4. How to configure JERED to suit your needs ?

Now you've tried this editor you should agree it is easy to use. However it can be configured to correspond better to what you expect. You can configure two things: the user interface and the general behaviour of the editor. All this configuration stuff can be made with variables placed in profile files or directly modified from the internal commands window. A key mapping is nothing more than a variable which name is the key name and a value which is the function, macro or text assigned to this variable. The syntax to set or modify a variable is:

VARIABLE_NAME:VARIABLE_VALUE

:VARIABLE_NAME:VARIABLE_VALUE

Profile files are text files which contains variables names and values. You can type comments too because each line which doesn't begin with a variable name is considered to be a comment. In a near future JERED will be able to read up to four profile files one after the other in order to allow people to use a site specific profile, then a user specific profile, then a project specific profile and finally a site-specific-again profile in which the site's administrator could put limitations on JERED's behaviour. In the package you've downloaded there is a default profile file named profile.je which in fact shows the default values of all JERED's internal variables. It doesn't contain the default values for the normal keys because everyone knows that a 'A' will produce a 'A', however normal keys are redefinable too. You can use or modify this profile file to learn how to configure JERED. This default profile includes all the possibilities and constants's names you can use in a JERED profile file, describing most of them.

4.1 Configuring the User Interface of JERED

You can configure many components of the user interface: colors, preffered language, help bars, and key mappings.

Colors

You can redefine up to the eleven colors used in JERED. Seven of them are general colors, four of them are specific to the C/C++ languages and are unused otherwise. JERED knows if you are editing a C or C++ source file according to the file's extension. Each color value is made of a foreground color, a background color and up to two screen attributes. These components are mixed together to make a JERED's color. The syntax for the color variables is slightly different than the syntax for other variables because of the four components of a color. it is the following:

COLOR_XXXX:FOREGROUND:BACKGROUND:ATTRIBUTE1:ATTRIBUTE2

COLOR_STATUS:COLOR_BLACK:COLOR_CYAN

COLOR_STATUS is the color of the status bar at the top of the screen. The default value is black on cyan without any special attribute.

COLOR_HELP:COLOR_BLACK:COLOR_CYAN

COLOR_HELP is the color of the normal and escape help bars at the bottom of the screen. The default value is black on cyan without any special attribute.

COLOR_HIGHLIGHT:COLOR_RED:COLOR_CYAN:A_BOLD

COLOR_HIGHLIGHT is a color you can use when redefining your help bars. When typing the text of your help bars, precede each character you want to highlight with an ampersand &. The default value is bold red on cyan.

COLOR_ALERT1:COLOR_BLACK:COLOR_CYAN

COLOR_ALERT1 is the color for the body of alert and dialog boxes. The default value is black on cyan without any special attribute.

COLOR_ALERT2:COLOR_BLACK:COLOR_CYAN:A_REVERSE:A_BLINK

COLOR_ALERT2 is the color of selected buttons in alert boxes and online help in dialog boxes. The default value is blinking cyan on black.

COLOR_BLOCK:COLOR_WHITE:COLOR_BLUE

COLOR_BLOCK is the color of marked blocks of lines. The default value is white on blue without any special attribute.

COLOR_NORMAL:COLOR_WHITE:COLOR_BLACK

COLOR_NORMAL is the color in which the file you are editing is displayed, unless if it is a C or C++ source file. The default value is white on black without any special attribute.

COLOR_CHAR:COLOR_MAGENTA:COLOR_BLACK:A_BOLD

COLOR_CHAR is the color of character constants in C or C++ source files. The default value is bold magenta on black.

COLOR_KEYWORD:COLOR_RED:COLOR_BLACK:A_BOLD

COLOR_KEYWORD is the color of C or C++ keywords if you are editing a C or C++ source file. The default value is bold red on black.

COLOR_STRING:COLOR_BLUE:COLOR_BLACK:A_BOLD

COLOR_STRING is the color of string constants in C or C++ source files. The default value is bold blue on black.

COLOR_COMMENT:COLOR_GREEN:COLOR_BLACK

COLOR_COMMENT is the color of C or C++ comments in C or C++ source files. The default value is green on black without any special attribute. Multi-lines comments are not well colorized.

Preffered Language

JERED was written with being Easy to Use as a goal, so it accepts several languages for the user interface. Actually you can choose between six languages for all the messages and the help of the user interface. Available languages are English, French, Finnish, Spanish, German and Russian. For now German is the same as English but a translation will come. In order to be able to use the Russian language you have to load the KOI-8 font using the setfont utility. You choose your language with the following syntax:

LANGUAGE:value

Help Bar

If you don't want to use the default key mappings, you'll certainely want to modify the default help bar without recompiling the whole editor. This is why the HELPBAR variable exists. You can change it this way:

HELPBAR:This is the new &Help &Bar

ESC help bar

When you press the ESC key, another help bar is displayed. For the same reasons as above, you'll certainely want to change it, this is possible this way:

ESCHELPBAR:This is the new ESC &Help &Bar

4.2 Configuring the General Behaviour of JERED

Other variables don't modify the user interface's appearance but modify the internal work of JERED. Here is a list of all these variables and an explanation of each of them.

TABSIZE

This variable allows you to choose the tabulation size when you edit files. When you load a file, each tab character is expanded to TABSIZE space characters. When you're editing a file, there's no tab character at all in memory: there are only normal characters and spaces. You can change this value this way:

TABSIZE:n

where n is a decimal number. The default value is 8. If you modify this variable during an editing session, the editor will use the new value but will not reformat the files which are already in memory.

SAVETABS

This variable allows you to choose if spaces will be converted to tabs + spaces characters every time you save a file or not. You can change this value this way:

SAVETABS:value

where value is either YES or NO. The default value is NO, which means that files are saved without any tab character in them. You must take care of setting it to YES if you are editing a makefile, otherwise make will not work properly.

WORDWRAPBEGIN and WORDWRAPEND

These variables allow you to choose the beginning and ending column at which blocks will be reformatted when you call the Reformat a Block of Lines function. You can change them this way:

WORDWRAPBEGIN:bc
WORDWRAPEND:ec

Where bc is a decimal number defining the beginning column and ec is a decimal number defining the ending column. The default value for WORDWRAPBEGIN is 1 and the default value for WORDWRAPEND is SZBUF - 10 where SZBUF is the constant defined in jered.h which indicates the maximum length of a line (2048 characters for now).

AUTOWORDWRAP

This variable allows you to choose if the text will be automatically reformatted according to WORDWRAPBEGIN and WORDWRAPEND while you are typing it. You can change it this way:

AUTOWORDWRAP:value

where value is either YES or NO. The default value is NO. For now this variable is not used at all, so text will never be automatically reformatted.

LOCK

This variable allows you to choose the locking method for the files you are editing. You can change it this way:

LOCK:value

where value is either NONE, READONLY or STRICT. NONE indicates that other users may read or write files while you are editing them. READONLY indicates that other user can just read files while you are editing them. STRICT indicates that nobody can read or write files while you are editing them. The default value is NONE, which means that other people can access files while you are editing them without any restriction.

BACKUP

This variable allows you to control if a backup copy should be done each time you save a file. You can modify it this way:

BACKUP:value

where value is either YES or NO. The default value is YES, meaning that every time you save a file a backup copy is made with the same name plus the extension .bak

AUTOSAVE

This variable will control the frequency at which automatic save of modified files is done. You can change it this way:

AUTOSAVE:value

where value is a decimal number defining the number of seconds between two automatic save of modified files. The default value is 0, which means NO automatic save. Each automatically saved file is saved with its original name plus a tilde at its end. For example, if BACKUP is set to YES and you are editing the file foo.c, after a manual save and an automatic save you'll have four files:

foo.c
foo.c.bak
foo.c~
foo.c.bak~

AUTOPLAYMACRO

This variable allows you to control wheter macros mapped to keys will be automatically played when you type the key or not. You can change it this way:

AUTOPLAYMACRO:value

where value is either YES or NO. The default value is YES. If you change it to NO then you'll have to type on the key which plays macros (by default Ctrl_P) after having typed on the key on which the macro is mapped.

COLORS

This variable will allow you to force your terminal to be detected as a color terminal even if it is monochromatic. This will allow you to choose other attributes than those defined at compile-time for mono terminals. You can change it this way:

COLORS:value

where value is either YES or NO. The default value is NO which means you let the system detect the type of your terminal. If you change it to YES then your terminal will be detected as a color one and you will be able to modify the COLOR_xxxx variables.

4.3 Remapping Keys

If the default key mapping doesn't correspond to what you want, or if you want to map text strings or macros to keys, you have to learn how to do this sort of things. There are three ways to change a key mapping, depending on what you want to map to the key: a text string, a macro, or a JERED internal function.

Key Naming Convention

When I wrote this software I decided to use when possible the same naming convention for special keys than the curses library, and to extend this convention to what I call normal keys. I've also extended this convention to what I call ESC keys, which are key combinations which begin with a keypress on the Escape key. Finally I've added the possibility to give a key name using the number returned by a keypress on this key and to simply name key combinations based on the Ctrl key.

Each key name must begin with KEY_ for simple keys, or ESC_KEY_ for key combinations which begin with a keypress on the Escape key.

Then you could eventually add CTRL_ to the key name if the key value is comprised between 1 and 26 decimal (from Ctrl_A to Ctrl_Z).

Then you add the last component of the key name. The last component could be either the curses key name without the leading KEY_, the character written on the keyboard, or an hexadecimal value representing the value returned by a keypress on this key.

If this section is not clear for you, just read the default profile file which comes with this package. It will give you lots of examples and all the internal functions names and their goal.

Remapping a Text String to a Key

You can assign text strings to keys, it is useful when you often type the same thing. For example your email address. You can change a text string mapping this way:

keyname:TEXT_string

Now lets' see some examples:

You want to Map a Text String to a Simple Key

For example you want that each time you press on the 'A' key JERED receives the string Hello World !!!. This can be done this way:

KEY_A:TEXT_Hello World !!!

You want to Map a Text String to a Ctrl Key

For example you want that each time you press on Ctrl and 'U' simultaneously JERED receives the string Windows is Bullshit. This can be done this way:

KEY_CTRL_U:TEXT_Windows is Bullshit

You want to Map a Text String to an ESC+Key combination

For example you want that each time you press on the Escape key followed by the '@' key JERED receives your email address. This can be done this way:

ESC_KEY_@:TEXT_yourname@yourhost.yourdomain

Remapping a Recorded Macro to a Key

You can assign macros to keys, it is useful when you often type the same complicated thing. For example you want to load several files into JERED, then search and replace a string in each of them, then save each file and switch to the next file. You want to do this a lot of times, every day for example. This can be done very easily with a macro. First you record the macro, then you assign it to a key. You can do this this way:

keyname:MACRO_filename_of_the_macro

Now an example:

You want to Map a Macro to an ESC followed by Ctrl+Key sequence

For example you want that each time you press on the Escape key followed by Ctrl_V then JERED plays the macro named /home/jerome/macros/testmacro.jem, this can be done this way:

ESC_KEY_CTRL_V:MACRO_/home/jerome/macros/testmacro.jem

Remapping an Internal Function to a Key

You can assign internal functions to keys, JERED itself works this way with a set of predefined key mappings. You can change a function mapping this way:

keyname:FUNCTION_internal_function_name

Now an example:

You want to Map a Function to a Simple Key

For example you want that each time you press on the BACKSPACE key the current line will be deleted. This can be done this way:

KEY_BACKSPACE:FUNCTION_DELETELINE