The Global Options Dialog Box

Utilities>Global Options displays the global options dialog box. A whole slew of settings can be customized here. The dialog box is divided into several panes, each pane containing a set of related options. To switch between panes, use the list on the left of the dialog box. Only panes created by jEdit are described here; some plugins add their own option panes, and information about them can be found in the plugin documentation.

The General Pane

The General pane allows you to change the following settings:

The Editor Pane

The Editor pane allows you to change the following settings:

The Gutter Pane

The Gutter pane allows you to change various settings used by the gutter. Colors used by the gutter can be set in the Colors & Styles option pane.

The Edit Modes Pane

The Edit Modes pane allows you to change a subset of the global editor settings on a per-mode basis. The combo box labelled "edit mode" selects the edit mode whose settings are to be changed. If the "use default settings" check box is selected, the edit mode will use the global editor settings. Otherwise, the settings can be customized and they will only apply to this mode.

The "file name glob" and "first line glob" fields allow you to specify a glob pattern that names and first lines of buffers will be matched against. The remaining fields and flags are the same as in the Editor pane.

Changes to the tab size setting in this option pane only take effect in newly opened files. All other settings take effect immediately.

This option pane does not change mode definition files on disk; it merely writes values to the user properties file which override those in mode files. To find out how to edit mode files directly, see Chapter 5.

The Colors & Styles Pane

The Colors & Styles pane allows you to change various colors used by the text area, and the text styles used by syntax highlighting. Clicking on a color or style will display the appropriate editor for changing it.

The File Filters Pane

The File Filters pane allows you to add custom file filters to the open file and save dialog boxes. Note that only user-defined file filters can be added and changed here; filters used to pick a file's edit mode can be changed in the Edit Modes pane.

Filters are added and removed in a rather peculiar fashion in this pane. Changing the last line in the list (which is always blank) will add another blank line. Lines with empty names or globs will be ignored when the filters are being saved.

The glob patterns are case insensitive. For information about glob patterns, which are a simplified form of regular expressions, see Appendix D.

The Tool Bar Pane

The Tool Bar pane allows you to specify if the tool bar and search bar should be displayed. Also, the buttons displayed on the tool bar may be changed.

The Context Menu Pane

The Context Menu pane allows you to edit the text area's right-click context menu.

The Abbreviations Pane

The Abbreviations pane allows you to enable or disable automatic abbreviation expansion, and edit the currently defined abbrevs.

The combo box labelled "Abbrev set" is used to choose the abbrev set to edit. The first entry, "global", allows you to edit abbrevs available in all edit modes. The subsequent entries allow you to edit abbrevs on a per-mode basis.

Abbrevs are added and removed in a rather peculiar fashion in this pane. Changing the last line in the list (which is always blank) will add another blank line. Lines with empty abbrevs or expansions will be ignored when the abbrevs are being saved.

The Shortcut Editing Panes

The Command Shortcuts pane allows you to change key bindings for jEdit's commands. The Macro Shortcuts pane allows you to change macro key bindings.

Internally, jEdit stores key bindings in the form modifiers+key where modifiers is a list of modifiers, with C being Control, A being Alt, and S being Shift. key is either an alphanumeric character, or a named key stroke such as PAGE_UP. A full list of named key strokes is available in the API documentation for the java.awt.event.KeyEvent class.

jEdit also allows multiple keystroke bindings; for example, Open URL is bound to C+e C+o. Any number of keystrokes can be present in a key binding.

Figure 8-2. The General pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-3. The Editor pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-4. The Edit Modes pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-5. The Gutter pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-6. The Colors & Styles pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-7. The File Filters pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-8. The Abbreviations pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-9. The Tool Bar pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-10. The Context Menu pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-11. The Command Shortcuts pane of the Global Options dialog box

Figure 8-12. The Macro Shortcuts pane of the Global Options dialog box