Text Editors - General

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Modified by Admin on Mar 17, 2014

Parent page: TextEdit Preferences

The Text Editors - General page of the Preferences dialog.

Summary

The Text Editors – General page of the Preferences dialog provides controls and information related to Text Editor settings.

Access

The Text Editors – General page is part of the main Preferences dialog (DXP » Preferences) and is accessed by clicking the General entry under the Text Editors folder, in the left hand pane of the dialog.

Options/Controls

Editing

  • Insert Mode - Enable this option and the text at the cursor is inserted without overwriting the existing text. If this option is disabled, text at the cursor is overwritten.

    You can use the Insert key to toggle Insert Mode in the Text editor without changing this default setting and you can observe the Overwrite or Insert message on the status bar of the software.

  • Overwrite cursor as block - Enable this option and the cursor is overwritten as a block.
  • Cursor through tabs - Enable this option and the arrow keys are enabled to move the cursor to the logical spaces within each tab character.
  • Cursor Beyond EOL - Enable this option and you can position the cursor beyond the end-of-line (EOL) character on the text document.
  • Cursor Beyond EOF - Enable this option and you can position the cursor beyond the end-of-file (EOF) character on the text document.
  • Persistent blocks - Enable this option to keep marked blocks on the text document marked even when the cursor is moved using the arrow keys. When a new block is selected, the previous block is removed.
  • Overwrite blocks - Enable this option and a marked block of text is replaced with whatever is typed next. If the Persistent Blocks option is also selected, text you enter is appended following the currently selected block.
  • Disable dragging - Enable this option if you do not wish to have the ability to drag selected blocks of text across the text document. By default this disable dragging option is disabled.
  • Group undo - Enable this option, and your last editing command as well as any subsequent editing commands of the same type are undone in one go if you press click Edit » Undo menu item or press the Alt+Backspace keys.
  • Remember undo/redo after save - Enable this option and your Undo data still exists after the saving of a text file allowing you to revert all changes you may have made. This option is enabled by default. Disable this option and all the Undo data is lost after saving a text file.
  • Smart Home key - Enable this option and when you press the Home key for the first time, the cursor jumps to the first non-space character in the current line and the next Home key press, the cursor jumps to the beginning of the line etc. This Home key behaviour is the same as in the Visual Studio product. Disable this option and the Home key always jump to the beginning of the current line.

Find

  • Find text at cursor - Enable this option and the text at where the cursor is at, is placed into the Text to find: field in the Find Text dialog box. If this option is disabled you must type in the search text, unless the Text To find field is blank.
  • Find selected text on Find Next - Normally to start searching text you need to press Ctrl-F, enter a string, and then press OK and so on to look for the next string. Enable this option and to continue searching you can just press the F3 key. For example if text is selected, then you don't have to press Ctrl-F and then the OK button, but press the F3 key to save time.
  • Select found text -  If this option is enabled, the found text is selected when you perform a search for text that matches the strings on the text document. These found text are copied to the clipboard when you do a copy. Enable this option if you do not want the found text to be selected so it does not get copied to the clipboard.

Tabs & Indent

  • Use tab character -  If this option is enabled, a tab character is inserted for each tab. If this option is disabled, space characters are inserted instead. Enable the Use Special Symbols option to see tab characters in the text document.
  • Optimal fill - Enable this option to auto indent a line with the minimum number of characters possible, using tabs and spaces as necessary. Enable the Use Special Symbols option to see the tab symbols on the document.
  • Smart tab - Tabs to the first non-whitespace character on the new line that aligns to where the white space is before the first character of text on the preceding line.
  • Auto indent mode - Enable this option, and the cursor is placed under the first non-blank character of the preceding non-blank line when you press Enter button.
  • Smart indent mode - Enable this option and when you click tab, it tabs to the first non-white space character in the preceding line on the document. This is currently used only when editing C files. 
    For example, when this option is enabled and you type a closing curly bracket, the editor will indent this character so that it is aligned to the matching opening curly bracket. 
    Disable this option and the tab works conventionally.
  • Backspace unindents - Enable this option if you want the insertion point to be aligned to the previous indentation level when you press Backspace key, if the cursor is on the first non-blank character of a line.
  • Tab Stops -  When multiple tab stops are entered, the numbers indicate the specific spaces on the line in which the tab stops are placed. The values in this field set the tabs that the cursor will move to when you press Tab. Enter one or more integers separated by commas in this field.
  • Block Indent - Specifies the number of spaces to indent a marked block on the text document when Indent or Outdent Block commands are used (Ctrl+Shift+I, Ctrl+Shift+U in default keymapping).

Key Mapping

Choose one of the following Key Mapping setup for your editing work on a text document.

  • Default -  Choose this option to have keys map that match CUA mappings.
  • Borland Classic - Choose this option to have keys map that match the Borland Classic editor keys.
  • Brief - Choose this option to have keys map that match the Brief keystrokes.
  • Epsilon - Choose this option to have keys map that match the Epsilon keys.
  • Visual Studio - Choose this option to have keys map that match the Visual Studio editor.

Advanced

  • Double click line - Enable this option and the line is highlighted when you double-click a character in the line. If this option is disabled, only the selected word is highlighted.
  • Unix EOL style - Enable this option and when a text file is saved, each line will be separated using a single LF character (Unix style) instead of a CR/LF pair.
  • Compress undo motion - Enable this option and changing the caret position does not go into the undo list. Normally, if you modify the text and then press the Page Up button, you would have to use Undo twice to restore the text to the original state. With the Compress Undo Motion enabled, that can be done with a single Undo.
  • Advanced block editing -  Enable this option and all the selected blocks are simultaneously overwritten at the moment you start typing.

Import

  • Import from - Click to import text editor preference settings from Tasking or Visual Studio.

 

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