Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/Tools/BBEdit Lite 3.0/BBEdit Lite Quickstart

Text File | 1994-09-02 | 37KB | 808 lines

This QuickStart document provides a brief overview of some of the commands
available in BBEdit Lite. For more general information about BBEdit Lite,
consult the “About BBEdit Lite” document.

The topics covered in this document are:

Installation
Creating and Saving Documents
Editing Documents
More on Wrapping
Printing
Searching
Multi-File Searching
Preferences Dialog
Parting Shots

---

Installation

BBEdit consists of the following major components:

•    The BBEdit application itself
•    The “BBEdit Extensions” folder

Only the BBEdit application file is required to use BBEdit.

If you’re planning to install the whole set of BBEdit files, create a
“BBEdit Folder”. Copy the BBEdit application and the “BBEdit
Extensions” folder into your BBEdit Folder.

---

Creating and Saving Documents

To create a new document within BBEdit, choose “New” from the File menu.
An empty editing window will be opened on the screen. You can type in
this window, paste text from another document or application, or do
anything else which causes text to be placed in this window.

If you’re using System 6 or System 7, you can use the Finder to open
files created by BBEdit by double-clicking on them.

Once you’ve opened a new window and done some basic editing, you can
save your new document. To do this, choose the “Save As…” command from
the File menu. Type in the name of your new file and click on “Save”.

---

Editing Documents

In terms of its basic editing functionality, BBEdit behaves like any
other word processor or text editor on the Macintosh: any typed
characters are inserted at the insertion point; if there is a selection
present, the selection is replaced by the first typed character, and
the insertion point is placed after the first typed character.

The insertion point is indicated by a blinking vertical bar.

If there is any text selected in the active (or front) window, it is
highlighted using your Mac’s default highlight color. If there is text
selected in a window that is inactive (not the front window), it is
framed in the highlight color.

As you type, BBEdit scrolls the window’s contents so that the insertion
point is visible. Note that since BBEdit doesn’t automatically wrap the
text as you type, the window may scroll horizontally. You can use the
“Wrap while Typing” option to change this behavior; when it’s turned
on, BBEdit will insert carriage returns as you type.

To move text from one place to another, select the text you wish to
move, and choose the “Cut” command from the Edit menu. The selected
text will be deleted, and placed in a special area called the
“Clipboard”. (The Clipboard always contains the last text that you cut
or copied.) You can then use the “Paste” command on the Edit menu to
place the text elsewhere in the document you’re editing, or even in
another window altogether. Also, any text that you cut or copy can be
pasted into another application. You can place text in the Clipboard
without deleting it by choosing “Copy” from the Edit menu.

When you Paste, the text that’s in the Clipboard will replace the
current selection (if there is one), or be inserted at the insertion
point. Paste doesn’t remove text from the Clipboard, so you can Paste
as many times as you wish.

To delete selected text, hit the “Delete” key on your keyboard, or
choose “Clear” from the Edit menu. If you have a keyboard with a
numeric keypad on it, you can hit the “Clear” key on the keypad to
delete the selected text.

To select all the text in the front editing window, choose “Select All”
from the Edit menu. You can then cut, copy, or perform any other action
that affects selected text.

BBEdit provides an assortment of facilities for transforming text in
various ways. The commands to transform text are all found under the
Text menu:

•   Balance locates the pair of parentheses, braces, brackets, or curly
quotes which encloses the current selection range or insertion point.
If there are unmatched parentheses, braces, brackets, or quotes, BBEdit
will beep.

•   Twiddle transposes the two characters on either side of the
insertion point, or at either end of the selected text.

Note: If you hold down the Option key, Twiddle becomes Twiddle Words.
Twiddle Words behaves in similar fashion to Twiddle, except that it
acts on entire words, rather than individual characters.

•   Change Case… allows you to automatically switch between upper and
lower case characters for entire words, first letters of words, or
first letters of lines.

•   Shift Left and Shift Right indent the selected text by one tab stop
(in the case of Shift Left), or outdent by one tab stop (for Shift
Right). If you hold down the Shift key while choosing one of these
commands, the selected text will be indented or outdented by one space
instead of one tab stop.

•   The Wrap… command is used for wrapping long lines of text and
filling paragraphs. Essentially, it uses carriage returns to break
lines of text, to keep them from running off to the right of your
screen.

•   Unwrap… removes carriage returns and spaces between groups of text.
Essentially, it performs the reverse function of the “Wrap…” command.

•   Zap Gremlins… is useful for finding and altering non-printing
characters in your text files.

•   Entab converts runs of spaces into tabs, according to the current
setting in the “Font and Tabs…” dialog. This transformation is useful
when downloading text from a mainframe computer or on-line service
which uses spaces to line up columns of text; when displaying the text
in a monospaced font, columns will still usually not line up unless you
Entab the text.

•   Detab converts tabs into runs of spaces, according to the current
setting in the “Font and Tabs…” dialog. This is useful when uploading
text to a mainframe or on-line service which has no concept of tabs as
column separators.

---

More on Wrapping

BBEdit offers the capability to wrap text in a variety of ways. This
wrapping is not the “live” word wrapping that word-processors provide;
instead, it is useful when importing text files from word processors or
other programs that do not use carriage returns to break lines on the
screen. When opened, such files appear to have only a few lines in
them, which run far past the right-hand edge of the window.

To wrap text in the current document window, choose “Wrap…” from the
Text menu.

The controls on the left half of the “Wrap…” dialog box control how
much of the text is wrapped, and the maximum length of the lines after
wrapping.

The group of radio buttons controls the length of lines after they have
been wrapped:

•    The “Philip Bar” button will break lines of text at the philip bar.
(To see the location of the philip bar, turn on “Show Philip Bar” in
the Windows section of the Preferences dialog.) The philip bar
indicates the maximum usable width of adocument window when the window
is zoomed to full size on a nine-inch “classic” Macintosh screen. For
this reason, you’re guaranteed that text wrapped to the philip bar will
be readable without horizontal scrolling by anyone on any Macintosh.

•    If “Window Width” is selected, no wrapped line will be longer than
the current width of the window. This option is useful if you’d like
the lines to be alittle longer or a little shorter than is provided for
by the philip bar; just size the window appropriately and wrap.

•    If “Character Width” is selected, the number in the text field
designates the maximum number of characters allowed on any line; a line
that exceeds this number of characters in length will be wrapped. The
“Character Width” setting is useful for preparing postings to on-line
services, which can break lines in an unattractive fashion if they’re
longer than a fixed number of characters (usually 80).

The controls on the right half of the dialog control paragraph
wrapping. If the “Paragraph Fill” check box is turned off, long lines
will be wrapped. Short lines will be left untouched.

---

Printing

BBEdit offers a variety of options for varying your printed output.
These options are available from the dialog that appears when you
choose “Print from the File menu:

The portion of the dialog above the gray line is the normal set of
controls that is provided by whichever printer driver you use. Below
the gray line are controls provided specifically by BBEdit.

•    The “Printing Font:” button will bring up a dialog that allows you
to set the font, size, style, and tab attributes for the text when it’s
printed (as opposed to when it’s displayed). For a description of the
controls in this dialog, see the “Editing” section of this document.

•    The “Options…” button will present a dialog box for setting various
formatting options, most of which should be self-explanatory.

Most of the options in “Options…” dialog only affect the appearance of
the pages that are printed out, and can therefore be set according to
your individual taste.

When printing a Search Results window, you can print out the list of
results by making sure that the heavy border is around the list. If it
is not, hit the Tab key or click on the list.

---

Searching

BBEdit gives you the ability to search for strings of characters within
the current document, or within multiple files, whether they’re
currently open in BBEdit or not. When you choose “Find…” from the
Search menu, BBEdit will present a dialog box with several options.

The edit field to the right of “Search For:” contains the string of
characters that you wish to search for. If the “Grep” check box is
checked, the string in this edit field is a regular expression. See
below for more information on grep searching.

The edit field to the right of “Replace With:” contains the string of
characters that will replace the current selection whenever you choose
“Replace”, “Replace and Find Again”, or “Replace All” from the Search
menu.

Note: To search for an explicit carriage return, line feed, or tab, you
can type the literal character by holding down the Command key and
hitting the Return or Tab key, or typing “\n” for a line feed, “\r” for
a carriage return, or “\t” for a tab. You can also type Control-J,
Control-M, and Control-I, respectively. To search for a -literal-
occurrence of an escape (for example, in C or Rez program source), use
two backslashes: “\\n”, “\\r”, and “\\t”. Also, a “\\” will be
interepreted to mean a single backslash, just as it does in C.

The “Match Case” check box determines whether the search is
case-sensitive or not. If “Match Case” is checked, only text which has
the same combination of upper and lower case letters as the Search For
string will be found.

The “Entire Word” check box determines whether the text being searched
must be bounded by word breaks (spaces, dashes, and other punctuation).

The “Wrap Around” check box will cause the entire document to be
searched, regardless of where the current insertion point or selection
range lies. Ordinarily, only the text from the start of the selection
range to the end of the document is searched. If “Wrap Around” is
turned on, and the search string isn’t found between the start of the
selection range and the end of the document, the search will
automatically restart from the beginning of the document. If the search
string is found in the document after wrapping around, BBEdit will
blink the menu bar to alert you.

If the “Search Backwards” check box is checked, BBEdit will search
backwards from the start of the insertion point to the start of the
document, rather than forward to the end of the document. If “Wrap
Around” is checked, and the search string is not found between the
start of the document and the start of the selection range, the
backwards search will resume from the end of the document.

If the “Search Selection Only” box is checked, BBEdit will constrain
the search to the current selection range; this box will be dimmed if
there is no selection range.

After you have entered the search and replace strings and set the search
options appropriately, you can click “Find”, “Replace”, “Don’t Find”,
or “Cancel”. If you click “Find”, BBEdit will immediately search for
the current search and replace strings, using the current search
options. If you click “Replace”, BBEdit will search for the current
search string, and if it’s found, replace it with the replace string.
If you click “Don’t Find”, BBEdit will accept the current search
strings and options, but will not perform the search; you can then
choose “Find Again” from the Search menu to start the search.

If you hold down the Option key while the Find dialog is up, “Find”
becomes “Find All” and “Replace” becomes “Replace All”. If you hold
down the Option key while clicking on either button, the operation is
extended to affect the entire document (or selection range, if the
“Search Selection Only” option is activated).

---

Multi-File Searching

BBEdit also provides a variety of means for searching through multiple
text files at one time in order to locate the search string. To perform
a multi-file search, check the “Multi-File Search” check box in the
Find… dialog.

When you turn on “Multi-File Search”, the “Options…” button is enabled;
to set up the options for a multi-file search, click this button, and a
new dialog box will appear.

The popup menu next to “Search Method” in this dialog box determines
how BBEdit will locate the files to be searched.

There are three ways to locate files:

•    Directory Search. When this search method is chosen, BBEdit scans
through the folders starting at the one you choose, and each file that
it encounters will be searched for the search string.

•    Open Windows. When you choose this search method, BBEdit searches
for the search string only in document windows that are currently open.
This sort of search is very fast, and may be most convenient if you
wish to limit the scope of your search to a few files.

•    Search Results. This search method is only available when the
“Search Results” window is open and contains the results of a previous
Batch Find (see below).

The check boxes in the “Options…” dialog can be used to tailor the
search to your needs:

•    Batch Find accumulates the results of the search in progress and
displays them all at once in a Search Results window. If this check box
is not checked, then the multi-file search will stop each time it
encounters a match, and open the file that contains the match.

Once the Search Results window is opened, you can double-click on
entries in the window to display any given match, or select multiple
matches from different files and display them all at once.

•    Search Nested Folders causes the Directory Scan search to search
folders which are enclosed in the search’s starting directory. If this
check box is turned off, only the files in the starting directory will
be searched.

•    Skip (…) Folders causes the Directory Scan to skip folders whose
names are enclosed in parentheses. This is useful if you have folders
containing text files that you do not want to search for one reason or
another; just enclose the folders’ names in parentheses, and they will
be skipped.

•    Search All File Types. If this check box is checked, BBEdit searches
files of all kinds, regardless of whether they contain actual text or
not. If it’s not checked, only text files will be searched.

After you have set the options, click “OK” to save the settings and
return to the “Find…” dialog. If you then click “Find”, the multi-file
search will start. If you click “Don’t Find”, the current settings will
be saved, but the multi-file search won’t start until you choose “Find
in Next File” from the Search menu. (If Batch Find is selected, the
“Don’t Find” button is disabled.)

When BBEdit performs a multi-file search, it does so in two steps.
First, it constructs a list of the files to be searched, using the
search method specified in the Multi-File Search Options dialog.
Second, it searches each file in the list for the search string. If
“Batch Find” is selected, all occurrences in each file will be
displayed in the Search Results window. Otherwise, each file will be
opened to display the first occurrence of the search string; you can
find subsequent occurrences of the search string in the same file by
choosing “Find Again” from the Search menu. If you’re not using Batch
Find, you can locate the next file that contains the search string by
choosing “Find In Next File” from the Search menu.

You can combine the capabilities of BBEdit’s multi-file search with the
Replace All command to perform multi-file replace operations. To do
this, set up a multi-file search as desired, and hold down the Option
key and click the “Replace” button in the Find dialog. After building
the list of files, BBEdit will present a dialog for setting the
multi-file replace options.

There are three levels of safety that are available:

•    Safest. Click on the “Leave Open” radio button. For each file that
contains the search string, BBEdit will perform a “Replace All” on that
file, and leave the file open so that you can inspect the changes.

•    Less Safe. Click on the “Save To Disk” radio button, and make sure
that the “Confirm Saves” check box is checked. BBEdit will perform a
Replace All on each file that contains the search string, and then ask
you what to do.

If you click “Save”, BBEdit will save the changed file. If you click
“Don’t Save”, BBEdit will throw away the changes that were just
performed. If you click “Leave Open”, BBEdit will leave the file open;
this is the same behavior as the “Safest” case, above. If you click
“Cancel Search”, BBEdit will stop the multi-file replace operation.

•    Living on the Edge. Click on the “Save to Disk” radio button, and
un-check the “Confirm Saves” check box. If you do this, BBEdit will
perform a Replace All on each file that contains the search string, and
then save the changed file to disk without asking. You should only use
these settings if you’re absolutely certain of what you’re doing, since
the changes are irreversible.

---

Grep Searching

Grep is a method of pattern matching that derives from the Unix™
operating system.  You may be familiar with simple pattern matching
from using word processors;  when you ask a word processor to find all
instances of the word "black", it is performing a simple pattern match,
where each letter has to match literally.  Matching strings in this
manner is not very hard.

The ability to match strings in a more general manner is both more
powerful and more complicated.  It allows for sophisticated pattern
matching operations, such as matching all words that begin with the
letter "P" and end with the letters "er", or deleting the first word of
every line.  Grep provides a powerful means of doing this.

To use Grep for searching documents, just check the “Grep” check box in
the Find… dialog.

The popup menu next to the “Patterns:” in the dialog contains a list of
your most commonly-used Grep patterns. You can change this list in the
“Grep Patterns” section of the Preferences… dialog.

How Grep Works

The “grep” mode of searching and replacing is a powerful tool. Although
somewhat slower than normal text searching, grep allows the user to
search for one of a set of many strings instead of a particular string.
As a simple example, you can search for any occurrence of an
identifier beginning with the letter P, or all lines that begin with a
left brace.

A pattern is a string of characters that, in turn, describes a set of
strings of characters.  An example of a set of strings is the set of
all strings that begin with the letter P and end with the letter r;
the strings “Ptr” and “ProcPtr” are members of this set.  We say that a
string is matched by a pattern if it is amember of the set described by
the pattern.  Patterns are composed of sub-patterns which are patterns
in themselves;  this is how complicated patterns may be formed.

The following section goes through the grep pattern matching and
replacement rules step by step, so that by the end of it you should be
able to understand how each of these grep patterns works and be able to
make your own.

In some cases, the state of case sensitivity affects the results of a
pattern match.  We have noted below when this is the case.

1. Any character, with certain exceptions described below, is a pattern
that matches itself.

2.    A pattern x followed by a pattern y forms a pattern xy that matches
any string ßµ where ß can be matched by x and µ can be matched by y.
We can, of course, take the compound pattern xy and concatenate yet
another pattern z onto it, forming the pattern xyz.

3.    The character . is a pattern that will match any character.

4.    The character \ followed by any character is a pattern that matches
that character. (You would use this to find special characters, such as
the . character. To search for a period, you would use \.).

5.    A string of characters s surrounded by square brackets ([ and a
]) forms a pattern [s] that matches a single instance of one of the
characters in the string s.  Note that the case sensitivity flag does
not apply to characters between square brackets:  letters must match
exactly.

5a.     The pattern [^ß] matches any character that is not in the string
ß. Special characters will be taken literally in this context.  Again,
case sensitivity doesn't apply to characters between square brackets.

5b.    If a string of three characters in the form [a-b] occurs in the
pattern p, this represents all of the characters from a to b inclusive.
All special characters are taken literally;  i.e., [!-.] denotes the
characters from ! to .. Notice that the only way to include the
character ] in p is to make it the very first character.  Likewise, the
only way to include the character - in p is to have it either at the
very beginning or the very end of p.  Single characters and ranges may
both be used between brackets.

6a.    Any pattern p formed by any combination of rules 1 or 3-5b
followed by a * forms the pattern p* that matches zero or more
consecutive occurrences of characters matched by p.

6c.    Any pattern p formed by any combination of rules 1 or 3-5b
followed by a ? forms the pattern p? that matches zero or one
consecutive occurrences of characters matched by p.

We now have the ability to form patterns that are composed of
sub-patterns, and will find it useful to "remember" sub-strings matched
by sub-patterns and to be able to match against those substrings.

7.    A pattern surrounded by ( and ) is a pattern that matches whatever
the sub-pattern matches.  This is useful for matching two or more
instances of the same string and when doing replacements.

Sometimes it is useful to be able to "constrain" patterns to match only
if certain conditions in the context outside the string matched are
met.

8.    A pattern p that is preceded by a ^ forms a pattern ^p.  If the
pattern ^p is not preceded by any other pattern, it matches whatever p
matches as long as the first character matched by p occurs at the
beginning of a line.  If the pattern ^p is preceded by another pattern,
then the ^ is taken literally.

9.    A pattern p that is followed by a $ forms a pattern p$.  If the
pattern p$ is not followed by any other pattern, it matches whatever p
matches as long as the last character matched by p occurs at the end of
a line.  If the pattern p$ is followed by another pattern, then the $
is taken literally.

Note that the characters ^ and $ constrain pattern matches to begin or
end at line boundaries, and so can be combined to constrain a pattern
to match an entire line only (as in the above example).

Grep provides not only a more sophisticated method of searching, but a
sophisticated method of replacing as well.  In a replacement string,
the following substitutions are made before any text replacement
occurs:

1.    Each occurrence of the character & is replaced with whatever was
last matched by the entire pattern.

2.    Each occurrence of a string of the form \n, where n is one of the
digits 1-9, is replaced by whatever was last matched by the sub-pattern
beginning with the nth occurrence of (.

3.    Each occurrence of a string of the form \p, where p is other than
one of the digits 1-9, is replaced by p.

This allows you to not only be able to search for a string satisfying a
complex set of conditions, but also to be able to do a subsequent
replacement that varies depending on the string that is matched. Note
that this does not take into account escape sequences, such as \t, \r,
\n, \\, etc. Suppose that you have written a program that is to become
a Macintosh application (i.e., it uses the Macintosh ToolBox instead of
stdio for the user interface).  Suppose also that you have discovered
that you have forgotten to put a \p at the beginning of your string
constants, so that your program is trying to pass C strings instead of
Pascal strings to the Toolbox (which only knows how to deal with Pascal
strings).  You can easily change all your C strings to Pascal strings
by specifying "(.*)" as the search pattern and "\\p\1" as the
replacement string.

Suppose you decided to reverse the two arguments of the function "foo".
You might try the pattern foo\(([^,]*),([^)]*)\) as the search pattern
and foo(\2, \1) as the replacement pattern.  How does the search
pattern work?

Let's assume we're trying to match some text that looks like
foo(1,*bar)

    foo\(([^,]*),([^)]*)\)    matches    foo(1,*bar)

Since ([^,]*) matched 1 and ([^)]*) matched *bar, the two arguments to
foo, the replacement pattern foo(\2, \1) will result in foo(*bar, 1)

This, unfortunately, won't work in the case of foo(1,(*bar)+2), since
([^)]*) will match only up to the first right parenthesis, leaving +2)
unmatched.  If we're sure that all calls to foo end with a semicolon,
however, we can change our pattern to foo\(([^,]*),([^;]*)\);. In this
pattern, instead of trying to match the second argument by matching
everything up to the first right parenthesis, we match everything up to
the ); which terminates the invocation of foo.

In this example we showed how to analyze a grep pattern by examining
sub-patterns. This is a good way of figuring out how to build a pattern
as well. Grep can be thought of as a small and rather cryptic
programming language, with each pattern a program and sub-pattern a
statement in this language. If you try to create a grep pattern by
testing a small sub-pattern, then adding and testing additional
sub-patterns until the complete pattern is built, you may find building
complex grep patterns not nearly as daunting as you first thought.

---

Preferences Dialog

To bring up the Preferences dialog, choose “Preferences…” from the Edit
menu, or double-click on your BBEdit Prefs file. (This may not be
convenient, since the BBEdit Prefs file usually resides somewhere
within the System Folder.)

The popup menu next to the “Preferences” text determines which section
of the preferences you’re looking at. If you click on “Save”, all of
the preferences settings will be saved to the “BBEdit Prefs” file. If
you click on “Cancel”, the existing preferences will be left alone, and
any changes you’ve made in the Preferences settings will be discarded.

--> The “Editor” preferences control BBEdit’s editing and keyboard behavior.

•    The “Default Font” button sets the font which will be used to display
the text in newly created windows, and for documents which have no
saved state information.

•    If Auto-Indent is turned on, BBEdit will indent to the start of the
preceding line whenever you type the “Return” key on the keyboard. This
is useful for programmers and for reverse-indenting text. It may be
less convenient if you’re using BBEdit for composing prose.

•    Wrap While Typing: generally, BBEdit does not automatically wrap
text as you type it in, which means the text may scroll horizontally.
Selecting this option tells BBEdit to enter carriage returns at the end
of each line, according to the current “Wrap…” settings.

•    If Balance While Typing is turned on, BBEdit will flash matching
parentheses, curly braces, and brackets as you type them.

•    Smart Quotes is used to determine the default value of the Smart
Quotes setting for newly created windows and for documents saved with
state information other than “BBEdit”.

•    If Show Invisibles is activated, BBEdit will display certain
invisible control characters by using visible placeholders: carriage
returns will be represented with a “¬”; tabs will be represented with a
“Δ”, and spaces will be represented with a “◊”. Non-printing control
characters will be represented with a “¿”.

•    Ordinarily, actions such as Entab, Detab, Zap Gremlins, Replace All,
and most extensions are not undoable, and BBEdit will alert you if you
are about to perform a non-undoable action. If you aren’t concerned
about being able to undo these actions, and don’t want BBEdit to alert
you, turn on the ‘No “Can’t Undo” Alerts’ check box, and BBEdit will
not alert you of these actions.

•    Exchange Command and Option reverses the meaning of the Command and
Option keys when used with the left and right arrow keys. See “Editing
Text with BBEdit” for more details.

•    If Use Keypad for Cursor Control is checked, the keys on the numeric
keypad (on keyboards that have them) will move the cursor. See “Editing
Text With BBEdit” for more details.

--> The “File Search” section of the Preferences contains settings to
determine defaults for BBEdit’s behavior when locating files via the
“Open Selection” command. The “Default <...> Directory” setting
determines which directory BBEdit will initially search for files whose
names are included in <angle brackets>. If “Follow Aliases” is checked,
BBEdit will resolve aliases to folders as it searches for your file,
and search those folders as well.

--> The “File Types” section of the Preferences allows you to modify
the list of file creators that appears in the “File Creator” popup menu
of the “Save As…, Options…” dialog box.

To add a new application’s file creator to the list, click the “Add…”
button, and choose the application. To change an application’s creator
signature, click on an application name in the list, enter a new
four-letter code in the text field next to “Creator…”, and click the
“Change” button. You can use the “Set button to pick an application and
enter its creator code in the text field for you. To remove an
application creator from the list, click on an application name, and
click the “Delete” button.

The creators for “BBEdit” and “Generic Text File” are built into BBEdit
and cannot be changed or deleted.

--> The “Filing Preferences” settings in this part of the Preference
dialog control the default settings for the Open… and Open Several…
dialogs. If “Auto-Backup” is checked, a backup will automatically be
made of a file every time it is saved. If “Wrap TeachText Files” is
checked, BBEdit will perform a Wrap operation, without paragraph fill,
whenever you open a file created by TeachText (or SimpleText).

--> The “Grep Patterns” of the Preferences dialog allows you to modify
the list of regular expressions which appears in the popup menu next to
the “Grep” check box in the “Find…” dialog. The scrolling list box
shows the names of the installed patterns. When you click on one, the
text fields below the list will be filled in with its name, search
pattern, and replace pattern. You can change any of these text fields,
and click “Change” to replace the selected pattern with the changed
one. You can also enter new information in the text fields and click
“Add” to add a new pattern, or select a pattern and click “Delete” to
remove it from the list.

Note: You can install a pattern with an empty replace pattern, which is
useful just for locating text which matches a particular regular
expression.

--> The “Printing” settings provide the default print settings for new
windows and for documents which have saved state information other than
BBEdit’s.

These settings correspond to the same settings on the “Options…” dialog
which can be brought up from the Print… dialog.

--> The “Search Folders” provides the ability to set up a list of
frequently-used starting points for a multi-file search; the folders
listed here will appear on a popup in the Multi-File Search options
section of the Find... dialog.

--> The “Startup” settings control what BBEdit does when it’s launched
by some means other than double-clicking on a BBEdit document, or by
dragging and dropping some item onto BBEdit itself (under System 7).

•    If Nothing is selected, BBEdit will take no action at startup. This
is handy if BBEdit regularly gets launched into the background, or is
launched by some scripting utility which will then start feeding
commands to BBEdit directly.

•    New Window causes BBEdit to bring up a new untitled window, as if
the “New command on the File menu had been chosen.

•    Open causes BBEdit to bring up an “Open…” dialog, as if the “Open…”
command on the File menu had been chosen.

•    Open Several causes BBEdit to bring up the “Open Several…” dialog,
as if that command had been chosen.

--> The “State Preferences” settings control what parts of a file’s
saved state are honored whenever a file with saved state information is
opened. In some cases, it may be desirable to ignore one of these
aspects of the saved state. If the “Leave Room for Finder Icons” is
checked, BBEdit will make certain that there’s enough space below and
to the right of any window so that icons on the desktop can be seen
when you’re running under MultiFinder or System 7. The “Default Saved
State” popup menu determines what state information will be saved by
default when you choose “Save As…” for a new window or for a file with
no saved state information. If “Always Add State” is checked, BBEdit
will save state information file every time, even if the file
previously had no state.

--> The “Text Search” settings provide the defaults for text searching
and multi-file searching. The options in this dialog correspond to
their counterparts in the Find… and the Multi-File Search Options
dialog.

The “Start From…” button sets the default starting directory for
Directory Scan multi-file searches.

--> The “Windows” preferences control BBEdit’s behavior with respect to
the display and management of windows.

•    Delay When Scrolling makes BBEdit wait a tenth of a second when you
click in the arrows of a scrollbar before scrolling the text in a
document window. This is most useful under System 6 on faster machines;
often several lines will go by before your reflexes allow you to let go
of the mouse button. System 7 offers a “scrolling throttle”, so this
setting may be turned off.

•    Show Status Bar causes the status bar to be visible within all
editing windows. (See “Editing Text With BBEdit” for a description of
the status bar.) This option is on by default; you can turn it off if
you have a small screen and screen “real estate” is at a premium.

•    Show Philip Bar draws a vertical gray line in the status bar at the
point where the visible editing area ends on a 9-inch “classic” screen.
See above for more details.

•    Show Tab Stops places tick marks in the status bar to indicate the
position of tab stops in each editing window. This option is dimmed if
“Show Status Bar” is turned off.

•    Show Line Numbers places line numbers along the left edge of each
editing window.

•    Show Cursor Position places the cursor-position display at the lower
left corner of each editing window; this display shows the position of
the insertion point, or the last-changed end of the selection range.

•    The “Leave Room for Finder” settings, when activated, will instruct
BBEdit to leave space along the bottom and right edges of the display
containing the menu bar, whenever it zooms or arranges windows on that
display.

Note - if you’re running on a Macintosh with a 9-inch screen, the window
sizes when “Leave Room for Finder” is checked are usually too small to
be useful. Therefore, you may want to turn these options off if you have
a small screen.

•    The “Maximum Width” and “Zoom Windows To” preferences control the
maximum size of windows when zooming or arranging them, and will also
control how BBEdit places zoomed windows.

--> The “Wrapping Preferences” settings are the default settings for the
Wrap dialog.


--> The “Zapping Preferences” settings are the default settings for the
“Zap Gremlins…” dialog.

---

Parting Shots

Be sure to look at the “About BBEdit Lite” document which comes with the
BBEdit Lite software. For more information about BBEdit or BBEdit Lite,
write:

Bare Bones Software, Inc.
1 Larkspur Way, #4
Natick, MA  01760

or, by e-mail:

[e-mail]    [internet]
73051,3255                [CompuServe]
BARE.BONES                [AppleLink]

or, by phone or fax:

[phone]            [phone]
[phone]            [fax]

This document was written by Allan Rousselle, with assistance from Rich
Siegel. This document and the BBEdit Lite application are copyright
©1992-1994 Bare Bones Software, Inc., all rights reserved.