Chapter Nineteen

Setting Preferences

Changing Your Tango Editor Preferences

The default preferences for Tango Editor are automatically set during installation. If you want to change the various settings required by the application, you can do so using the Preferences dialog box.

This chapter describes each of the following preference settings:

• editor, data source, and online help dialog box options
• HTML and text options
• source control options.

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Using the Preferences Dialog Box

From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.

The Preferences dialog box appears.

You set Tango preferences using three tabs: the first for general preferences, the second for how you want the text to look in Tango editing windows, and the third for source control. You switch among preference sections by clicking the appropriate tab to display the options available.

After you set your preferences, clicking OK saves your changes and closes the Preferences dialog box. Any open editing windows are automatically updated with any new settings.

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Selecting Options

General

To display the General section of the Preferences dialog box, if not already displayed, click the General tab.

• Editor options. Opening a text or HTML file in the Project Workspace (that is, a file with any of the extensions listed in the table on this table) by default opens the file in Tango's built-in editing window. If you want instead to use the application defined for that file type in the Windows Explorer, disable the Open text files in projects using Tango Editor option.
• Data source options. Select the Include system tables option to include the data source's system tables in the Data Sources Workspace. This option is disabled by default.

Set the maximum number of tables you want to appear. The default is "25". If a data source has more than the specified number of tables, the Select Tables dialog box appears, allowing you to work with a more manageable subset of tables.

• Help options. Select the Show help dialog option to show the Help Information dialog box, which tells you about the HTML help system when you choose an item from the Help menu.

Selecting this option is the only way to show the help dialog again if you have previously selected Don't show this dialog again in the Help Information dialog box.

Text

When you click the Text tab in the Preferences dialog box, the following text options appear.

Text

Select the basic text attributes for the text that appears in the editing windows.

• Font. Select from the monospaced fonts installed on your machine, such as, Terminal, Fixdsys, Courier, Courier New, and Lucida Console.
• Size. Select from the point sizes available for the selected font, such as, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16.
• Tab Size. Type the number of characters you want to equal one tab character. The default is "3".
• Auto indent. This option, enabled by default, inserts a tab character automatically at the start of a new line at the same indent level as the previous line.

Background

Color refers to the background color of the HTML editing window.

You can select from the colors in the drop down list: Black, Maroon, Green, Olive, Navy, Purple, Teal, Gray, Silver, Red, Lime, Yellow, Blue, Fuschia, Aqua, and White. The default is "White".

If you select a different color, the background of the Category list changes to show you the selected font, size, and color against that background.

Syntax Coloring

In addition to setting a default font for text appearing in the HTML editing window, you can also add color to the selected font for certain categories of text.

Coloring your text can make editing of your text, HTML, and meta tags much faster and easier, and reduce the chances of making syntax errors. Only valid HTML and meta tags appear in the specified color.

Note: Meta tag attribute names are not currently checked for validity.

The default is to show the editing window text with syntax coloring enabled. If you disable the Show syntax coloring option, all text in an editing window appears black on a white background.

The following table describes each category and the default color for the text in the category.

To assign a different color to a category, select the category in the list, then select a color from the Color drop down list. The colors available are the same colors listed for "Background".

If you change text preferences and want to return to the defaults, click Use Defaults.

Source Control

When you click the Source Control tab in the Preferences dialog box, the following source control options appear.

For more information, see "Using Source Control in Tango".

Note: The Source Control tab only appears if you have a source control system installed on your machine. You must have your source control system's client software installed on the same machine as Tango Editor.

• Add new projects to. To add newly created Tango projects automatically to source control, select the name of your source control system in the drop down list. The default is Don't Add New Projects To Source Control.
• Prompt to add files when inserted into project. If you enable this option, when you add new files to a Tango project, Tango Editor asks if you want to add the new files to source control. Click Yes to add the files or No to cancel.
• Use dialog for checkout. Enable this option if you want the Check Out File(s) dialog box to appear always when you check out files. Otherwise, the selected files are automatically checked out without displaying the dialog box. A checkmark in the checkbox () beside the file name in the Project Workspace indicates the file is checked out.
• Include only selected files in dialogs. Enable this option if you want the Get Latest Version, Check Out File(s), Check In File(s), and Undo Check Out dialog boxes to show only the files selected in the Project Workspace for the particular operation. If disabled, you do not see all the files the particular source control operation could apply to.
• Login. Enter the name you use to log in to your source control system. The name you enter automatically appears in your source control system's login dialog box; otherwise, the user name field remains empty.
• Advanced. Click this button to display some of the options available for your source control system. Because the options appearing correspond to the options for your particular source control system, they may appear differently than this example shows.

Click Help for a description of each of the available advanced options and how to set them.