LANG=fr_FR; export LC_ALL=fr_FR; bluefish & if you use a bash-like shell.

For French users, if you want to get the custom menu in French language, launch it with the same command as above. If you run bluefish in GNOME, launch it with this command the first time after installation, thereafter you may launch it via the Applications/Programming menu.

There are several useful command line options:

Many programs like browsers, email clients and file managers can be configured to open files in Bluefish. For example, bluefish '%s' will open a file in the current window, bluefish -n '%s' will open a file in a new window, and bluefish -p '%s' will open a project file.

The biggest part of the user interface is the editor area. Because Bluefish has a so-called “Multiple Document Interface”, there are actually many editor areas in Bluefish, accessible via the tabs. By default the tabs are on the bottom.

Figure IV.1. Bluefish Editor Array

Notice that the current document's tab may be raised by the Gtk theme, and if the document has been modified, its name on the tab is coloured in red. The changes are also noted with red on the open document list, accessible by right-clicking on the tab.

Figure IV.2. List of open Documents

The top of the Bluefish interface consists of a menu, a main tool bar, an HTML tool bar, and a Custom menu.

Figure IV.3. Bluefish Main Menu

The main tool bar gives you quick access to the basic functionalities of a text editor.

Figure IV.4. Bluefish Main Tool Bar

The HTML tool bar provides access to the most commonly used HTML functionalities.

Figure IV.5. Bluefish HTML Tool Bar

The custom tool bar provides access to languages and replacement functions. It is fully customizable through the preferences panel.

Figure IV.6. Bluefish Custom Tool Bar

To the left of the editor area is the side panel. If you would prefer that the side bar be on the right side, simply change the setting in the User Interface tab found in the Edit → Preferences menu option. The side panel consists of a file browser, a function reference browser, and a bookmark browser, accessible by clicking on the corresponding sidebar notebook tab.

Figure IV.7. Bluefish Sidebar Notebook Tab

You may also customize the location of the sidebar notebook tab via User Interface tab found in the Edit → Preferences menu option.

The file browser provides quick access to files and directories.

Figure IV.8. Bluefish File Browser

The function reference browser references CSS2, HTML, PHP, and Python functions with their syntax. Some of them provide dialogs to help you inserting them.

Figure IV.9. Bluefish Function Reference Browser

The bookmark browser provides access to previously marked positions in a file.

Figure IV.10. Bluefish Bookmark Browser

On the bottom of the Bluefish window is the status bar. Shown here are messages, the current line & column number, the insert (INS) or overwrite (OVR) mode for the cursor, and the file type & character encoding.

Figure IV.11. Bluefish Status Bar

The visibility of these items can be toggled via the View menu.

Figure IV.12. Bluefish View Menu

If you want to disable any of these items by default, you can set these options in the preferences under User interface.

The Help menu contains the typical About box. As usual, you will find in it developers', maintainers', and translators' details. Plus the configure flags used to compile Bluefish on your system and the packages detected automatically.

Figure IV.13. Bluefish About Window

The other menus are described in the following sections:

Apart from using File → New (Ctrl-N) or the New icon to create a new file, you may also use File → New Window (Shift-Ctrl-N).

Those methods create an untitled file of type text (except when you are working on a project with defined template file, see Creating a New Project for more info) with default permissions and the default character encoding defined in the Files tab in the Edit → Preferences menu option. You will further have to save it under the desired name.

Figure V.3. Untitled Document Window

	Note that the document window is titled “Untitled n - Bluefish versionnumber”, which indicates precisely that the file is not saved on the disk. The same applies to the document's tab which shows “Untitled n”. Moreover, if you move the cursor onto the document's tab, you will not see any size or modification date.

	When creating new files, you may want to create them in a new window. In this case, use File → New Window to first open the new window and then create the desired files as usual.

To spare yourself the bother of saving, right click on the desired directory in the directory list of the file browser in the side panel and select New File. You will be presented with a File name dialog, where you will enter the desired name:

Figure V.4. The File Name Dialog

	You may type a path relative to the clicked directory, provided that the target directory be under the clicked directory and that it exists.

To create a new directory, right click on the desired parent directory in the directory list of the file browser in the side panel and select New Directory. You may also right click on any file in the files part of the file browser.

Then enter the desired name in the Directory name dialog. Bluefish will create the named directory with the default permissions under the currently selected directory.

Figure V.5. The Directory Name Dialog

Note that you cannot delete directories within Bluefish, but you can refresh the view with the Refresh contextual menu item of the directory part of the file browser if you delete them externally. This is especially useful when you add files and directories or delete files.

If you right click a directory in the file browser within the side panel, you can make this directory the base directory for the file browser using the Set as basedir option. Then you can access it directly from the pop up menu in the upper part of the file browser.

By default the file browser follows the document focus. If you change to a different document, the file browser will show the contents of the directory where this document is located. This behaviour can be changed by unchecking Follow focus on the bottom of the file browser.

Through the File → Open... (Ctrl-O) menu item or the Open... icon in the main tool bar, one or more files can be opened. If you want to open them in a new window, use File → New Window to first open the new window and then open the desired files as usual.

Figure V.6. Bluefish Open File Dialog

The most recently opened directories appear in the upper part of the side panel, while the lower part contains user-defined locations. To add a new directory to the list, click on Add. You can also filter the file list by file type using the pop menu located on the right side. The list of file types in the filter menu is provided through the Filetypes tab found in Bluefish's Edit → Preferences menu option.

Recently opened files can be opened by selecting them from the list within File → Open recent. The number of files in this menu can be set in the preferences under Files.

The contextual menus of both parts of the file browser in the side panel can also be used to open files. The file part supports opening a given file by right clicking it, and filtering files via the Filter submenu of its contextual menu. The directory part supports filtering files via the Filter submenu of its contextual menu, and advanced opening explained in the Section 12.3, “Open advanced”.

Figure V.7. Filtering Files with the Bluefish File Browser

The available filters may be modified in Preferences. For more information, see Section 11, “Modifying the files filters”.

An interesting feature of Bluefish is the ability to open files by selecting the text of a currently opened file in another application. For example, if a filename is shown in say a terminal application, you can select the filename, and use File → Open from Selection to open that file. The file, if it exists, will be opened in another tab within Bluefish.

	The selected text should match the full path of an existing file.

Files can also be opened via the command line by feeding filenames to Bluefish as arguments. For example:

$bluefish ~/foo1.txt ~/foo2.txt

This can even be done while Bluefish is running and the resulting files will then show up in their own tabs.

If you have installed gnome-vfs or gnome-vfs2 before installing Bluefish, you will be able to open files on remote desktop via the File → Open URL... menu item. See more on this in the Section 12.1, “Remote files”. Finally, if the gnome2 environment is installed on your system, you may open files by drag and drop from the desktop or the Nautilus file manager onto any part of the Bluefish interface, but the document's editor.

Be aware that if the file is huge it may take a very long time to get the rendering if syntax highlighting is enabled in the Editor option of Preferences, in particular if the PCRE UTF-8 support is enabled. The GTK editing widget used in Bluefish, furthermore, is not very good at handling files with very long lines, and that could also slow down Bluefish considerably.

Information about currently opened files can be seen if you move the mouse over the document tab (by default on the bottom of the screen). A so called tool tip will be shown with information about the full path, size, permissions, file type and encoding of the file.

Figure V.8. Info on open File

	Note that the document's tab is hightlighted in red, because the document has been modified since the last save. Info in the tool tip match the state of the file as it was saved on disk.

To save a document, you can use the File menu, the Save icon in the tool bar, or press the shortcut key combination Ctrl-S.

If the file does not exist already on the disk, you will be presented with the following dialog window:

Figure V.9. Saving an untitled File

If the file already exists on the disk, no dialog window pops up. It is assumed that the file name does not change.

When a document has been modified, the filename is shown in red in the document tabs; morever if you right click on the tabs, the full path is shown in red in the list that will pop up.

Figure V.10. A modified Document in the Documents' List

By default a backup is made during save. The original file is copied to the same filename with a tilde ~ appended. This suffix and the backup behaviour can be changed in the preferences under Files.

Before saving the file, Bluefish will check if the original file was changed on disk, using the last modified time and the file size. On some file systems the last modified time is sometimes not very precise (most notably on samba mounts). This makes Bluefish think the file is modified when it is not. This check can be changed in the preferences under Files.

You can also save a document under a different name, using the Save As... (Shift-Ctrl-S) menu entry, or the Save As... icon in the main tool bar. The original file will still exist.

Figure V.11. Saving a File under a new Name

To save all modified files, you can use the File → Save All menu entry. This will save all documents that have been modified and present you with a save dialog if some files are new files.

It is also possible to move or rename a document, using the File → Rename... (F2) menu item, or right-clicking the file name in the side panel and choosing the Rename item.

Figure V.12. Moving a File to another Location

To delete a file, right click on it in the file browser within the side panel. You will be asked either to confirm the deletion or to cancel the process, if you have the right permissions for it.

	Be cautious with this feature, there is no easy way to recover the deleted file. Mac OS X users: this command is not equivalent to putting the file in the trash, but to using the rm command, so that, apart using a specialized commercial tool, you cannot recover the file.

Combining this feature with the Show hidden files feature accessible via the contextual menu of the Filebrowser side panel allows you to delete hidden files more easily than via the rm tool on some systems.

Combining it with the Rename feature accessible via the contextual menu of the Filebrowser side panel allows you to delete an original file once you have edited a new file based on the former one, and to give the new file the same name as the original one.

	The first safe usage I can find for this feature is, for example, to remove the backup .#filename.version files created by CVS during conflicts after resolving them, particularly on Mac OS X where those files are tricky to access. A second usage would be, for example, to save a po file again under its original name after updating it via a shell script under a new name, and editing it manually.

When you want to close a file quickly, click on the close icon in the document tab. You may also use the Close icon in the main tool bar, or the File → Close (Ctrl-W) menu item.

Figure V.13. Closing a File with the Document Tab Icon

If the file is unchanged, it is merely closed. If the file has been modified, you will be presented with a save dialog.

Figure V.14. Closing a modified File

	Use it to save and close a file in one step.

When dealing with multiple files, you may want to use the File → Close All (Shift-Ctrl-W) menu item.

For each modified file, you will be presented with a save dialog, where you can choose to save the changes, close the file (i.e. discarding any change), or cancel the operation.

Figure V.15. Closing all Files

	Say you have a number of open files, and only a few of them have been changed. To quickly close the unchanged files, and remain with the modified ones, use it answering cancel for the latter ones.

Note that the File → Close Window menu item offers the same behaviour.

You can insert any file into the current document with the File → Insert... menu item.

Figure V.16. Inserting a File

The file will be inserted at the cursor location.

	Always save the file before inserting another one, this will prevent any potential loss of data.

For more in-depth information about dealing with files, see Section 12, “More on files”.

Bluefish offers a wide range of find and replace methods in the Edit menu, also available through the contextual menu within a document. Here we will explore the most basic ones. For advanced find and replace methods, see Section 5, “Find and Replace”.

10.1. Searching for a word within a whole document

Choose the Edit → Find... (Ctrl-F) menu item. A Find dialog will be displayed. Enter the word to search for in the Search for: field. Then click OK.

Figure V.19. Finding a Word in a Document, from Start to End

If the word does not exist in the document, a small window pops up.

Figure V.20. Unsuccessful Search Window

If the search is successful, the document window scrolls up to the first occurrence of the string in the document and highlights it.

Below is an example of a search applied to a shell script.

Figure V.21. Highlighted Search Result in the Document Window

To find a subsequent occurrence of the string, use the Edit → Find again (Ctrl-G) menu item. If no further occurrence is found, a dialog will be displayed notifying you that no match was found.

10.2. Setting limits to the search scope

You may want to search for a string from the cursor location till the end of the document. Here is an example to search all name == occurrences within a python script from a given location.

Procedure V.2. Searching from selection

1. Put the cursor where you want to start the search from in the document window

   

   Figure V.22. Setting the Cursor Location

2. Open the Find... dialog

3. Enter your search string in the Search for: field

4. Choose Current position till end from the Starts at: pop up menu

   

   Figure V.23. Choosing a limited Search Method

5. Click OK.

Here is the result:

Figure V.24. Limited Search Result

Notice that the search does not take into account the occurrence of the same string at line 50, since it is outside the search scope.

You can also limit the search scope to a selection range. In that case, highlight the selection before the search, and choose Beginning of selection till end of selection from the Starts at: pop up menu in the Find dialog.

10.3. Case sensitive search

By default, the search process is case insensitive. If you want to make it case sensitive, just check the Match case box in the Find dialog.

Figure V.25. Making the Search Case Sensitive

Here is the result applied to a ruby script:

Figure V.26. Case Sensitive Search Result

Notice again that the result does not catch the XML string at line 45, since the search string was xml and case sensitive search was requested.

10.4. Overlapping searches

It may occur that the document contains some kind of palindrome you want to search for. The "normal" find process does not retrieve all occurrences of that kind of string.

In this case, you have to check the Overlap searches box in the Find dialog to retrieve all occurences of the string.

Figure V.27. Finding overlapping Strings

Applied to a shell script, the second search (with Ctrl-F, then Ctrl-G) will give the following result:

Figure V.28. An overlapping String retrieved with the Find Dialog

10.5. Retrieving previous search strings

Notice that the pop up menu to the right of the Search for field in the Find dialog allows you to retrieve previous search strings. They are listed in reverse order by search history, providing quicker access to the most recent searches.

Figure V.29. Retrieving recent Searches

10.7. Replacing features

The Edit → Replace... (Ctrl-H) menu item works the same way and has all the features, the Edit → Find... (Ctrl-F) menu item offers.

The Replace dialog is also accessible through the contextual menu within a document.

For the features common to the Find dialog, see Section 10.1, “Searching for a word within a whole document”.

Here we will explain the features unique to the Replace dialog.

Figure V.30. The Replace Dialog

10.9. Changing letter case when replacing

If you want to change letter case when replacing, use the Replace type pop up menu.

The default choice is Normal, that is the case is not changed.

With the Uppercase replace type, the search string will be replaced with its uppercase translation.

Likewise, with the Lowercase replace type, the search string will be replaced with its lowercase translation.

Figure V.31. Changing letter Case when Replacing

Notice that in this case, the Replace with field is deactivated, thus not taken into account even if you have entered some string in it.

10.10. Choosing strings to replace

It may occur that you do not want to replace all search strings retrieved by the search process, but only some of them. In this case, check the Prompt before replace box. A Confirm replace dialog will appear for each retrieved string where you can choose to Skip this string, i.e. leave it as it is, Replace it, Replace all strings within the search scope, or Close the dialog, i.e. cancel the process.

Figure V.32. The Replace Confirm Dialog

If you want to replace only the first occurrence of a search string, check the Replace once box instead.

Different file types can change the behaviour of Bluefish. File types are recognized by their extension, or by the beginning of the file's contents. The current document type is shown in the far right of the status bar. If the type of a file is not properly detected, you can change the type using the Document → Document Type menu. See Chapter VIII, Customising Bluefish to change these extensions.

The editing area is a standard GTK editing area. This means there are many keyboard shortcuts available to navigate through the text.

These shortcuts are also available when selecting text. Some examples:

Navigating through a large list of documents can be difficult. But if you right-click the document notebook tabs, you get a list of all opened documents.

Navigation between documents can also be done using the Go menu, or its shortcuts.

Figure VI.1. Bluefish Go Menu

The shortcuts are the following:

The Go → Goto Line (Ctrl-L) offers an interesting feature.

If there is some number in the document, you may select it, then click the From selection label in the Goto line dialog. Bluefish will fill in the Line number field with that number and go directly to it. The same feature is available from the Go → Goto Selection.

Figure VI.2. Using the Goto Line Dialog

	Check the Keep dialog box to keep the dialog open, when you plan to access several parts of the document by line numbers.

The projects are a sort of saved state of Bluefish. Thus, they are a very convenient way to work with files scattered all over your disks or to pick up only the files you are interested in within a huge tree. Projects features are accessible through the Project menu.

Figure VI.3. The Bluefish Project Menu

To open a project, you have the choice between Project → Open Project... or Project → Open recent. When you choose the former, a Selecting a Bluefish Project dialog is presented to you.

Figure VI.7. Selecting a Bluefish Project

To save the project under its current name/location, use Project → Save or Project → Save & close; to save it under a new name/location, use Project → Save as.... If any file in the project has changed, a dialog will allow you to save the file, discard the changes, or cancel. All files open when the project is saved are automatically opened the next time you open the project.

Figure VI.8. Opening a Bluefish Project

Notice that the side panel only shows the tree related to the project.

Also, the recently used files in that project are shown in the File → Open recent menu item.

A project also saves some basic Bluefish settings, giving the project its own customized Bluefish setup. Currently, the word wrap preference and the state of various tool and menu bars are saved in a project file. The project file itself is simply a text file in the standard Bluefish format (same format as the config file). This format is key: value. Here is an example:

name: BluefishDoc
basedir: ~/bluefishcvs/bluefish-gtk2/doc/
webdir: http://micmacfr.homeunix.org/bluefish/doc
template: 
view_main_toolbar: 1
view_left_panel: 1
view_custom_menu: 1
view_html_toolbar: 1
word_wrap: 1

In Bluefish you can add bookmarks to a line in the text, and you can later use the bookmark to quickly jump to this location, or even to open the document referred to by the bookmark at that line.

Bookmarks can be added to the current cursor location by using the Edit → Add Bookmark (Ctrl-D) menu item; or by right-clicking in the text, and selecting Add bookmark. You can delete a bookmark using the Delete bookmark item in the document contextual menu.

Each bookmark in a given document is marked by a blue background in the line number margin.

Figure VI.9. How Bookmarks are marked

Bookmarks can be temporary or permanent. Permanent bookmarks are stored, and temporary bookmarks are gone after Bluefish is closed. The default is set in the preferences under Editor.

Bookmarks can be found in the third tab of the side panel, sorted by document and line number.

Figure VI.10. Bookmarks in the Side Panel

If you right click a bookmark in the bookmark tab of the side panel, you get a pop up menu with several options.

Figure VI.11. Contextual Menu on Bookmark in the Side Panel

The Goto bookmark item allows you to go to the bookmark location in the document, opening it if needed.

The Edit item allows you to change a bookmark from temporary to permanent or the other way around, to name it, and to give it a short description.

Figure VI.12. Editing a Bookmark

Note that after naming a bookmark, the default name - first characters of the bookmarked line - is displayed after the new name.

Figure VI.13. A named Bookmark

Via this contextual menu, you may also delete a bookmark, delete all bookmarks in the active document, or delete all bookmarks stored in the bookmark tab of the side panel. The latter ones are also available when you right click the name of a document in this tab.

Figure VI.14. The Contextual Menu on a Document in the Bookmark Tab

4.1. Generating several bookmarks at once

To add many bookmarks at once, use the Edit → Find (Ctrl-F) dialog. Check the Bookmark result option, and all search results will be added to your bookmarks.

For example, the XML files for this manual have sections, each identified by a header like <sect1 id="nameofthesection">. A way to automatically get a bookmark to every section is to search for the following posix regular expression pattern: <sect[0-9]+ id="[^"]+"> and bookmark all results.

Figure VI.15. Bookmarking with Posix Regular Expression

Here is the result:

Figure VI.16. Bookmarks with Posix Regular Expression

Here are two examples which bookmarks all functions in Objective-C and PHP files with POSIX or PERL regular expressions:

Figure VI.17. Bookmarking Objective C Functions via the Find Menu

Figure VI.18. Bookmarking PHP Functions via the Find Menu

Check Section 5.3, “Find and Replace Using Regular Expressions” for more information on finding and replacing with regular expression in Bluefish.

The Edit menu features several options for Find and Replace. The Edit → Find (Ctrl-F) and Edit → Replace... (Ctrl-H) menu items will simply start their corresponding dialogs described in Section 10, “Basic Find and Replace”.

5.1. Find Again

The Edit → Find again (Ctrl-G) menu item will repeat the last used search. It will continue the search after the position where the previous search was stopped. If the end of file is reached, it will signaled it if the search operates on a unique file, nevertheless you can continue the search from the top of file with Ctrl-G after dismissing the Search: no match found dialog. If the search operates on multiple files, it will continue with the next file.

Here you can see how the Find again process operates on two successive searches for the word "url" in an xml file:

Figure VI.19. Nth Occurrence with Find Again

Figure VI.20. Nth+1 Occurrence with Find Again

5.2. Find from Selection

The Edit → Find from selection menu item will search for the currently selected text. If you select for example the name of a function, in bluefish, or in any other program, and you choose find from selection Bluefish will start a new search for this selected string.

Here we have selected a function in a C file:

Figure VI.21. Selecting a String for subsequent Search

Clicking on Edit → Find from selection gives the following result:

Figure VI.22. Finding a String from Selection

Next occurrences of the string can be found with Ctrl-G as usual.

5.3. Find and Replace Using Regular Expressions

With find and replace you can do incredibly powerful searches. We have already seen some of them in Section 4.1, “Generating several bookmarks at once”, which deserve some explanation here.

Example VI.1. Retrieving all sections in an xml book

The regular POSIX expression <sect[0-9]+ id="[^"]+"> can be split into:

• <sect: a string beginning by <sect

• [0-9]+ : followed by one or more (the + part) characters in the range of 0 to 9 (the [0-9] part), i.e. digits, followed by a space

• id=": followed by the string id, followed by an equal sign, followed by a double-quote

• [^"]+: followed by one or more (the + part) not double-quote characters (the [^"] part - ^ is a not )

• ">: followed by a double-quote, and ending with a > sign

Therefore, it matches any string of type <sectn id="nameofthesection">, where n is a positive integer.

Example VI.2. Retrieving all functions in an Objective C file

In a simplified example, an objective C function may have two forms:

1. - (IBAction)nameofthefunction:(id)parameter

2. - (void) nameofthefunction

We will try to make a pattern from those forms:

• Hyphens and parentheses have special meanings in regular expressions, hence we need to escape them, i.e. to put before each of them a backslash, so that they will be interpreted as normal characters.

  Thus, - ( is matched by: \- \(

• IBAction or void are a non empty sequence of alphabetical characters. We have already seen something similar in the previous example.

  They are matched by: [a-z]+, that is one or more characters in the range of a to z.

• Another parenthesis matched by: \).

• A space or no space at all, it is matched by: *, that is a space followed by an asterisk, which means 0 or more times the preceding character.

• A non empty sequence of characters, matched by [a-z]+ as already seen.

• A colon or no colon at all, which is matched by: [:]*.

Thus the whole POSIX regular expression is: \- \([a-z]+\) *[a-z]+[:]*. In the example, we have grouped the parts with parentheses, you may prefer this simplified form, though it is not recommended.

Example VI.3. Retrieving all functions in a PHP file

A php function has the form function nameofthefunction(listofparameters), where the list of parameters can be empty. To match it with a PERL regular expression, you have to know that \s matches any white space and \w matches any alphanumerical character as well as white spaces.

Thus, the matching regular expression is: function\s+\w+.

Now, if you want to capture also the function's parameters, you have to add:

• An opening parenthesis: \(. Remember parentheses should be escaped with a backslash.

• Zero or more characters, none of them being a closing parenthesis: [^\)]*

• A closing parenthesis: \)

The PERL regular expression becomes: function\s+\w+\([^\)]*\).

Here is a new example which transforms a table into a definition list inside an html file.

Example VI.4. Transforming a table into a definition list

Say you have the following table:

Figure VI.23. The table before Transformation

You want to transform it in the following definition list:

Figure VI.24. The table after Transformation

For the rendering, you will use the following css style sheet:

.st2 {
    font-weight: 900;
    color: #e38922;
    margin-left: 30px;
}
dl {
    font-weight: 900;
    margin-left: 55px;
}
dt {
    margin-top: 6px;
}
.dd1 {
    font-style: normal;
    font-weight: 400;
}

The table's source code is the following:

<table border="1">
<tr>
<th>Software</th>
<th>Use</th>
<th>Requirements</th>
<th>Author</th>
<th>Date</th>
<th>Download</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>BackupSeek 1.8</td>
<td>To catalog your backup from all media. Prints labels too.</td>
<td>PPC</td>
<td>Ken Ng</td>
<td>17 November 1999</td>
<td>English version (452 Ko)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Biblioteca v. 1.0</td>
...
</tr>
</table>

The definition list's source code will be the following:

<p class="st2">BackupSeek 1.8</p>
<dl>
<dt>Use:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">To catalog your backup from all media. \
Prints labels too.</span></dd>
<dt>System requirements:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">PPC</span></dd>
<dt>Author:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">Ken Ng</span></dd>
<dt>Date:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">17 November 1999</span></dd>
<dt>Download:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">English version (452 Ko)</span></dd>
</dl>
<p class="st2">Biblioteca v. 1.0</p>
...
</dl>

Comparing both chunks of code, we see that the variable sequence of characters to capture is the one between one <td> tag and its closing </td> tag. That sequence can be interpreted as one or more characters which are not a <. We have already seen that. This is expressed as: [^<]+

To be able to retrieve it later, we need to embed it into parentheses. Thus, the string becomes: ([^<]+)

Next, this sequence is embedded into <td> and </td>, which is expressed simply concatenating the strings: <td>([^<]+)</td>

We should also add the end of line character, which is expressed as: \n. The regular expression now describes a whole line: <td>([^<]+)</td>\n

As we cannot use variables to retrieve the headers of the table, we will merely repeat that string five times, so that the regular expression matches exactly the six lines of importance to us.

	Do not type it six times in the search field. Select the string, use the shortcuts Ctrl-C to copy it, move to the end of the string with the right arrow, and use Ctrl-V five times to paste it at the end of the string.

The regular expression becomes (backslashes are inserted at end of line just for the purpose of not to have too long lines):

<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n

Those lines are at their turn embedded into <tr> and </tr> tags each of them on their own line, which can be expressed as: <tr>\n for the first one, and </tr>\n for the second one. We add those strings respectively at the beginning and at the end of our regular expression, which becomes:

<tr>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
<td>([^<]+)</td>\n \
</tr>\n

Now that we have described the search pattern, we will build the replace pattern. Each expression embedded into parentheses in the search string can be retrieved with \x, where x is an integer starting at 0 for the first expression, 1 for the second, etc. All others parts in the final string are fixed strings which we will express as they are.

The first line becomes (note the \n at the end to match the end of line character):

<p class="st2">\0</p>\n

The second line (again, note the \n to match the end of line characters):

<dl>\n<dt>Use:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">\1</dd>\n

And finally the whole replace pattern is:

<p class="st2">\0</p>\n \
<dl>\n<dt>Use:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">\1</dd>\n \
<dt>System requirements:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">\2</span></dd>\n \
<dt>Author:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">\3</span></dd>\n \
<dt>Date:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">\4</dd>\n \
<dt>Download:</dt><dd><span class="dd1">\5</span></dd>\n</dl>\n

After entering both patterns, choose PERL type in the Regular expression drop down list, check the Patterns contain backslash escape sequences (\n, \t) and click OK.

After replacement occurred, you have to remove the table headers and the last </table> tag and to insert the link to the style sheet.

Note that if some lines contain a < sign, the table row will not be translated, but others will.

In the Find and Replace dialogs it is not possible to insert the keys Enter or Tab. A simple way to do it is to copy two lines in a row from the current document into the Find or Replace dialog, this way you retrieve the end of line character. The same applies for Tab. A more elaborated way to do it is to use escaped characters to represent these characters. A new line character, produced by pressing the Enter key, is represented as \n. Use \t for a tab. To get an actual backslash, just escape the backslash, \\. There are many other escape characters used in regular expressions.

	To enable the escaped characters in your searches check the Patterns contain backslash sequences (\n, \t) option.

If you have any search and replace patterns you use often, you can also add them to the Custom Menu. Check Section 7, “Custom menu” for more information.

For more information about regular expressions you might want to read man 1 perlre, man 3 pcrepattern, man 3 regex or man 7 regex, or read any of the great Internet sites about regular expressions. As you become more familiar with regular expressions, you will realize that they make Bluefish a very powerful editor.

To indent large sections of text, simply highlight the section and choose Edit → Shift Right (Ctrl-.). To remove an indentation, choose Edit → Shift Left (Ctrl-,). There are corresponding buttons in the tool bar for these menu options (see later in this text).

By default, Bluefish will use tabs for indenting, but can be configured to use spaces if you have Use spaces to indent, not tabs selected in the Editor preferences panel. The number of spaces used is the same as the Tab width option in the same preferences panel.

Here's an extract of Dante's work indented with the Shift Right button in the main tool bar:

Figure VII.1. Indenting Part of a Text

By default, Bluefish will automatically produce closing tags for HTML and XML documents. For example, if you type <p> within an HTML document, bluefish will produce </p>. So, as soon as you finish typing a non-empty HTML tag, meaning the tag is supposed to have a closing tag, Bluefish will help you out and close the tag automatically. This feature can be turned off by unchecking the Document → Auto Close HTML Tags (Ctrl-T) menu option.

Bluefish has two modes for tag closing, an XML mode and an HTML mode. In XML mode, Bluefish will add a closing tag to any tag that is not closed itself with />. In HTML mode, Bluefish excludes all known tags that do not need a closing tag, such as <br> and <img>.

Bluefish will choose the mode based on the file type of the document. In the filetype preferences panel, the default mode for each file type can be set. See Section 10, “Modifying file types” for more info.

Figure VII.2. Bluefish Spell Checker

Bluefish uses aspell for spell checking. If the aspell libraries are not installed on your system, then the spell checking feature will not be available. At the aspell web site you can also download dictionaries for many different languages.

To launch the spell checker, select Document → Check Spelling... or click on the ABC button on the main tool bar. The spell checker will launch in a separate window, which you can keep open as you edit files.

You have the option to check a whole document or just a selection, to use a personal or a session dictionary, and to choose the language depending on the installed dictionaries.

Click on Spell Check to start spell checking the current document.

You may want to set a default dictionary by first choosing the language in the Language pop up menu, then clicking on Set default.

Key words for different languages can be ignored using filters. Currently, the only filter is for HTML. If you want to help write more filters, join the mailing list.

The function reference browser contains reference information for different programming and markup languages. Currently, Bluefish comes with a PHP reference, a CSS 2.0 reference, an HTML reference, and a Python reference. The functions are grouped, depending on the language, by type, module, object, etc.

The function reference browser will display an info window on the bottom by checking the Show info window check box. In this window, information about the currently selected item is shown. The type of information shown can be configured in the right-click context menu (see Info Type later in this text).

In the reference browser's contextual menu, you can simply insert the text for the selected item by choosing Insert. Or, you can get a little help using Dialog, which launches a dialog window containing fields for the currently selected item's attributes or parameters. For a summary of an item's usage, choose Info. The contextual menu is also accessible on a group of functions and at the top level of a reference.

Figure VII.3. The Reference Browser Contextual Menu

The Options menu accessible via the contextual menu offers three actions:

Figure VII.4. The Reference Browser Options Menu

HTML is obviously the most supported language in Bluefish. There is a special HTML tool bar with many dialogs, and two menus to work with tags:

The preferences have several settings on HTML style under HTML.

The HTML tool bar has two types of buttons. You can recognise each type by the tool tip if you move the mouse over the button:

If you want to add an HTML tag around some block of text, select the block of text, use the HTML tool bar or the Tags or Dialogs menu to insert the tag. The opening tag will be inserted before the selected block, the closing tag after the selected block.

An existing tag can be edited by right-clicking the tag, and select Edit tag in the context menu. You can also place the cursor in the tag and use Dialogs → Edit tag under cursor... (F3). Not all tags, however, have a dialog, so this is not always possible. Colors in the style #RRGGBB can also be edited from the right-click context menu.

In the reference browser on the left panel there is an HTML reference available. All possible attributes and valid values can be found in this reference. See Section 4, “Function reference” for more info.

5.1. Special find and replace features

There are several special search and replace actions in the menu Edit → Replace special. These can be used to convert special characters (like < and &), or ISO characters to their HTML entities, as well as to change the letters case.

Figure VII.11. The Replace Special Menu

In all cases, when you want to replace some part of the text, you should first select the part to replace, then use the appropriated menu item.

5.2. Thumbnail generation

Bluefish can automatically generate thumbnails for images. A thumbnail is a small image, with a link to the larger image. Bluefish will create the small image based on your settings, and insert a <img> tag in the file, and a <a> tag linking the original. The thumbnails are created in the same directory as the original sources.

The formats used for thumbnails may be png or jpg format. By default, the format used for thumbnails is png. You can change it in the Images panel of Preferences. For jpg images, the thumbnail extension is jpeg.

There are actually two thumbnail dialogs in Bluefish:

• an Insert thumbnail dialog,accessible from the Dialogs → General → Insert Thumbnail... (Shift-Alt-N) or from the Standard bar of the HTML toolbar.

  

  Figure VII.12. The Insert Thumbnail Icon

• a Multi thumbnail dialog, only accessible from the Standard bar of the HTML toolbar.

  

  Figure VII.13. The Multi Thumbnail Icon

The Insert thumbnail dialog is very straightforward. You select the image file, provide some <img> tag attributes, choose the scaling, and press OK. The scaling factor is chosen by moving the slider directly under the image. The resulting image is previewed in the preview frame. Bluefish will create the thumbnail with extension _thumbnail.png or _thumbnail.jpeg (depending of the settings for images in the preferences).

Figure VII.14. The Insert Thumbnail Dialog

If the source image is not accessible, change webimage to image in the Select File window loaded after clicking on browse for choosing an image. This way you can choose whichever format you want for the original sources. Another way to do it is to change the definition of webimage (see Section 10, “Modifying file types”). If that does not solve the problem, it is likely that the type of images you want to load is not defined yet in preferences. In this case, change the definition of image as explained in Section 10, “Modifying file types”. As last resource, if you don't want to change the generic file types, you may choose All files in the pop up menu at the bottom of the Select File window.

The code generated for a png image and a png thumbnail looks like this:

<a href="/Users/michga/Desktop/343-4351_IMG_2.png">
<img src="/Users/michga/Desktop/343-4351_IMG_2_thumbnail.png" 
width="89" height="134" border="0" name="Gamboling" 
alt="Gamboling in the meadow" align="middle"></a>

and for a jpg image and jpg thumbnail:

<a href="/Users/michga/Desktop/343-4351_IMG_2.JPG">
<img src="/Users/michga/Desktop/343-4351_IMG_2_thumbnail.jpeg" 
width="89" height="134" border="0" name="Gamboling" 
alt="Gamboling in the meadow" align="middle"></a>

	You can perfectly mix jpg images with png thumbnails or the other way around. If the html file exists beforehand, the paths to image and thumbnail are inserted relative to the location of the html file. On the contrary, if the html file does not exist beforehand, the full paths to the image and thumbnail are inserted in the code.

In the multi thumbnail dialog, you first choose the scaling method, then you set the corresponding width and/or height parameters. Finally, you may want to adjust the HTML code to be inserted for each image.

Scaling can be based on a fixed ratio, a fixed width, a fixed height, or a fixed width and fixed height (this last option does not keep the original aspect ratio!).

In the HTML code for each image, you can use several placeholders, such as:

• %r for the original filename

• %t for the thumbnail filename

• %w for the original width

• %h for the original height

• %x for the thumbnail width

• %y for the thumbnail height

• %b for the original file size (in bytes)

The default string is:

<a href="%r"><img src="%t" width="%x" height="%y" border="0"></a>

After you have set up the scaling method and parameters, as well as the HTML code, you can select multiple images. Bluefish will create the thumbnails and insert the code.

Here is an example of two thumbnails created with a non nul border width and middle-aligned, with a fixed height and width, disregarding the aspect ratio.

The Multi thumbnail window is the following:

Figure VII.15. The Multi Thumbnail Dialog

And the generated code is:

<a href="/Users/michga/Desktop/tot/343-4351_IMG_2.png">
<img src="tot/343-4351_IMG_2_thumbnail.png" width="50" 
height="50" border="5" align="middle"></a>
<a href="/Users/michga/Desktop/tot/343-4352_IMG_2.png">
<img src="tot/343-4352_IMG_2_thumbnail.png" width="50"
height="50" border="5" align="middle"></a>

	Full pathnames are always used to reference original image sources. The paths to thumbnails are relative to the html file path if the html file already exists, while they are inserted as full paths when the html file does not exist.

Below is a full procedure to quickly generate thumbnails from a directory of image files. This example is purposedly made with deprecated tags, so that you have an idea of what can be made with the variables. Feel free to adjust it when using CSS style sheets.

Procedure VII.1. Generating a photos album with multi thumbnails

1. Put the image files in a folder of their own

2. Open a new file in bluefish, click on the Multi thumbnail... icon in the Standard bar tab of the html tool bar.

3. Enter the scaling percentage in the Scaling (%) field

4. Change the html code as follows:

   <tr><td><a href="%r">
   <img src="%t" 
   width="%x" height="%y" border="0"></a>
   </td>
   </tr>
   <tr><td>Original: %w x %h</td></tr>

   and click OK.

5. Choose the folder containing the images from the Select files for thumbnail creation window, click Ctrl-A to select all files, then click OK. The code generated by Bluefish will look like the following:

   <tr><td><a href="/Users/michga/Desktop/photos/343-4344_IMG.JPG">
   <img src="/Users/michga/Desktop/photos/343-4344_IMG_thumbnail.png" 
   width="80" height="53" border="0"></a>
   </td>
   </tr>
   <tr><td>Original: 1600 x 1065</td></tr>
   <tr><td><a href="/Users/michga/Desktop/photos/343-4347_IMG.JPG">
   <img src="/Users/michga/Desktop/photos/343-4347_IMG_thumbnail.png" 
   width="80" height="53" border="0"></a>
   </td>
   </tr>
   <tr><td>Original: 1600 x 1065</td></tr>

6. Use Ctrl-A to select the file's contents and click on the Table icon located in the Tables tab of the HTML tool bar to embed the code into table tags.

   

   Figure VII.16. The Table Icon in the HTML Tool Bar

7. Save the file wherever you want.

If you want to add the file name and the file size in bytes, use this code:

<tr><td><a href="%r">
<img src="%t" width="%x" height="%y" border="0"></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr><td>%r:  %w x %h (%b bytes)</td></tr>

The Quick bar is a user defined tool bar. All HTML tool bar buttons can be added to the Quick bar by simply right-clicking the button and selecting Add to quickbar.

Figure VII.17. Adding an Element to the Quick Bar

And automagically you will see the element in the Quick bar:

Figure VII.18. The added Element in the Quick Bar

Note that you cannot add a pop up menu. Thus, if the item you want to add is inside a pop up menu (as is the code tag located in the Context formatting pop up menu of the Fonts tool bar), you have to first click on the pop up menu to display its contents, then to right click on the desired element to insert it in the Quick bar.

Figure VII.19. Adding a Pop Up Menu Element to the Quick Bar

If you want to remove items from the Quick bar, right-click them and select Remove from Quick bar.

Figure VII.20. Removing an Element from the Quick Bar

You can also change the location of an element in the Quick bar. To do so, right-click the element and select Shift left or Shift Right as desired. The element will be moved to the left or to the right of its neighborough. Notice that this is not a drag and drop action; you may have to repeat the process if you want to move the element farther.

Figure VII.21. Moving an Element within the Quick Bar

To customize items in the Custom menu tool bar, you will use the Custom menu element:

Figure VII.22. Accessing the Custom Menu

The Custom menu → Edit custom menu... leads to the Custom Menu Editor. The Load new item allows you to load a new menu in case you have directly changed the custom_menu file located in the .bluefish directory within your HOME directory, while Reset item allows you to return to the default custom menu under the same circumstances.

The custom_menu file is created upon install Bluefish and corresponds to some default entries, the ones you can see in the Custom menu tool bar. These will give you an idea what can be done with the custom menu.

The custom menu operates only on elements of the Custom menu tool bar, and allows you to:

The Custom Menu Editor is the place where you make all changes to the custom menu. The location for entries in the custom menu is defined by their menu path in the Custom Menu Editor:

Figure VII.23. The Custom Menu Editor

It has four parts:

7.1. Adding a custom menu dialog

The most simple custom dialog item has a menupath, for example /MySite/author, and a Formatstring before, for example written by Olivier. If you add this item, you can add this string by selecting the menu item.

Procedure VII.2. Adding a custom menu based on custom dialog

1. Choose Custom menu → Edit custom menu... in the custom menu tool bar.

2. Enter /MySite/author in the Menu Path field of the Custom Menu editor.

3. Enter written by Olivier in the Formatstring Before field located on the right.

4. Click on the Add button at the top.

   Notice that upon adding the new entry, it is listed at the bottom of the Menu path list:

   

   Figure VII.26. A new Custom Entry in the Menu Path List

5. Click on the Save button. This will add the menu to the Custom menu tool bar:

   

   Figure VII.27. A new Menu in the Custom Menu Tool Bar

Note that the new menu is placed at the right end of the custom menu tool bar. When closing Bluefish and relaunching it, it will be placed in alphabetical order, except that the Replace menu will always be at the far right side.

In another example, you have a string you often need to set before and after some block of text, for example <div class="MyClass">YourBlockOfText</div>. To do it:

1. Open the Custom Menu Editor

2. Enter /MySite/div with class in the Menu Path field

3. Enter <div class="MyClass"> in the Formatstring Before field

4. Enter </div> in the Formatstring After field

5. Click on Add, then on Save. The item will appear in the menu.

If you select some text:

Figure VII.28. A Block of selected Text before Activating the Menu

And activate this menu item, the first bit of text is now added before the selection, and the second bit after the selection:

Figure VII.29. A Block of Text after Activating the Menu

Suppose you want to improve this last example. You have both MyClass1 and MyClass2 and want to be able to choose the desired class when activating the menu. Here's how to do it:

1. Open the Custom Menu Editor

2. Browse the Menu path list to retrieve the /MySite/class with div entry and click on it to make appear its components in the Menu Path and Custom Dialog fields

3. Click on the top arrow of the Number of Variables pop up menu to get 1 in the field. As you see a Variables entry appears where you can enter the name for variable %0. As name we enter MyClass number

4. Now change the FormatString Before field to take this new variable into account, as following: <div class="MyClass%0">

5. Click on Apply so that your changes will be taken in account, and click on Save to update the menu.

If you now activate this menu after having selected a block of text, you will be presented with a new dialog asking you for the value of MyClass number:

Figure VII.30. The new DIV with Class Dialog

After entering the desired value, the same process as before will occur, using the value you provided. Here we have entered 1 as value:

Figure VII.31. The Block of Text after Entering the Value

	You can use the Return and Tab keys to format the output. Any variable can be used any times you want in the dialog.

7.2. Adding a custom replace dialog

Find and replace items are no different. The dialog has some more options, each of these options corresponds to the regular Replace dialog. Again you can use variables like %0, %1 etc. to make a certain menu item more flexible.

Say you want to add title tags to a selection in a HTML page so that the user agent could render it either as a tool tip or as spoken words. To ease the discussion we will work on the following snippet of code:

<ul>
<li><a href="progsys01.html">Process scheduling</a> - 26/10/2002</li>
<li><a href="progsys02.html">Fork and Wait</a> - 02/11/2002</li>
</ul>

We will transform it into the following one:

<ul>
<li><a href="progsys01.html" title="blah Process scheduling">Process scheduling</a> \
- 26/10/2002</li>
<li><a href="progsys02.html" title="blah Fork and Wait">Fork and Wait</a> \
- 02/11/2002</li>
</ul>

where blah is any text you want.

The initial rendering:

Figure VII.32. The HTML Page before the Transformation

will be transformed as is:

Figure VII.33. The HTML Page after the Transformation

To do this, we need to express the <a href="yoururl">yourstring</a> part of the initial snippet of code as a Perl regular expression (see Section 5.3, “Find and Replace Using Regular Expressions” for full details):

• a href=" will be expressed as is and embedded into parentheses to retrieve it as \0 variable.

• yoururl will be expressed as ([^"]+) to match one or more non double quote characters and retrieve it as \1 variable.

• The second double quote will be expressed as is and embedded into parentheses to retrieve it as \2 variable.

• The second > sign will be expressed as is and embedded into parentheses to retrieve it as \3 variable.

• yourstring will be expressed as ([^>]+) to match one or more non > characters and retrieve it as \4 variable.

• </a> will be expressed as is and embedded into parentheses to retrieve it as \5 variable.

Thus, the search string will be: (<a href=")([^"]+)(")(>)([^>]+)(</a>)

The replace string should be of the form: <a href="yoururl" title="yourvariablestring yourstring">yourstring</a>

Expressed as a regular Perl replacement expression, it will be as simple as: \0\1\2 title=\2%0 \4\2\3\4\5 where %0 will match yourvariablestring, that is the value entered in the Title field of the Replace dialog at activating time.

Procedure VII.3. Adding a custom menu based on replace dialog

1. Choose Custom menu → Edit custom menu... in the custom menu tool bar.

2. Browse the Menu path list to retrieve the /Replace/Convert in Selection/<td> to <th> and click on it to make appear its components in the Menu Path and Custom Replace fields.

3. Change the Menu Path to /Replace/Anchor/Add Title.

4. Click on the top arrow of the Number of Variables pop up menu to get 1 in the field. Enter Title in the %0 Variables field.

5. Change the Matching pop up menu to perl regular expressions.

6. Change the Search Pattern field like this:

   (<a href=")([^"]+)(")(>)([^>]+)(</a>)

7. Change the Replace String field like this:

   \0\1\2 title=\2%0 \4\2\3\4\5

8. Click on the Add button.

   The Custom replace dialog should have the following appearance:

   

   Figure VII.34. The Custom Menu Replace Dialog filled in

9. Click on the Save button.

To use the new menu item, select the lines to be changed in the HTML file and activate Replace/Anchor/Add Title in the custom menu bar. Fill in the dialog as follows:

Figure VII.35. The Add Title Dialog

Click OK to proceed.

The External menu provides a quick access to external default or user-added programs and text filters. It is divided into three parts by default (see Chapter VIII, Customising Bluefish for layout change):

	Typically all programs and filters apply to the current document. Nevertheless it is possible to invoke a program without applying it to the current document. On the contrary, it is not possible to apply text filters to anything but the current document.

Figure VII.36. Bluefish External Menu

Customization of the External menu is performed in different parts of the Edit Preferences dialog:

8.1. Customizing browsers

The Browsers panel in Preferences shows the items in the same order as in the External menu:

Figure VII.37. The Browsers Panel in Preferences

	The first line in the panel will be the browser selected when clicking on the View in browser button in the main tool bar.

If you want to change the order of the browsers, apply the following steps:

Procedure VII.4. Changing the order of browsers items

1. Click on the Preferences... icon in the main tool bar to access the Edit preferences panel.

2. Click on the External programs tab to display the Browsers panel.

3. Click near the left border of the browser's line you want to move. The whole browser's line will be highlighted:

   

   Figure VII.38. Selecting the Browser's Line to be Moved

4. While maintaining the click, drag the selected line over another line, until you reach the place you want, so that the selected line covers entirely the latter one. The cursor will change its appearance and the dragged line will be shown as a framed line:

   

   Figure VII.39. Dragging the Browser's Line

   	To drag a line to the end of the list, drag it until a thin line appears below the last item: Figure VII.40. Dragging the Browser's Line to the Bottom

   	If you change your mind, drag the line over its original place and release the mouse button. There will be no change.

5. Release the mouse button to drop the line at the desired place.

6. Click on the Apply button to save the change if you plan to make further changes in the panel, otherwise click on the OK button to save the change and close the Edit preferences panel.

If you want to customize one of the browsers supplied by default, use the following procedure:

Procedure VII.5. Customizing an existent browser

1. Click on the Preferences... icon in the main tool bar to access the Edit preferences panel.

2. Click on the External programs tab to display the Browsers panel.

3. Click on the Command region of the browser's line you want to change. The line will be hightlighted.

4. Double-click on the same location to allow editing. The line will be framed.

5. Make the desired change

6. Click on the OK button to save and close the panel.

To add a new browser, proceed as follows:

Procedure VII.6. Adding a new browser

1. Click on the Preferences... icon in the main tool bar to access the Edit preferences panel.

2. Click on the External programs tab to display the Browsers panel.

3. Click on the Add button. A new line will be shown, with an Untitled label.

4. Double-click on the label to allow editing, and enter the string you want to appear in the External menu.

5. Double-click in the Command zone and enter the command followed by the & sign to detach it from the main bluefish process, for example:

   amaya %s &

6. Click on the OK button to save and close the panel.

To delete a browser, just click on the Delete button.

Though nothing impedes you to put any command (not necessary a browser) in the panel for quick access, you may want to avoid to put it at the top range, since it will be somewhat strange to click on View in browser to launch abs for example.

8.2. Customizing Commands menu

To add items to the External → Commands submenu, you use the External programs tab of the Edit Preferences panel:

Figure VII.41. Utilities and Filters Panel in Preferences

You add, modify, delete, move commands or text filters the same way as described in Section 8.1, “Customizing browsers”.

Bluefish will apply the supplied command on the current document, while representing the document as it is before the command is applied by %s and the document after the command has been applied by %f. Usage of the %i parameter is not implemented yet. You should embed those parameters into simple quotes to prevent special characters to be interpreted by the shell.

Usage of the parameters depends on the command:

• If the command does not operate on the file, as xterm, you just supply it as you would in an xterm, detaching it to avoid bluefish freezing with:

  xterm &

• If the command does operate on the file, but not on the file's contents, as chmod, you supply it as you would in an xterm, using %s as a reference to the current document:

  chmod +x '%s'

• If the command operates on the standard input device by default, as tidy, you will have to redirect the document's contents, i.e. %s, with cat for example, to the standard output device, pipe the result so that it will be used as standard input device for the command, then redirect the result of the command to the document, i.e. %f, as in:

  cat '%s' | tidy 'someoptions' > '%f'

• If the command operates on file's contents, as sed, you should use input, i.e. %s and output, i.e. %f redirection to feed the command with the right parameters, as in:

  sed -e 'somesedcommand' < '%s' > '%f'

As those parameters are used internally to create temporary files, you cannot use them to modify the name of the final document for example. But you can redirect the standard output to a named file, if you do not want to override the current document, as in:

sed -e 'somesedcommand' < '%s' 1 > 'namedfile'

Here is an example to get rid of hard-coded /usr in a source file:

Procedure VII.7. Adding a Commands menu item

1. Click on the Preferences... icon in the main tool bar to access the Edit preferences panel.

2. Click on the External programs tab to display the Utilities and filters panel.

3. Click on the Add button. A new line will be shown, with an Untitled label.

4. Double-click on the label to allow editing, and enter the string you want to appear in the External menu.

5. Double-click in the Command zone and enter:

   sed -e 's|\/usr|${PREFIX}|g' < '%s' > '%f'.

   	We need to escape the slash in /usr with a backslash to avoid interpretation by the shell.

6. Click on the OK button to save and close the panel.

8.3. Customizing Ouputbox menu

Items within the External → Outputbox submenu allow for programs to give feedback by opening an output box at the bottom of Bluefish's main window.

Here is an example showing the output box after using the External → Outputbox → tidy HTML validator item on an html file with an on purpose error:

Figure VII.42. The tidy Output Box

The contents of the resulting output box are based upon scanning the output of the supplied command, as it appears in an xterm, with a given regular expression and filling in the various fields of the output box with the desired parts of that regular expression. The Output parsers tab of the Edit preferences panel provides you with a model to do that:

Figure VII.43. The Output Parsers Tab in Preferences Panel

The Outputbox panel comprises 7 fields:

• The Name field, a character string which will appear as the item in the Outputbox menu.

• The Pattern field, a Perl regular expression which describes the command output, so that some of its parts could be used in the following fields.

  Let's use an example: say you have a ruby script named foo.rb with the following line in it:

  put Hello Word

  When executing ruby -d foo.rb in an xterm, the output is:

  Exception `NoMethodError' at foo.rb:1 - undefined method `put' for main:Object
  foo.rb:1: undefined method `put' for main:Object (NoMethodError)

  The second line can be parsed with the following Perl regular expression:

  ([a-zA-Z0-9/_.-]+):([0-9]+):(.*)

  The first part embedded into parentheses will match the script name, i.e. foo.rb; the second part will match the line, i.e. 1: the third part will match the remaining. See Section 5.3, “Find and Replace Using Regular Expressions” for some explanation on using regular expressions within bluefish.

• The File # field, a part number matching the filename in the Perl regular expression given in the Pattern field. Note that the first part is numbered 1, the second 2, etc. If you do not want that the part be shown, put -1 in it.

• The Line #, a part number matching the line number in the regular expression, here it will be 2, as same rules apply as in the Filename # field.

• The Output # field, a part number matching the desired part in the regular expression, typically the remaining of the line, here it will be the third and last part. Again, same rules apply as in the Filename # field.

• The Command field, the command to execute on the current document, internally named %s. Here it will be: ruby -d '%s'. Notice that you should embed the reference to the current document, if any, within parentheses to avoid interpretation at run time.

• The Show all output check box, which can be checked to show all output not matching the Perl regular expression. Here it is not needed, since the regular expression matches all output.

You add, modify, delete, move output boxes the same way as described in Section 8.1, “Customizing browsers”.

Procedure VII.8. Adding an Outputbox menu item

1. Execute the desired command in an xterm with some error either in the command or in the file which it is applied on, in order to know how the errors are outputting.

2. Build a Perl regular expression based on the output, so that the filename, the line number and the error message be retrieved.

3. Click on the Preferences... icon in the main tool bar to access the Edit preferences panel.

4. Click on the Output parsers tab to display the Outputbox panel.

5. Click on the Add button. A new line will be shown, with an Untitled label.

6. Click "Add" to add a new item.

7. Double-click on the Name field to give the command a name.

8. Double-click on the Pattern field and fill it in with the Perl regular expression you have built previously.

9. Double-click on the File # field and give the number for the subpattern matching the filename (-1 for none).

10. Double-click on the Line # field and give the number for the subpattern matching the line number (-1 for none).

11. Double-click on the Output # field and give the number for the subpattern matching the actual error message (-1 for none).

12. Double-click on the Command field and enter the command to execute in the form command options '%s', %s being the current filename.

13. Toggle the "Show all output" check box to show output NOT matching the regular expression, if needed.

	Of course, it is also possible to add these items by editing the file named ~/.bluefish/rcfile_v2 found in the user's home directory. The fields are delimited by colons and correspond to those found in the GUI.

Many menu entries are accessible via key combination, also called a shortcut. For example, pressing the Ctrl-S keys saves the current file to disk. If available, shortcut key combinations are shown on the right of the menu entry.

To add or change a shortcut, move the mouse over the desired menu entry, and press the key combination you would like to use. Immediately this combination will show up on the right of the menu entry.

Here's a shortcut added to the File → Open URL... menu item:

Figure VIII.1. Adding a Shortcut to a Menu Item

To remove a shortcut, press the backspace key when you move the mouse over a menu entry to remove the shortcut.

To save the shortcut key combinations for later Bluefish sessions, use Edit → Save Shortcut Keys. This will store the settings in the ~/.bluefish/menudump_2.

	If you want to restore the default combinations simply remove this file and restart Bluefish.

	Be aware that if you give a menu entry the same shortcut as another one, the shortcut of the latter will be lost.

By default, invisible files and folders are not shown in the file browser tab of the side panel.

If you want to see them at a given level of the files system hierarchy, right click on the desired folder name in the file browser within the side panel and toggle Show hidden files in the contextual menu.

Here is how to view all visible files and folders in the whole system:

Figure VIII.2. Turning Files and Folders Visibility ON

	This feature is very convenient for Mac users when used with caution, since combined with the Delete contextual menu in the file browser, it allows you, for example, to get rid of files generated by cvs on conflicts within bluefish.

By default, backup files are not shown in the file browser tab of the side panel.

You may turn on their visibility at a given level of the file system by right clicking on the desired folder name in the file browser within the side panel and toggle Show backup files in the contextual menu.

Most of the editor appearance depends on your GKT theme, which may be customized through the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 resource file.

Parts that you may want to customize through that resource file are among others:

You will find examples of themes resource files while searching for a gtkrc file in a gtk-2.0 folder within the various directories under $prefix/share/themes/, where $prefix is your installation prefix (it may be /usr, /usr/local, /sw, /opt, etc.).

	You should not customize those files, instead customize ~/.gtkrc-2.0. If the file does not already exist in your home directory, just create it with: touch ~/.gtkrc-2.0

Here is an example made on a Crux theme:

style "bluefish"
{
 # For up and down arrows grouped together at right side
 GtkNotebook::has_secondary_forward_stepper = 1
 GtkNotebook::has_secondary_backward_stepper = 1
 
 # Editor background color 
 # (background of editor view)
 base[NORMAL]="#fcfff5"
 
 # GUI normal background color
 # (most of the GUI)
 bg[NORMAL]="#dbe9e9"
 
 # GUI highlighted background color
 #(GUI when mouse over elements)
 bg[PRELIGHT]="#c6e9e9"
 
 # GUI unactive background color
 #(GUI disabled elements)
 bg[INSENSITIVE]="#9fb2b2"

 # GUI active background color
 #(GUI enabled elements)
 bg[ACTIVE]="#c7d4d4"
}
class "GtkWidget" style "bluefish"

	You may give any name to the style on the first line, provided that you use the same on the last line. The customization applies to any Gtk application.

It will give this appearance to bluefish:

Figure VIII.3. Bluefish with a customized Gtk Theme

Other options for the Editor are available in the Editor tab of the Edit preferences panel accessible via the Edit preferences... button in the main tool bar. In particular you may want to customize the font of the editor, the end of line wrapping, and the undo history size:

Figure VIII.4. The Editor Tab in Preferences

When you add bookmarks to document, the name of the file it refers to is displayed from the base directory. You can choice another path from the Bookmarks filename display pop up menu in the Editor tab of the Edit preferences panel:

Figure VIII.5. The Bookmarks Path Pop up Menu in Preferences

The HTML tab of the Edit preferences panel provides you with some options to change the style of the html tags:

Figure VIII.6. The HTML Tab in Preferences

One interesting feature in the HTML tab of the Edit preferences panel is that you can let bluefish update the author meta tag on save.

Let's say you created an html file with an author meta tag while you were logged in as user foo. On save bluefish will fill up the contents attribute of the author meta tag with the full name associated with the foo user:

Figure VIII.7. The Author Meta Tag filled in on Save

You share this html file with another user bar or you change the owner of the file to bar. When you modify the html file while logged in as user bar, the author meta tag is updated to reflect the new author on save, providing that the user bar has write permission on the file:

Figure VIII.8. Update of the Author Meta Tag on Save

	If you do not want that the author meta tag be changed while editing the file under another user's login, uncheck the box.

The Files tab of the Edit preferences panel allows you to set some options related to the way files are handled and displayed in the file browser.

Figure VIII.9. The Files Preference Panel

8.4. Backup files

By default, a backup file is created on save in the same directory as the original file based on the same filename with the exception that a ~ suffix is added. This backup file is deleted on closing the file.

You can change this behaviour in the Files tab of the Edit preferences panel.

When the backup fails to be created, you can choose what to do:

Figure VIII.10. Choosing an Action on Backup Failure

8.5. Using multiple instances of a file

A nice feature of bluefish is it allows you to open multiple instances of a file. Combined with either launching two instances of bluefish or opening the same file in two windows, it eases the modification of a file in one window while browsing it in another one.

This feature can be disabled in the Files tab of the Edit preferences panel.

	Be aware that the last closed instance of the file wins. Hence it is important that you remember which instance is the modified one. You can, for example, always open the file to be modified on the left side of your screen, the file to be browsed on the right side.

The User interface tab of the Edit preferences panel allows you to customize most part of the user interface:

Figure VIII.11. The User Interface Preference Panel

In the Filetypes tab of the Edit preferences panel you can define all file types that should be recognized by bluefish.

The file types consist of:

You add, modify, delete, or move file types the same way it is described in Section 8.1, “Customizing browsers”.

	If you want to enter more than one extension in the Extensions field, you should separate them with a colon. When you define a new filetype, you should also provide new highlighting patterns.

The files filters allow you to group files types from the usage point of view. Once a file filter is created, you can view, hide, or open files based on a filter in the File browser contextual menu.

The file filters consist of:

You add, modify, delete, or move file types the same way it is described in Section 8.1, “Customizing browsers”.

	The file types used in the Filetypes in filter match those defined in the Filetypes part. Do not confuse them with the file extensions. For example the C programming file filter matches c and image filetypes, i.e. files whose extensions are .c, .h, etc...

The highlight patterns are build from Perl compatible regular expressions. A pattern has options for coloring and styling the text it matches. Within a match other patterns can be used to color parts of that match. There are three types of patterns:

One specific pattern can also be used within several other parent patterns. The parent-match option is a regular expression that defines all parents for a certain pattern. If empty it will default to ^top$, so basically it will be on the top level.

So how does it work? Lets take a look at a little example text, a piece of PHP code within some HTML code:

<p align="center">
<?php
// this is a comment ?>
?>

The first thing the highlighting engine does is finding the pattern that has the lowest match. Using the default patterns for PHP, the pattern named HTML:

Figure VIII.12. The HTML Pattern

has a match at position 0:

<p align="center">

So now the highlighting engine searches for the lowest match in all subpatterns of HTML, in the region matched by a type 2 pattern. Again, the lowest match will count. The pattern named <html> Tags:

Figure VIII.13. The <html> Tags Pattern

has a match at position 1. This pattern is a type 3 pattern, so it matches a subpattern of the parent:

p

The match from subpattern <html> Tags ends at position 2 and it does not have any child patterns, so the highlighting engine continues at position 2 with all subpatterns from HTML. A type 2 pattern named HTML Attributes:

Figure VIII.14. The HTML Attributes Pattern

has the lowest match:

align="center"

This pattern does have a child pattern, again a type 3 pattern called HTML Attribute Contents:

Figure VIII.15. The HTML Attribute Contents Pattern

matching:

"center"

The pattern HTML Attribute Contents does not have any child patterns, and subpatterns of HTML Attributes do not have any more matches, and also HTML subpatterns do not have any more matches. So we are back on the main level, the remaining code to highlight is:

<?php
// this is a comment ?>
?>

Now a pattern named PHP Block:

Figure VIII.16. The PHP Block Pattern

has the lowest match. This is a type 1 pattern, so the highlight engine continues with all the remaining code, but it will not only search for the lowest match of the child patterns of PHP Block, but it will also ue it for the end pattern of PHP Block. The lowest match in this example is a pattern named Comment (C++/single line):

Figure VIII.17. The Comment (C++/single line) Pattern

As you can see the ?> within the comment does not end the php pattern, because it lies within a subpattern of PHP Block:

// this is a comment ?>

The pattern Comment (C++/single line) does not have any child patterns, so the remaining code for the PHP subpatterns is:

?>

It is very obvious now, the lowest match will be the end pattern of the php pattern, so we're back on the main level, and we have matched all of the code!

Figure VIII.18. Syntax Highlighting Example

The config file for highlighting is a colon separated array with the following content:

mode:
patternname:
case_sensitive(0-on/1-off):
start reg-ex:
end reg-ex:
start & end pattern(1), only start(2), subpattern(3):
parent-match:
foreground-color:
background-color:
don't change weight(0), non-bold(1), bold(2):
don't change style(0), non-italic(1), italic(2):

The same options are found in the syntax highlighting preferences.

As an exercise you may want to add the highlighting patterns for the xsl stylesheet file type created previously. They will be based on the xml patterns with just small changes.

	If you check the force bold weight check box, you should also check that the font you use has a bold variant in the Editor tab of the Preferences panel.

Here are the shortcuts that apply to all types of documents.

	For the Filebrowser contextual (FileB. in the table), we distinguish the directory part with D and the files part with F. When no letter appears after the name, the shortcut applies to both parts.

	The contextual menus shortcuts listed below are only valid for English language.

Here are the shortcuts that apply to documents containing HTML markup.

Table IX.2. Shortcuts for HTML Markup

Action		EWA		Tool Bars
		Keys	Menus	Ic.	Bar
Headings	Quickstart...	Shift-Alt-Q	Dialogs → General		Std
	Meta...	Shift-Alt-M	Dialogs → General
	Body...	Shift-Alt-B	Dialogs → General		Std
Header tags	H1	Ctrl-Alt-1	Tags → Headings		Std[a]
	H2	Ctrl-Alt-2	Tags → Headings		Std[a]
	H3	Ctrl-Alt-3	Tags → Headings		Std[a]
	H4	Ctrl-Alt-4	Tags → Headings		Std[a]
	H5	Ctrl-Alt-5	Tags → Headings		Std[a]
	H6	Ctrl-Alt-6	Tags → Headings		Std[a]
Layout	Bold	Ctrl-Alt-B	Tags → Format by layout		Std
	Italic	Ctrl-Alt-I	Tags → Format by layout		Std
	Underline	Ctrl-Alt-U	Tags → Format by layout
	Strikeout	Ctrl-Alt-S	Tags → Format by layout
	Strong	Ctrl-Alt-G	Tags → Format by context		Font
	Emphasis	Ctrl-Alt-E	Tags → Format by context		Font
	Subscript				Font
	Superscript				Font
	Context Formatting				Font
	Paragraph	Ctrl-Alt-P	Tags → Format general		Std
	Break	Ctrl-Alt-K	Tags → Format general		Std
	Break and Clear				Std
	Non-Breaking Space	Ctrl-Alt-N	Tags → Format general		Std
	Preformatted Text	Ctrl-Alt-F	Tags → Format general		Font
	Rule...	Shift-Alt-R	Dialogs → General		Std
	Center				Std
	Align right	Ctrl-Alt-R	Tags → Format general		Std
Special signs	Division sign	Ctrl-Alt-/	Tags → Special → Math-Science
	Less-than sign	Ctrl-Alt-,	Tags → Special → Math-Science
	Greater-than sign	Ctrl-Alt-.	Tags → Special → Math-Science
Fonts	Font...	Shift-Alt-F	Dialogs → General		Font
	Base Font Size...				Font
	Font Size + 1	Ctrl-Alt-=	Tags → Format general		Font
	Font Size - 1	Ctrl-Alt--	Tags → Format general		Font
Table	Table Wizard...				Tbl
	Table...	Shift-Alt-T	Dialogs → Table		Tbl
	Table Row...				Tbl
	Table Header...				Tbl
	Table Data...				Tbl
	Table	Ctrl-Alt-T	Tags → Table		Tbl
	Table Row				Tbl
	Table Header				Tbl
	Table Data				Tbl
	Table Caption				Tbl
Frame	Frame Wizard...				Fr.
	Frameset...				Fr.
	Frame...				Fr.
	Frameset				Fr.
	Frame				Fr.
	Noframes				Fr.
	Target				Fr.
Forms	Form...				Form
	Input Button...				Form
	Input Text...				Form
	Input Hidden...				Form
	Textarea...				Form
	Input Radio Button...				Form
	Input Check Box...				Form
	Select...				Form
	Option...				Form
	Option Group...				Form
	Button...				Form
Lists	Quicklist...	Shift-Alt-L	Dialogs → General		List
	Unordered List	Ctrl-Alt-L	Tags → List		List
	Ordered List	Ctrl-Alt-O	Tags → List		List
	List Item	Ctrl-Alt-M	Tags → List		List
	Definition List				List
	Definition Term				List
	Definition				List
Anchors	Anchor...	Shift-Alt-A	Dialogs → General		Std
Email	Email...	Shift-Alt-E	Dialogs → General		Std
Images	Insert Image...	Shift-Alt-I	Dialogs → General		Std
	Insert Thumbnail...	Shift-Alt-N	Dialogs → General		Std
	Multi Thumbnails...				Std
Comment		Ctrl-Alt-C	Tags		Std
Stylesheets	Create Style...	Shift-Alt-S	Dialogs → CSS		CSS
	Div...	Shift-Alt-D	Dialogs → CSS		CSS
	Span...				CSS
Tags	Editing	F3	Dialogs
	Autoclose	Ctrl-T	Document
[a] This is a pop up icon. Corresponding H1, H2, etc... icons are also accessible from the Fonts toolbar.