1 INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL INFORMATION
1.1 What is Cooledit?
Cooledit is a full-featured text editor, for Unix computers
that run
the X Window System. Cooledit was born from a need for
a user
friendly text editor that would rival editors of other
operating
systems in ease of use and convenience. Lately Cooledit
is also a
powerful programmer's editor. It is also small and fast,
making it
ideal for interface with applications that allow for,
or require, an
external editor. See 'Features' in the man page for a
more elaborate
description of what Cooledit can do.
1.2 Who has written it?
Cooledit was written by Paul Sheer. A few odd C functions
and the
regular expression library were taken from Rxvt, Dnd and
the Midnight
Commander (thanks guys). Their respective authors are
acknowledged in
the source. See THANKS in the man page for help that I
received from
users.
1.3 Does it run on my machine?
Cooledit was initially written only for Linux, but now
uses GNU
autoconf, and will therefore compile under any Unix compatible
system, provided that system is running the X Window System,
Version
11. If it doesn't compile or run as expected, please email
me ASAP.
Cooledit does not require any of the X11 extensions that
many other
programs need to compile or run. Cooledit has run on all
the
computer's listed in the man page.
1.4 Does Cooledit require any proprietary libraries
to compile/run?
No. Cooledit requires only the basic X11 library (libX11)
to run
which is available as free-ware. On some systems this
may mean
linking with addition basic libraries (like libsocket?),
which are
automatically determined by the ./configure script. In
particular,
note that Cooledit does not require the Motif (libXm)
library which
is not yet available for free.
1.5 Is Cooledit copyrighted? What is the licensing
agreement?
Cooledit is licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
This means
that you can freely distribute Cooledit under certain
conditions. The
file COPYING contains the full licensing agreement. You
are advised
to read this license to be sure of your restrictions and
obligations
when modifying or distributing Cooledit.
1.6 What is the latest version of Cooledit?
The distribution that this README file was packed
into is Cooledit Version
3.7.3 created on 17 September 1998. See 'Where can
I get Cooledit?' below.
1.7 Can CoolEdit be ported to GTK+ or Qt?
Cooledit and Coolwidgets are deeply integrated since they
were
developed simaltaneously. Cooledits behaviour has been
honed at a
low level. To port to any other widget library would be
close to
a complete rewrite. The editor widget itself is however
running
under Gnome. This is not the complete Cooledit application,
but
a version of Cooledit that works under the Midnight Commander
(text mode) and under the Gnome verison of the Midnight
Commander.
2 NETWORK SOURCES AND RESOURCES
2.1 Where can I get Cooledit?
The latest development version can be obtained from
ftp://lava.obsidian.co.za/pub/unix/cooledit
The latest stable release can be obtained from
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/editors/X
2.2 Does Cooledit have a mailing list?
The mailing list is
cooledit@mail.obsidian.co.za
To subscribe, email
majordomo@mail.obsidian.co.za
with the following line in the body of the message:
subscribe cooledit
2.3 Does Cooledit have a world wide web home-page?
Yes. The Cooledit page is now up and can be viewed
at
http://www.obsidian.co.za/cooledit
This has some nice screen shots of Cooledit.
2.4 What other applications are called 'cooledit'?
I havn't done a search myself, but users tell me
that
a program 'cooledit', for editing sound files, exists
for one non-unix operating system.
3 COMMON PROBLEMS
3.1 How do I get the commands from the 'Scripts'
menu to work?
If a script doesn't function properly, try run it
stand-alone from a
terminal to see what happens. Some of the scripts are
not standard
Unix commands and require installation of other free-ware
packages.
You may need to install
ispell
indent
latex
xdvi
rxvt
ghostview
dvips
(Look on you local sunsite or tsx
mirror for these and other
free-ware packages.) You can edit the script from the
Script menu.
Look at the script's text and try run the script (make
appropriate
substitutions for the filenames) from a terminal. This
will usually
indicate the problem.
3.2 How do I get the man page browser to work?
(As of version 3.3.3, the configure script automatically
checks if man accepts '-a')
Look in the file ~/cedit/.cooledit.ini
Somewhere in the file is the line:
option_man_cmdline = man -a %m
You should try:
Start cooledit from a terminal.
See your man man-page (type
man man at the terminal) to see if
command-line
options or environment variables are needed.
See if the -a option is supported.
Then see if the command-line needs changing.
3.3 The man page browser displays the man page,
but gives a warning.
This can safely be ignored.
3.4 In what ways does Cooledit behave differently
to other X applications.
Cooledit is more similar to applications from 'other'
operating systems
than to standard X applications.
- Only two mouse buttons are supported. Mouse button 1
is recognised as
the 'Left' button, while all other
buttons are recognised as the
'Right' button.
- Double clicking is synonymous with acknowledgement or
pressing Enter.
- The Tab key is always used to cycle between items in
a dialog box.
The arrow keys can also be used
where they are not bound to some
other function. Shift-Tab or back-tab
is used to cycle backward.
- Shift-arrow text highlighting works along with its well
known keys:
Control-Ins and Shift-Ins. In
addition Alt/Meta-Ins brings up
a cut and paste history which
is very useful.
- Dragging and dropping bits of text poses the problem
of how to
tell if the user wants to copy
or to move the text being highlighted:
use the Left mouse button to copy
and the right mouse button to move
('move' = 'copy and then delete
the original'). Dragging always works
by highlighting the text with
the mouse or cursor keys, and then
Clicking (with the appropriate
button) and dragging from within
the highlighted region.
- Clicking with button 2 to copy text from another application
doesn't
work --- instead you must use
Shift-Insert. If text is highlighted
in another application it will
then be inserted at the cursor.
Cooledit also does not discriminate
between different kinds of data,
so any data being copied to Cooledit
will be accepted and inserted.
- Copying of text to another application works as usual:
highlight it
with the mouse and click the middle
mouse button in the window of
the application. You can also
highlight it with the arrow keys and
press Control-Ins, and then click
the middle mouse button in the
window of the application.
3.5 How do I get Emacs key-bindings, or bindings
of other editors?
The key learning dialog box is easy to use. Just go through
the list,
pressing the keys you would like. Double key combinations
will not
work however.
3.6 How do I get function keys F13 and up with
my keyboard?
Shift with a function key is analogous to adding 10 to
the function
key. i.e. Shift-F3 is F13 etc.
3.7 How do I paste into an input widget like the
file browser input line?
Press Shift-Insert in the input line.
3.8 How do I get my Alt/Meta key to work?
On some machines, what the system thinks is an Alt/Meta
key is
actually one of the other hyper keys (on my Sun I have
to use the key
with the diamond on it). Try using one of these other
keys as a
Alt/Meta. The header file global.h contains
the definition of the
Alt/Meta key which you can change if you know what you
are doing.
3.9 Why do my other drag and drop applications
not work with Cooledit?
The freeware community is adopting a new drag and drop
protocol called
XDND. Cooledit now works with this protocol only. It supports
version
0, 1 and 2 of the protocol, although I have not tested
it with versions
below 2.
3.10 Where can I get more info on drag and drop?
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~jafl/xdnd/
3.11 How do I get mail to work?
If mail doesn't work, your mail command probably doesn't
support one
of the command line options (see the mail dialog). You
will have to
create a mail script that ignores these options. The command
is not
currently configurable. Watch cooledit's stdout when sending
mail to
see mail error messages.
4 INTERNATIONAL CHARACTERS
4.1 How do I enable international character support?
In the `Options' menu, click on `General..' and set the
`Display
international characters' switch.
4.2 How do I compose and insert international characters?
Use Right-Control and the character that the international
character most looks like. Then press a second character
that
would compose that character typographically.
Eg. Ctrl-a o inserts a 'å'
The file INTERNATIONAL in the source distribution contains
a
complete list of character compositions. Note that cooledit
does
not compose characters in a standard way.
4.3 My keyboard doesn't have a right-control key.
The header file global.h contains the definition
of the Compose
key which you can change to one of the others in the list
of examples.
You will have to recompile though with
make clean
make
make install
For the change to take effect.
(you can, alternatively, just remove the file coolnext.o
to re-make.)
4.4 Where can I get more information on UNIX and
ISO?
See the 'ISO 8859-1 National Character Set FAQ'
The most recent version of this document is available
via anonymous
ftp from ftp.vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at under the file name
/pub/8bit/FAQ-ISO-8859-1"
5 COOLICON
5.1 3D How do I get the 3D rotating `e' to work?
The coolicon man page describes this.