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Copyright ⌐ 1990-1995 Pete Keleher. All Rights Reserved The Author(s) of this product are in no way liable for any direct or indirect damage caused by the product. You may freely copy and distribute ALPHA, but please bear in mind that ALPHA is Shareware. If you decide to keep it, please register your copy by selecting 'Register' from the 'About╔' dialog. I am collecting user-written Tcl procs and XTCLs in pub/faculty/keleher/Alpha/contrib on cs.umd.edu. If you have written anything that you think may be of general interest, please send it to me and I will make it available. Alpha contains source from main places, but in particular I'm grateful to Ray Johnson and Tim Endres for their working on porting TCL to the mac, and to Tom Scavo and Tom Pollard for their Tcl code contributions. The following people have also provided considerable code and/or help debugging the one or two bugs Alpha has had: Masatsugu Nagata, Karl J. Smith, Eric Sink, David C. Black, Richard T. Austin, Henry Spencer, and Jerry Fowler. What to do: USE THE MARKS MENU IN THIS FILE!. This file contains "marks" in a popup menu above the vertical scrollbar on the right, that let you jump to different sections of this file. Mouse-down on the curly braces. Also, Alpha supports a limit form of hypertext. Clicking on green underlined text executes a command associated with the underlined text, usually taking you to other documentation. For example, clicking here takes you to more documentation of the hypertext capabilities. Alpha is a very powerful, multi-purpose editor that allows any program- or user-defined function to be bound to any keystroke, or placed into user-defined menus. Every menu is defined in the macro language Tcl by one of the startup files ("alphaBits.tcl" or one of the files sourced from inside it). Alpha uses Dr. Ousterhout's Tool Command Language (Tcl) as an extension language. Click here for a more complete definition of the language. Many of the functions bound to keystrokes, as well as many of the functions in the user-defined menus, are written in Tcl. Callable functions in Alpha come in two different flavors. First, there are the basic Tcl commands, detailed here. Second there are "Alpha commands", commands that relate specifically to Alpha. The only way to get to know the editor and the language is to try different things out. Play around. Choose the menu item "Misc:List Bindings" to get a listing of all the current keystoke bindings. Look in "procs.tcl" for definitions of many of the routines. Look in "menus.tcl" for definitions of most of the menus. See the section on "GUI Details" for more information about the various pieces of Alpha's windows. And finally, please feel free to send suggestions/"feature" reports/questions to me at keleher@cs.umd.edu. I am not able to answer US postal mail, but if you send it to me I will at least read it. Have fun! Colorizing Version 5.80 and up support automatic "colorizing" of text. This is controlled by the function 'regModeKeywords', which registers keywords to colorize in a specific mode. By default, color schemes are supplied for C, C++, Pascal, Tcl, and TeX. Colorizing can be turned off via the 'coloring' flag. You can add words to a given mode by creating a file called prefs.tcl in the 'Alpha' subdirectory of the system preferences file, and using regModeKeywords w/ the -a option. File Detritus The primary method of either reading or storing files with Alpha, or any other Mac editor, is through the GetFile and PutFile dialogs. However, Alpha's dialogs are not exactly like those of other applications. The GetFile dialog has two additional items: a "Read-only" checkbox and an "All Files" checkbox. The first allows you to open a file as read only. Files in the read-only state can not be modified, only read. A read-only file is indicated by a lock icon replacing the grow zone icon. Read-only status can be toggled by command-clicking on the icon. The second checkbox, "All Files", allows Alpha to open any file rather than just those of type 'TEXT'. The type of a file can be determined by using the 'll' alias in the Tcl shell. The PutFile dialog is used to prompt the user for a new name under which to save the contents of a window. This dialog has been enhanced by two popup menus: "State" and "Format". "State" allows you to specify how much information should be saved in the resource fork of files that you use. If the state is set to "MPW", window position, current selection, tab sizes, and font information are saved into the resource fork of your application every time you open and close it, *even if you don't modify the file*. Alpha still manages to coexist with build or make files because saving this information does not change the modification date of the file. If the state is set to "Think", neither the window position nor the current selection are saved. If state is set to "None", no information is saved. The default value for saved state can by changed by setting the Alpha variable 'savedState' to "mpw", "think", or "none". Note that if a given file already has mpw information in it when the file is open, Alpha will always update that information when the file is closed. Note also that "marks" are always saved in the resource fork whenever a file is saved, regardless of the setting of the 'savedState' variable. The "Format" menus allows the way Alpha terminates lines to be changed. The Mac uses a carriage return to mark the end of a line, Unix uses a linefeed, and IBM uses both (of course). Alpha can read and write any of these formats, and can convert between them just by opening a file, choosing "Save As", and changing the selection in this menu. Note that if you are going to be sharing files with a Unix or IBM machine, you probably don't want anything in your resource fork, so you'd probably want to set 'savedState' to 'none' in your prefs.tcl file. GUI Details Alpha's windows have several non-standard features. First, the horizontal scrollbar can be turned on and off via the window menu. The default for subsequent windows is controlled via the global variable horScrollBar (look under "Modes:Flags"). Secondly, above the vertical scrollbar on the right are at least three icons. The bottom-most icon is the "Mode Vars" popup menu (see the Modes section of this file). The next icon is the "Mode" popup menu, which shows the window's current mode and allows it to be changed. The next icon shows the "Marks" menu, which lists all marks for the current window and allows them to be cleared or automatically created (through the Tcl proc 'markFile' that calls mode-specific routines). Finally, above this icon a red disk icon appears if the window is currently dirty. Clicking on this icon saves the file. Directly above the vertical scrollbar is a black bar that can be used to split any window into two independent panes showing the same buffer. Windows are split by either dragging the black bar or using the "Windows:Split Window" menu command. Windows are unsplit the same way. Double-clicking on the bar can also be used to toggle whether the window is split. Command-clicking on the window name brings up a popup menu that shows the complete pathname of the file. Command-clicking anywhere else on the titlebar brings up the mark menu. Option-clicking on the titlebar of a window queries the Symantec project manager for include files, if running. Option-clicking and dragging text enables rectangular editing. Control-double-clicking on any type of paren or bracket hilites from the paren or bracket to it's mate. Without the control key held down, only the intervening text is selected. Command-double clicking on a word in a C file will try to find the definition of the word. The first option is looking up the word in the tag file. If the word is not a tag, or no tags have been specified, Alpha attempts to lookup the word through the THINK Reference app. If you would like Apple's Toolbox Assistant to be used instead, edit the proc 'cmdDoubleClick'. In Tcl mode, the verb is looked up in the SystemCode and UserCode directories, then in ":Help:Alpha Commands", and then finally in ":Help:Tcl Commands". Alpha also supports drag and drop editing. The grow region in the lower right corner is replaced by a lock icon if the file is read-only. Read-only status can be changed by command-clicking in this area. See "Status Bar" for information describing the bar running across the bottom of the screen. Marks Alpha allows the user to use "marks" to remember positions in files. Marks "float". That is, if a mark is initially at position 312 and then five characters are inserted at location 297, the mark's new value will be 317. Alpha uses three different types of marks. The first is generically referred to as "the mark". The mark is set to the current insertion point by the command 'setMark' (control-space by default). The position in the file indicated by the blinking cursor is referred to as the current insertion point. Many commands (such as "cut" and "copy") can operate either on the currently selected (hilighted) text, or the text between the current insertion point and "the mark". For example, if you move the cursor to the beginning of the work "allybaba", hit control-space (the status bar should say "Mark set"), move to the end of the word and hit option-w (the status bar should say "Region copied"), the effect is the same as if you had used the mouse to select the text and then selected the "Copy" command from the "Edit" menu. The second type of mark are the permanent marks. Permanent marks are set, removed, and moved-to through the three corresponding menu items in the "Search" menu. Permanent marks differ from the generic mark in that they have names, there can be any number of them, and they are saved in the resource fork if the file is subsequently saved. Permanent marks can be access via the "Search:Named Marks" menu items, by a popup menu called by mousing down on the curly braces above a vertical scrollbar, or by command-mousing on a window's titlebar. The third type of mark is the temporary mark. Like permanent marks, temporary marks can be named and there can be any number of them. Unlike permanent marks, temporary marks do not "dirty" the file, and they aren't saved. So far, temporary marks are used exclusively to implement higher order functions in TCL procedures. In the 5.0 release, temporary marks are used to implement a "mark stack" and a for loop template. At the time a file is saved, the marks for that file are stored into the file's resource fork in an order determined by the variable 'markSorting'. The choices are either 0 (no sorting), 1 (sort by file position), or 2 (sort alphabetically). Mark Stack The mark stack is a last-in-first-out (LIFO) stack of temporary marks managed by the TCL procedures 'pushMark' and 'popMark'. 'pushMark' creates a new temporary mark of the current insertion point and adds it on to the top of the stack. 'popMark' removes the top mark from the stack and goes toit. A typical use of the mark stack is a 'pushMark' at the current position, go look somewhere else in the file, and then 'popMark' to get back to where you were. However, the stack is recursive, so there can be any number of 'pushMarks' before the marks start to be popped back off the stack. Templates Temporary marks can also be used to with language construct templates. The file "template.tcl" contains an example implementing a template for C's 'for' command. Depressing control-i will insert a template for the "for" command into the current window. Five temporary marks are defined in the for structure, three inside the parenthesis, one where the "for" body text will be inserted, and one after outside the for body entirely. Depressing control-shift-i moves the cursor to the next of the five temporary marks allowing quick entry of the entire command. TCL See the Tcl manual page under the 'Help' menu for a complete description of Tcl, the Tcl shell, and it's commands. Each of the Tcl commands and several sections have a mark defined, so you can use the "Mark" menu to navigate through the manual page. Key Bindings Any TCL command can be bound to any single keystroke. One way to bind a function is with a statement such as: bind 'c' <modifier string> funcName [<mode>] where c is a character, <modifier string> is an optional string containing one or more of: c - command modifier o - option modifier s - shift modifier z - control modifier e - escape modifier Additionally, the modifier string can contain a capital letter specifying that the binding is only activated if preceded by control and the lowercase version of that letter. This feature allows multiple-key combinations ala Emacs. The following line binds cmd-shift-f to the function 'forwardChar': bind 'f' <cs> forwardChar The next line would bind the same function to C-x C-f, assuming that control-x is bound to the function 'prefixChar': bind 'f' <cX> forwardChar 'mode' is an optional parameter that specifies, when present, that the binding is only active in a given mode, where the current mode is the parameter to the last call of 'displayMode' (look in "procs.tcl"). Note that given a general binding (no mode specification) and a binding specific to the current mode, the last binding to have been created is the one found first. Additionally, most keyboards have keypads and/or Function Keys. These keys can be bound using case-insensitive numeric labels using the same bind command as above, with the label replacing the character. For example, to bind F1 to function 'funcName', the following would work: bind F1 funcName As above, the binding can include a modifier string. The following labels are defined for US keyboards: Esc F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 F11 F12 F13 F14 F15 Help Home Pgup Del End Pgdn Left Right Up Down Clear Kpad0 Kpad1 Kpad2 Kpad3 Kpad4 Kpad5 Kpad6 Kpad7 Kpad8 Kpad9 Kpad= Kpad/ Kpad* Kpad- Kpad+ Enter Kpad. The function 'listBindings' will list all of the bindings currently in effect in a format suitable for re-loading. The above labels may not be sufficient for all keyboards (attention international users). If a hex number is used instead of a character inside the single quotes, the binding is done to key codes instead of ascii values. The following is a key code version of the same binding: bind 0x03 <cs> forwardChar The key code for any given key can be obtained by using the 'keyCode' function. Also, there is an alternate form that allows the specification of an ascii code directly: ascii 0x20 <z> setMark Binds control-space to 'setMark'. Note that menu item command equivalents take precedence over bindings, and that the 'bind' command does not affect the command equivalents displayed in the menus. Command equivalents can only be changed by using an external tool like 'ResEdit'. Also note that key code bindings take precedence over ascii bindings. Finally, there are 'unbind' and 'unascii' functions, with identical arguments to their counterparts. Menus Alpha's menus are completely reconfigurable. Some of the menu items are internal alpha commands, while others are Tcl procs defined in one of the files of the "Tcl" subdirectory. Most of these procs are defined in "procs.tcl". The following is an explanation of the default menus. The explanations of items that are defined as Tcl procs are implemented by the Tcl proc specified by "(proc <name>)", and can be found in one of the .tcl files. All others are internal functions. Versions 5.98 and above use Ramon Felciano's Mercury MDEF to display menus. In addition to allowing other modifiers to be shown in the menu, this MDEF also allows alternates, items that change depending on the state of the modifier keys. Alternate items are tagged below by the modifier that must be depressed to display it. File New New file. Open╔ Open file. Recent╔ Menu of recently opened files. These same files can be opened via the 'editFile' (cmd-') proc from the submenu of the filesets menu. Close Close file. Close All (option) Close all files. Save Save file. Save All (option) Save all files. SaveAs╔ Prompt for name to same file under. Revert Revert to last saved version, throw away undo history. Shell Start up command-line shell that interprets Tcl commands. The shell has a few csh-type features, such as 'ls', 'rm', etc. commands, as well as file completion with the TAB key. Page Setup╔ Set print options. Print Print╔ Print file directly. Kodex C Pretty Printer Print through Kodex app. Enscriptor Fancy Printer Print through Enscriptor app. Send PS to 'DropÑPS' Print through 'DropÑPS' app. Print All╔ (option) Print all files. Quit Quit Alpha. Edit Undo Undo. Redo (option) Redo. Load Execute either the window or the selection as Tcl source. Cut Cut selection to scrap. Cut & Append (option) Cut and append selection to scrap. Copy Copy selection to scrap. Copy & Append (option) Copy and append selection to scrap. Paste Paste from scrap. Paste Pop (option) Immediately after a paste, use a previous paste instead. Twiddle Exchange characters bracketing the selection point. Twiddle Words (option) Exchange words bracketing the selection point. Yank Paste last deleted text. Concatenates together consecutive, adjoining deletions. Select All Select entire file. Select Paragraph (option) Select current paragraph. Clear Delete selection. Shift Left Shift selection left one tab. Shift Left Space (option) Shift selection left one space. Shift Right Shift selection right one tab. Shift Right Space (option) Shift selection right one space. Balance Select text out to the next set of matching braces. View Saved Settings╔ Any variables or flags that you modify during the course of a session are saved to files in the system preferences folder when Alpha quits. This function shows all such saved variables. Remove Saved Settings╔ This function allows settings to be removed. Edit prefs.tcl Put your own arbitrary startup code here (used to be "userStartup.tcl"). Search Find.. Present a search dialog. Search Start (option) Return selection point to where the last search started. Find Again Search forward again w/ same settings. Find Again Backward (option) Search backward again w/ same settings. Find in Next File Restart multiple-file search in next file after stopping at a match. Enter Search String Use the current selection as the search text. Enter Replace String (option) Use the current selection as replace text. Replace Replace the selection. Replace and Find Again. Replace the selection and search again forward. Replace All (option) Replace all of occurances of the search string in the rest of the file. Replace in Fileset (control) Global replace in fileset. Hilite Select text between current insertion and the generic "mark". Or, if there is already a selection, unselect the text, place the insertion at the beginning of the unselection, and place the "mark" at the end of the unselection. The function 'exchangePointAndMark' (by default mapped to the "5" on the keypad and control-x,control-x) exchanges the character positions of the insertion and the "mark". Named Marks Set╔ Goto╔ Remove╔ Unnamed Marks Set╔ Exchange Point and Mark Mark Stack Push Push current pos onto a "stack". Pop Pop last pos from stack and go to it. Registers Point To Register Create a single-char-named temporary mark at insertion. Jump To Register Jump to mark made as above. Utils File Utils Insert Path Name╔ Prompt for a file and insert complete pathname in window. Insert File╔ Insert the text of another file. File Remove╔ Remove a file. File Info╔ Display/edit info about a file. Word Count Count lines, words, chars in window (proc wordCount). Compare Windows Compare top two windows, sending output to a third. Selecting a line in the third window and hitting return (or enter) moves that line to the top of the window. Files Same as above, but prompts for files. Directories As above, but works for entire directories. Emacs Ascii Etc Key Code╔ Wait for key press and insert keycode and modifier string suitable for key binding. Key Ascii╔ Same as above, but use ascii form. Get Ascii╔ Display ascii code for char to right of insertion. Insert Ascii╔ Prompt for ascii code and insert character. ..... Many emacs movement commands. Evaluate╔ Evaluate complex command. Kbd Macros Start Keyboard Macro Start creating anonymous macro. End Keyboard Macro Finish. Execute Keyboard Macro Execute. Dump Macro Dump to current file. Sort Lines Sort selected lines (proc sortLines). Spellcheck Window Matching Lines Grab all lines from current position on that match a regular expression and dump in new buffer (proc matchingLines). Goto Match If cursor on line in output of batch search or "Matching Lines", goto the match specified by that line. Named Clipboards Copy╔ Cut╔ Paste╔ Install Electric Alias Loads David Black's "electric alias" routines, see the appropriate help file. Mac Perl Permanently loads the Tom Pollard's perl mode. HTML Permanently loads the Scott Brim's HTML mode. List Functions List all functions currently defined, both "core" functions (those coded in C), and those coded in the supplied Tcl files. Mode Flags A submenu of Tcl flags to be turned on and off. Look under "Variables" for explanations of individual flags (proc editFlag). Selecting any flag w/ the option key down shows docs for that flag. Vars Same as Flags, except these variables may be arbitrary integers or strings (proc editVar). Selecting any flag w/ the option key down shows docs for that flag. Lookup Name Look up and display definition of the selected word. If in "C" or "C++" mode, use the file pointed to by 'tagFile'. If in "Tcl" or "Shel" mode, look in "Alpha Commands", "Tcl Commands", and the "Tcl" subdirectory. Describe Binding╔ Wait for a keystroke, then display that keystroke's binding. List Bindings Create a new file containing all current key bindings. App Paths List of paths to other applications. Allows paths to be viewed, changed, or reset. Set Font Tabs╔ Change font and/or tabs for current file. Switch To Bring other apps to front. ToolServer Shell Start a window that sends 'DOSC' events to Apple's toolserver. Convert Fill Paragraph "Fill" paragraph that contains the insertion (proc fillParagraph). Wrap Paragraph (option) Break lines longer than 'fillColumn' in paragraph containing insertion pt (proc wrapParagraph). Fill Region "Fill" selection subject to 'leftFillColumn' and 'fillColumn', (proc fillRegion). Wrap Region (option) Break lines longer than 'fillColumn' in selection (proc wrapRegion). Zap Invisibles Delete all chars in file w/ ASCII code < 32, except for LF, TAB and CR. Tabs To Spaces Convert tabs to space runs. Spaces To Tabs Convert space runs to tabs. Strings Insert Prefix Prepend string 'prefixString' to every line in selection (proc insertPrefix). Remove Prefix (option) Remove prefix string from lines in selection (proc removePrefix). Insert Suffix Append string 'suffixString' to every line in selection (proc insertSuffix). Remove Suffix (option) Remove suffix string from lines in selection (proc removeSuffix). Set Prefix╔ Change prefix string (proc setPrefix). Set Suffix╔ Change suffix string (proc setSuffix). Comment Line Comment out line, considering mode. Uncomment Line (option) Un-comment line, considering mode. Comment Box Create a comment box around selected text. UnComment Box (option) Remove such a comment box. Downcase Region Downcase all chars in region. Upcase Region Upcase all chars in region. Help Editor help files (proc helpMenu). Wins (an icon with three windows) Arrange Rearrange open windows. Zoom Zoom windows in and out. Single Page (option) Resize as single page. Iconify Toggle iconification of front window. Split Window Split window into two panes, or unsplit. Toggle Scrollbar Toggle the horizontal scrollbar on the frontmost window. The scrollbar can be enabled/disabled on subsequent variables by changing the value of the 'horScrollBar' flag. Next Window Select next window (proc nextWindow). Prev Window (option) Select previous window. Swap With Next Swap topmost two windows (proc swapWithNext). Choose A Window Choose window to select from list (proc chooseAWindow). File Sets Edit File Edit a file from one of the filesets. (hierarchical menus containing fileset and their files, select file to edit) Utilities Choose Set current fileset. Create Fileset Create a fileset on the fly. Delete FileSet Delete a fileset. Create Fileset From Wins Builds a new fileset containing all currently open windows. Open Entire Fileset Opens all files in a specified fileset. Create Think Fileset Create a fileset containing the source files of the current Symantec project. Create Warrior Fileset Create a fileset containing the source files of the current CodeWarrior project. Find Tag Find a function definition. Create Tag File Create a "tag" file specifying where functions are defined. Replace In Fileset Global search-and-replace through a fileset. Does not update open windows unless told to. Regbuild Fileset Menu Rebuilds the menu. Filesets created with globbing (all except the Symantec and CodeWarrior filesets) are re-globbed and reflect changes in the directories. Menus, User-Defined All of Alpha's menus are defined in the initialization files that Alpha loads on startup. They can be altered or discarded at well. Alpha's menu commands allow the the user to build custom menus which contain names of functions, macros, or arbitary TCL commands that just HAVE to be in the menus, as opposed to being merely callable through the bindings. The syntax is dead simple. Menus can be nested, allowing heirachical menus to be defined. See the 'alphaBits.tcl' file for examples (only the first three Alpha menus are hard-coded into the Application, the others are set up through the alphaBits.tcl file). The following meta characters can be embedded in the strings: Meta-character Usage -------------- ----- ; or Return Separates multiple items. ^ Followed by an icon number, adds that icon to the item. ! Followed by a character, marks the item with that character. < Followed by B, I, U, O, E, or S, sets the character style of the item. / Followed by a character, sets up a keyboard equivalent. ( Disables the item. The following modifiers can be used to require other combinations of modifiers than just the command key. Control-option, for instance, is specified by putting the string "<B<I" in the menu item. The menu symbol for shift is an upward outline arrow, control is the outlined ^ symbol ("Files:Close All" has one), and option is the wavy line with the dot in the upper right ("Wins:Iconify" has one). The following are characters that can follow the '<' and what they signify. B - control key required I - option key required U - shift key required (only for alpha-numerics!) O - command key required S - isDynamicItem is part of dynamic item. E - forces item to start new dynamic item. Please ignore the following: a Enter n F10 b Return o F11 c Tab p F12 d Num Lock q F13 e F1 r F14 f F2 s F15 g F3 t Help h F4 u Del i F5 v Forward Del j F6 w Home k F7 x End l F8 y Page Up m F9 z Page Down 128 Up 130 Left 129 Down 131 Right The menu creation syntax is : menu <-n name> <-i num> [-p procName] [-m] "Tcl list of items" Where the arguments have the followings meanings: '-s' Save previous search string and flags. '-i <num>' Resource id of icon suite to use for menu title. '-n <name>' Name of menu. '-m' No menu form. If not supplied, each menu item is split into words at each capitalized letter. '-p <pname>' Rather that having alpha call a Tcl proc named by the menu item's text, this option tells Alpha to call the tcl proc named by 'pname' with two arguments: the menu name, and the text of the menu item chosen. '-M <mode>' Bindings only take effect in specified mode. Once the menus are created, they can be inserted and deleted from the menu bar by the syntax: insertMenu "name" deleteMenu "name" as well as through macros. As alluded to above, Alpha attempts to make procedure names readable in the menus by separating words at any capitalized letter. For example, 'findFile' becomes "Find File". This function is turned off by the '-m' option. Menu items can be enabled and disabled through the TCL command 'enableMenuItem'. Menu items checkmarks can be turned on and off via 'markMenuItem'. Menu items can be appended via 'addMenuItem' and deleted via 'deleteMenuItem'. See the "Alpha Commands" help file for syntax. As explained above, the Mac ToolBox uses various keys to specify text style and key equivalents. Sometimes you may want these characters included in your text literally. If an ampersand ('&') is the last character in a menu item, Alpha coerces the string so that these special characters are not interpreted. If an ellipsis ('╔') is the last character in a menu item (except possible for the above ampersand), it is stripped off before searching for the function corresponding to the chosen item. #================================================================================ # Just for the heck of it, the following is a script that I put in my # prefs.tcl file. It creates a menu for all the .tex files in my # thesis directory, minus the dirname and .tex extension. # set THESIS "Internal:Textures:thesis" proc thesisMenuProc {menu item} { global THESIS edit -r -m $THESIS:$item.tex } set files "" foreach f [glob $THESIS:*.tex] { lappend files [file rootname [file tail $f]] } menu -n Thesis -m -p thesisMenuProc $files unset files #================================================================================ Event Hooks Alpha calls the TCL procs "openHook", "saveHook", "saveasHook", "closeHook", "activateHook", "deactivateHook", "suspendHook", and "resumeHook" when the corresponding events occur. With the exception of "saveasHook", the proc are all called with the complete pathname as the sole argument. "saveasHook" is called with the old pathname as the first argument and the new pathname as the second argument. Default implementations for these commands are in the file 'modes.tcl'. These commands can be modified to perform arbitrary commands, including saving of files, backups, implementations of per-window variables, etc. Searches ALPHA has a full repertoire of searching commands. The 'find' command brings up a dialog allowing the search and replacement text to be specified. The dialog also allows 'Forward', 'Ignore Case', 'Reg Expr', and 'Word Match' options to be set. These options can be toggled via the keyboard by clover-<first letter of option>. For example, clover-w toggles the 'Word Match' option. The 'Mult Files' option tells Alpha to search through all files in a given file set. Filesets can be specified in 'procs.tcl' (see the section on filesets) or on the fly, via the "Create Fileset╔" item of the "File Sets:Utilities" sub-menu. Filesets can be chosen via the popup fileset menu. In addition to the current filesets, the fileset menu has an entry called "Directory Scan". Selecting this menu item enables the "Scan Options" button. This button, in turn, allows the specification of a directory and a file pattern to be searched instead of a fileset. To set the directory, hit the "Dir:" button. The pattern is used to select files of the selected directory. The '*' wildcard character can be used to replace any sequence of characters. For example, the pattern '*.c' will select any file ending with ".c". If this doesn't work, be sure that you executed all of the following steps: 1) select "Directory Scan" in the popup menu of the find dialog 2) Hit the "Scan Options" button. 3) Select a directory via the "Dir:" button. All multiple searches can be "Batch" searches, a list of all matches in the fileset are displayed in a new window. A particular match can be displayed by moving the cursor to a line in the file of matches and selecting "Goto Match" from the Utils menu (also bound to control-c control-c). And finally, Alpha allows a library of useful search and replace texts to be defined as a tcl list of lists (each sublist containing a name, search text, and replacement text). This list, the 'patternLibrary' variable defined at the end of 'procs.tcl', is used to create a popup menu in the find dialog allowing these patterns to be easily entered. Once the text and options have been set, the 'Search' menu contains several commands for repeated searching, replacing, etc. Regular Expressions If the variable 'regExpr' is true, the search functions interpret the search text as regular expressions, which have the following elements: c literal char. ^ beginning of line. $ end of line. . any character except carriage return. [...] character class, can use ranges such as '0-9'. inside classes. Matches one character of the enclosed choices. Ex: '[ac0-2]' matches 'a', 'c', '0', '1', or '2'. [^...] negated character class, matches anything but the enclosed characters. ']' can be included by putting it immediately after the '^'. \t tab. \r carriage return or line break. * zero or more occurrences of the previous pattern. Ex: 'ab*' matches 'a', 'ab', 'abb', 'abbb' etc. + one or more occurrences of the previous pattern. ? zero or one occurrences of the previous pattern. Ex: 'ab?' matches 'a' or 'ab'. a|b matches either a or b. If enclosed in parenthesis, the extent of the alternated expressions is limited. Ex: (pete|bob) matches either 'pete' or 'bob'. (...) The interior elements are grouped together. Regular expressions constructed from the above elements can be concatenated to create larger expressions. The parenthesis also define substrings of the total matched string that can be used either later during substitution. The substring delimited by the pair of parenthesis that includes the nth left paren is denoted \n, where n is 1, 2, .... 9. '\0' and '&' both refer to the matched text. EXAMPLE: The following regular expression will match either 'aabox' or 'bbbox': (aa|bb)box See here for more details. Regular expressions can be very difficult to master, but they the following section shows how useful they can be. Searches, Incremental Emacs users will be happy that both forward and backward incremental searches are implemented. Incremental searches bypass the normal search dialog and search for the current text after each keystroke. The result is often much faster and less intrusive. Executing either while an incremental search is in progress causes the search to proceed to the next instance of the current text. Incremental search mode is exited when any other command (executed through the menus or through bindings that include at least one of the control key and the option key) is executed, or when the escape or delete key is used. Typing control-w while incremental search is active causes all the characters to the end of the next word boundary to be added to the search. Tags, 'C' ALPHA supports the use of tags to find declarations of functions. When searching for a tag, ALPHA looks for the tag file specified by the "tagFile" string variable. ALPHA's tag generating routines use the regular expression in the string variable "funcExpr" to look for function declarations. In other words, we don't parse the text. If you declare your functions differently, you can change " funcExpr" to suit your own style. Alpha currently uses the following regular expression to find C function declarations: ^[^ \t#\r/@][^\r]*$[^\r]*$$ (NOTE: the above expressions won't pick up many C++ method definitions. To pick them up, add a question mark '?' after the last right parenthesis.) Although complicated, this expression makes sense if you slowly wade through it. The string that we are looking for must take up an entire line. It must begin with a character other than '\t', '#', '\r', '/', ' ', or '@'. There must be a set of parenthesis. Note that not only can you customize this to your style of 'C' declarations, you could also use it to generate tags for other languages. The only thing you need to bear in mind is that the tag routines use the complete word previous to the first '(' in the selected line as the function's name. If there is no '(' in the selected line, the last word in the line is used. Therefore, Pascal procedures w/ or w/o parameters can be identified. Caveat: Apple's list manager can't handle more than 32k of text in the entire list, so there is a practical limit of 2000 or so tags in your project. Backups If the 'backup' variable is set in preferences files, or from the Utils:Flags menu, Alpha backs up each file before saving new modifications. By default, the backup file is in the same directory, and its name is formed by suffixing a tilde to the name of the saved file. Backups are actually performed in the 'saveHook' proc (see above), in the file procs.tcl. The Tcl variables 'backDir' and 'backExtension' can be used to modify this behavior. Fill Routines The "fill" and "wrap" routines reformat text to specified line lengths. This is useful in two case. First, word processors such as Microsoft Word only insert carriage returns at the end of paragraphs. Secondly, while typing and inserting text into pre-existing paragraphs, the line lengths become unequal. The "wrap" routine handles word processor documents quickly by merely inserting carriage returns as necessary to ensure all lines in the selected region are shorter than specified by the variable 'fillColumn'. Alpha asks the user if wrapping should be done whenever the user opens files that have lines longer than 'paraColumn' characters. The TCL routines 'fillRegion' and 'fillParagraph' go further. Not only do they break lines, but they also coalesce lines to eliminate short lines. Both routines work by stripping the relevent text of white space, then re-inserting white space and carriage returns so that no line extends past 'fillColumn' characters in length and begins with 'leftFillColumn' spaces characters. Both routines are implemented in the file 'procs.tcl', and therefore different definitions of paragraphs can be accomodated by modifying the appropriate TCL procedures. Word Breaking Alpha allows you to redefine it's internal notion of what a word is, through the variables 'wordBreak', and 'wordBreakPreface'. 'wordBreak' is set to a regular expression that defines a word to you. 'wordBreakPreface' should be a regular expression that matches exactly one of any characters that are not in your word definition. For instance, the default definition of 'wordBreak' is '[a-zA-Z0-9_]+'. This matches any contiguous sequence of contiguous alphanumeric characters, plus underscore. The default value for wordBreakPreface is '[^a-zA-Z0-9_]', basically just the negation of any any of the characters in your 'wordBreak' definition. The need for both these variables in backward searches can be seen as follows. Suppose your window's text is "hey hello", and the current insertion is between the two 'l's. Now, searching backwards for the above 'wordBreak' definition will take the insertion to between the 'e' and the first 'l', not really where we want to say is the start of the word. By contrast, if we search backwards for 'wordBreak' and 'wordBreakPreface' concatenated together, and then move forward one character after a successful search, we end up right before the 'h' in 'hello', just where we want to be. File Sets File Sets are lists of files that Alpha uses for multiple-file searches and tag searches, among other things. Typically, a user will set up several different file sets, perhaps one specifying all the source files in a project, another specifying all the Mac include files, and another specifying all the UNIX include files. When a command using file sets is initiated, Alpha evaluates the command "getCurrFileSet", which returns a list of complete pathnames to search. Functions that use file sets operate on the "current" fileset, which is specified by the 'fileSet' variable. The current file set can also be switched by using the "File Set" heirarchical menu. Macros, Keyboard Defining and Using Keyboard Macros ALPHA supports keyboard macros which record a sequence of keystrokes to be played back later w/ the function 'executeKeyboardMacro' (this function is also in the 'Utilities' menu) or written into a buffer by selecting 'Dump Macro' from the 'Utilities' menu. The dump function prompts you for a macro name, which must consist only of letters of the alphabet, digits, and '_'. These macro declarations can then be edited, loaded, and bound to keystrokes. Loading a macro or a binding is accomplished by hiliting the text and selecting the "Load Selection" item of the 'Customize' window. If no text is hilited, the entire window is loaded by the same command. Macros can be bound to keys in exactly the same manner as functions (see above). Undo + Redo ALPHA supports unlimited undo and redo. This means that most changes can be undone, and then redone, at will. Bear in mind that once you create new modifications, all changes that you have undone but not redone are lost. Another point to bear in mind is that saving a buffer to disk currently flushes the undo buffer. THINK and Alpha Yes! Finally Think has support for external editors (7.0 or better). To make this work, put an alias of Alpha in the "Tools" subdirectory of the directory the project manager is in, and name the alias "Editor". Secondly, check the "Use External Editor" button in the project manager's option dialog. You do not have to check the "Always Check File Dates" button. Any open window events will now be vectored to Alpha, and from within Alpha you can initiate compiles, disassembles, makes, etc. Errors are reported back to Alpha. Look in :Tcl:SystemCode:"think.tcl" for the code controlling much of the interactions between THINK and Alpha. If you improve anything, please send it back to me. If a window contains a file that is part of the a project that is currently open in the Think Project Manager, selecting "Open Header" from the Think menu will put up a list of include files. The same files can be accessed by option-clicking on the window's title-bar. A fileset consisting of the source to a think project can be created through the "File:File Sets" menu. Rectangular Editing If the option key is pressed while the mouse is dragged, a rectangular section of text is selected instead of the normal selection. This rectangular selection may extend over multiple lines, but contains only text between the column of the drag start and the column of the drag end. The drag cannot end on a column or row less than the start. This selection can be extended by option-shift-mouse, but not dragged further. The rectangular selection can be deleted, copied, and pasted. This is very useful for tables and arrays, such as in LaTeX. Usually, the operation will be intuitive. However, if you use proportional fonts the selection may appear ragged. If some of the line contain tabs, the result may not be want you want. Converting tabs to spaces in the desired region before attempting rectangular selection usually fixes the problems. The most natural semantics of rectangular selection aren't obvious. I chose to implement it in a similar fashion to that of Microsoft Word. Preditor does it in another way, and has many bugs (and it's commercial, hah!). LaTeX See the "LaTeX Help" file under the help menu. Option Key Several option combinations are "dead keys" (option-e, option-o....), they are used to create bizarre (sorry to y'all non-Amuricans) characters through multiple keystrokes. System Software 7.0 Alpha is 32-bit clean and high-level event aware. Under 7.0, Alpha uses temporary memory to accommodate large files. This allows you to open multi-megabyte files even when Alpha's partition is set only at 512k, if the system has that much memory available. Note that using temporary memory makes that much memory unavailable to other applications. Contrary to all admonishments, Alpha does not unlock temporary memory across WaitNextEvent calls and may eventually use all the memory in your system. You can turn this feature off through 'tempMem'. Note, however, that the clipboard is allocated by the system in Alpha's heap, and therefore cannot take advantage of temporary memory. Apple Events See the Help file on AppleEvents. MPW Alpha's 'dosc' capability (see the function "dosc") can be used to send events to MPW's ToolServer. Using about ten lines of C code and the ~40 lines of Tcl code in 'mpw.tcl', I created a pseudo mpw shell (look under the "Misc" menu). This shell uses Alpha's 'dosc' function to package each shell command up into an Apple Event and send it to the ToolServer, which then evaluates the command and returns the result to be displayed in the shell. I'm rather new to Apple Events and the ToolServer, so there are probably a few rough edges. If anyone has extensive docs for ToolServer I'd appreciate looking at them. I only have the application because I am a beta tester for another product that supports ToolServer. I was given the application for the beta testing, but not any docs. And of course, I can *not* give away copies of ToolServer because it is a licensed Apple product. Finally, Tom Moertel (thor@vivaldi.psu.edu) has written and provided a set of tools that make life easier while writing code in Alpha for the MPW environment. The tools make extensive use of Apple Events, so you must be using MPW 3.3a or greater. (Earlier versions cannot receive commands via Apple Events.) With the MPW-Alpha package you can: o Send TCL commands to Alpha from MPW o Use MPW 411 from Alpha for instant access to programming help o Automagically locate source code errors from your last MPW compile o Use the MPW CDent tool to reformat (grind) C/C++ source code from within Alpha This package is available via anonymous ftp from cs.umd.edu. File Formats Alpha reads and writes files stored in three (or maybe four) different formats. The three main formats are mac (lines end with a carriage return), unix (lines end with linefeed), and IBM pc (lines end with both carriage return and linefeed. Typical, isn't it?). Alpha will transparently read and write all three of these formats. You don't have to do anything special to use different formats, but the 'SaveAs...' dialog allows you to specify the format that a file is written in through the 'Format' button. The fourth file format is just a modification of the ordinary mac format. Word processors such as Microsoft Word and MacWrite only put carriage returns at the end of paragraphs, so that they can wrap the paragraphs on the fly. This is what is referred to as 'paragraph format' in the rest of the help text. Alpha does not transparently convert to and from this format because there are valid reasons why someone might want to edit a paragraph formatted file while not in paragraph mode. Therefore, when Alpha detects reads a paragraph-mode file, it asks the user whether or not to remap it. Files can be mapped back to paragraph mode by setting 'fillColumn' to a very large number and executing 'fillRegion' on the text. Printing Version 6.0 and above have many printing options available. Printing is accomplished via a submenu under the File menu. The menus allows printing either via Alpha or several other applications. If printing through alpha, the variables 'printHeader', 'printHeaderTime', and 'printHeaderFullPath' control whether and what type of header is printed at the top of each page. These flags are actually used in the proc printHeaderProc to create the string that appears on the left side of the top of the page. 'leftMargin', 'topMargin', and 'bottomMargin' control margins on the printed page. 'printerFont' and 'printerFontSize' allows the size and type of the printed font to be specified. The external apps that Alpha is currently configured to use are "Enscriptor", an app that allows multi-column and other options, "Kodex", a "C" pretty printer, and "DropÑPS", which prints postscript files. All options operate on the frontmost window. These applications are not supplied w/ Alpha, but can be downloaded from any comprehensive mac site. They can also be downloaded from Alpha's home site. "Enscriptor" and "Kodex" are shareware apps written by John Cho. "DropÑPS" is a freeware app written by some evil commercial text editor guru. Random Tips - When a window is "dirty" (has unsaved changes), a red disk icon appears just below the titlebar in the upper right corner of the window, and a diamond appears next to the corresponding item in the Windows menu. - All dialogs that have editable text can use the Cut, Copy, and Paste menu command equivalents. - In all dialogs, non-editable controls can be selected by typing Command-<first char of control>. If there are no editable controls in the dialog, simply typing the first letter of the desired control suffices. PgUp, PgDown, Home, and End keys now work for most list dialogs. - Set the flag 'undoOn' to 0 in order to speed up long replace-all and macro modifications. - After a piece of text has been yank'd or paste'd, the 'mark' is set to the beginning of the new text and the selection is at the end. 'markHilite' will now hilite the entire insertion. This is especially useful when moving code. Cut the code, insert at a new position, select the inserted text by selecting "Edit:Hilite", and then use "Edit:Shift Left" and "Edit: Shift Right" to move the text to the proper indentation. - Most help files have marks in them, which let you quickly navigate to places of interest. You can access these marks by command-clicking on the title-bar or on the "{}" icon above the vertical scrollbar. Variables There are two different kinds of variables in the Alpha world: global vars and mode vars. Mode vars can have different values in each mode, and are modified by the "Mode Vars" popup menu via the American flag just above vertical scrollbar. Changing one of these variables changes the variable's value for all windows of the current mode. Global variables are accessed via the "Mode:Flags" and "Mode:Vars" menus. Changing one of these variables affects all windows. Alpha records which variables are modified in the course of a session and prompts the user to save them prior to quitting. Mode Vars autoMark Ñ Automatically mark windows on open if they don't have marks. elecLBrace Ñ Electric 'C' left brace on. elecRBrace Ñ Electric 'C' right brace on. electricSemi Ñ Electric 'C' semicolon on. fillColumn Ñ Number of columns use as limit for "fill" routines. See 'leftFillColumn' funcExpr Ñ Set to the regular expression that ALPHA uses to find function declarations. leftFillColumn Ñ Number of blanks left at beginning of lines by 'fill' routines. wordBreak Ñ Regular expression used to defines words for all internal operations. wordBreakPreface Ñ Prepended to 'wordBreak' when looking backwards for a word. See the "Word Break" section of this file for more information. wordWrap Ñ if true, lines exceeding 'fillColumn' in length are automatically wrapped during normal text insertion (typing) wrapBreak Ñ Reg expr used for automatic word wrapping. wrapBreakPreface Ñ Reg expr used for automatic word wrapping. Global Vars autoHScroll Ñ Automatically scroll horizontal scrollbar to follow insertion. autoSave Ñ If TRUE, buffers (except untitled buffers) are automatically saved every 'changesLim' changes. backDir Ñ Directory in which to store backup files. backExtension Ñ Suffix to append to backup files. backup Ñ if TRUE, the default Tcl proc 'saveHook' makes a backup of a file before the data is written. The default backup scheme has extension "~". blinkCursor Ñ Cursor blinks blockCursor Ñ if true, Alpha uses a block cursor instead of a vertical line. bottomMargin Ñ Bottom print margin. bwWindows Ñ if true, Alpha will use 1-bit windows even if color is available. This speeds refresh quite a bit on slow color machines such as the IIsi. changesLim Ñ number of changes to a window before garbage collection or autosave is done. coloring Ñ enable keyword coloring. def{Height,Left,Top,Width} Ñ If 'fullScreen' set, default size of windows. defaultFont Ñ font to use on new windows and files which don't have associated font specification resources. diffFlags Ñ Command line args to pass to GNU diff. dragAndDrop Ñ Enable drag and drop. fontSaving Ñ if '-1', Alpha never saves font info, if '1', Alpha always saves font info, '0', Alpha saves font info if the font or size is different than the default. fontSize Ñ Default size of fonts used to display files. forceMainScreenÑ If true, forces windows to main screen. Useful if you have a small screen and windows habitually are too large. fullNames Ñ Windows display pathnames instead of mere file names. fullScreen Ñ If on, all windows are start in the same place, and have the dimension specified by 'defHeight' and 'defWidth'. horScrollBar Ñ If set, use horizontal scrollbar. iconifyOnSwitchÑ Iconify all windows when suspending. indentOnCR Ñ Auto-indent on carriage return. infoWindowsDirtyÑ Dirty/Clean state of description windows. intelCutPaste Ñ Enable intelligent cut and paste. lockStatus Ñ Disable status window dragging. maskCapsLock Ñ Mask caps lock bit on key depresses. moveInsertion Ñ if true, 'pageBack' and 'pageForward' move the insertion point numWinsToTile Ñ specifies the number of windows tile commands should affect. paraColumn Ñ Alpha automatically wraps files that contains lines longer than this. posActivate Ñ If true, then merely moving the mouse over a window activates. For those X11-twm lovers. powerThumb Ñ If true, vertical scrollbars have power thumbs. printerFont Ñ Font to print documents. printerFontSizeÑ Size to print documents. projectorAware Ñ Respect projector resources. savedState Ñ set to either "mpw", "think", or "none" depending on how much information you wish Alpha to save in the resource fork of the files you edit. See the "Files" section of this file for more information. showInvisibles Ñ Show spaces, tabs, crs. showMode Ñ Display current mode in status window. showPlatform Ñ Display Mac/IBM/Unix for current window. showRowCol Ñ if set, row and col are continuously displayed in the title bar. sortColumn Ñ column to use for sort routine. sortedIsDefaultÑ if set, sorted is the default for function and section menus. suppressHeader Ñ Suppress header on printed pages. tagFile Ñ complete path-name of tag file tile{Height,Left,Top,Width} Ñ rectangle to tile windows within. tempMem Ñ Enable use of system temporary memory. undoOn Ñ used to turn undo on and off. When undo is turned off, all undo info is lost. Useful when doing global replaces, etc. Spellchecking Alpha has the capability to interact with the spell-check 'Excalibur', written by Robert Gottshall and Rick Zaccone. The menu item 'Spellcheck Window' is always available in the "Utils" menu. Selecting this item will start up Excalibur and send an OpenDoc event describing the current window. For version 1.4 and earlier, if Alpha has to launch Excalibur you will need to dismiss Excalibur's opening dialog by hitting the Cancel button. Subsequent selections of the menu item will switch right into Excalibur with the correct file displayed. In future versions, this will become even more automatic. Excalibur is free, but not in the public domain. It can be obtained from all the usual Internet ftp sites, as well as cs.umd.edu under pub/faculty/keleher/Alpha. International Users Everything should work. If it doesn't, please tell me. Drag and Drop Alpha supports drag and drop cut, copy, clear, and paste. To use this feature, select some text, then move the cursor over the selected text. The cursor should then turn into an open hand. Mouse down, and move the cursor to the place you wish to paste the text. When the mouse is released, the hilited text is moved to the new location. Option-mouse does a "copy" instead. You can also drag selections between windows and to and from other applications, including the finder. Text can be deleted by dragging it to the trash can. You MUST have Apple's "Macintosh Drag And Drop" installed. Status Bar The stripe across the bottom of the screen is a floating window that displays status information, certain prompts (option-x, and see the func 'statusPrompt'), and the current row and column. You can't make this window go away. However, both 'sizeWin' and 'moveWin' accept "StatusWin" as a window specification and will act on this window, so you can move the window offscreen if you really wish. The height parameter to 'sizeWin' is ignored. The status bar can be dragged if the flag 'lockStatus' is turned off. Clicking over the row and column indicators allows you to jump to a particular line. Finally, if you turn horizontal scrollbars off (via the 'horScrollBar' flag in the "Mode:Flags" menu, you haven't lost any real estate. Furthermore, when tiling windows vertically, you actually have *more* real estate. Modes Each window in Alpha is always in a single "mode", such as the "C++" mode, or the "TeX" mode. A mode describes bindings and variable values particular to that mode. By default, the mode of the frontmost window is displayed on the status bar, and can be changed by the Mode Menu, which is accessed via the second icon above the vertical scroll bar in each window. Alpha sets modes for new windows based on file name suffixes. For instance, "files.c" is started up in mode "C" because of the ".c" suffix. Below are the standard suffixes recognized by Alpha. You can add more suffixes in your prefs.tcl file by duplicating the lines adding these suffixes in :Tcl:SystemCode:modes.tcl. The default mode is "Text". .h, .c, .r C .cc, .cp, .cpp, .CPP, .C C++ .f .fcm .for .FOR Fort .tcl Tcl .tex, .sty, .ltx, .dtx, .ins TeX .pl Perl .html .HTML HTML Bindings for a specific mode can be specified by passing the desired mode as the last argument to a 'bind' command (see "Key Bindings"). Alpha has two different types of immediately visible flags and variables. "Global" variables don't change from mode to mode. These are listed in "Modes:Flags" and "Modes:Vars". Any change there affects every mode. "Mode" flags and variables are instantiated separately for each mode. These are inspected and set via the "Mode Vars" popup menu, called by clicking on the flag icon above the vertical scrollbar. Changing these values affects every window in that mode, but doesn't affect windows in other modes. The variables displayed in the "Mode Vars" popup menu are all the variables that the current mode cares about. The "Set Mode Menus╔" item allows you to specify which of the extra menus should be present whenever the frontmost window is in that mode. Select multiple menus by shift-clicking. File Comparison Version 5.94 and above can create UNIX "diffs" of two text files. Among other things, diffs allow you to easily pinpoint what has changed between two different versions of the same file. Alpha's interface (under the "Utils" menu) allows you to compare either the two topmost windows, or two arbitrary files (later, Alpha will be able to compare entire directories). Alpha opens the two files in windows at the top of the screen with the diff file at the bottom. You can navigate between individual differences in the diff file by using the Up and Down arrows. Pressing either a carriage return or the Enter key displays the affected portions of the two files in the above windows. I'm currently using a hack of QUED's GNU diff port. My hack allows it to work as an AppleEvent server. However, it handles most errors by quitting without responding, and handles only a single message before quitting. It also doesn't deal with directories. The interface is a 'dosc' script event containing the command-line arguments that would be used in running 'diff' from a UNIX shell (see here). The result is the diff. On the command line, file names containing spaces can be specified by delimiting the entire file name with double quotes. The source for my version of the diff application (crude though it is), is available in pub/faculty/keleher/Alpha on cs.umd.edu. Bugs: The files must have line Mac terminations. HyperText Alpha's hypertext is both more and less powerful than systems that use markup languages such as HTML. It's more powerful because the action taken upon hitting a hypertext link is any arbitrary Tcl script rather than just navigation. It's less powerful because the generality doesn't allow a standard notion of going "back" or "forward". In any case, two points: 1) The hypertext is only intended for Alpha documentation, and links should not need to be created by anyone who isn't writing docs. 2) The whole thing is basically an answer looking for a problem. Existing code made adding the whole thing the work of an hour and a half and I couldn't resist. Much more fun that looking for bugs or creating more documentation. If you *must* create hypertext links, use the insertColorEscape command. Limitations - Apple's listproc seems to have a total size limit of 32k characters. This effectively limits tag searches to about 4000 function names. Preferences Alpha saves settings between sessions by writing them to files in an "Alpha" sub-folder of the system preferences folder. Additionally, Alpha will source a file called "prefs.tcl" from this sub-folder if it exists. You can view or remove the settings currently being saved there at any time via the "View/Remove Saved Settings╔" from the Edit menu. You can edit the prefs.tcl file via the "Edit prefs.tcl" item. Never add manually add text to the defs.tcl or arrdefs.tcl files in the preferences folder. These files are automatically generated and read by the addDef etc. functions. If you need to save variable definition from Tcl code, addDef etc. is your friend. If you want to have arbitary code executed on startup, you can manually place this in the prefs.tcl file.