1.3 The Editor Window
The Editor window is one of the three windows which is created when you
run Boa Constructor. If you close the Editor Window, you can re-open it
from the Palette Window using the
Button.
When it is opened the Editor provides two pages, the Shell page and
the Explore page. You can now open a source file into the Editor. There
are several methods for opening a source file in Boa Constructors editor.
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Use the Open Option from the Editor Toolbar or Editor File Menu.
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Use operating system Drag and Drop functionality to drop a file on the
editor.
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Use the Explorer Window (covered in section 1.5 below).
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Use an application file (covered in section 1.6 below).
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Start the Boa Constructor application with the source file as a command
line parameter.
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Use one of the options from the 'New' page in the Palette.
When a source file is opened, the editor creates a new page for the module.
Within that page, the editor creates another notebook to provide alternative
views of the file source. The initial two Views are 'Source' and 'Explore'.
The Source View shows the source code and allows you to change the source
code. The Explore View provides a tree view of the module, with methods
and components nested under classes
and functions.
The 'Explore' Pane shows a Class based view of your source. The methods
and attributes of each class in the source are displayed. You can double-click
the mouse left button on an attribute or method, and the 'Source' view
will display the definition of that item.
The 'Views' menu in the editor provides other views on the source. These
are Hieriarchy, Documentation, ToDo, Imports and UML.
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The Hierarchy View shows the classes in your source as a heirarchy.
The inheritance relationships between classes are clearly visible in this
view.
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The Documentation View shows documentation, which is automatically
produced from your source code. If you use standard python documentation
strings for classes and methods (i.e. a string immediately following the
declaration), then this information is included in the generated text.
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The ToDo View is used for tracking your to-do lists. You add ToDo
items to your code as comment followed by three 'X' characters, e.g. #
XXX My todo item. These are useful for track items that you want to
comeback to later.
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The UML View shows the relationships between classes.
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The Imports View shows the relationships between modules.
The Editor provides a 'diff' tool on the 'File' menu. This tool can be
used to compare the version of a source file in the editor with another
version of the file.