tpad help
Configuration
You can configure tpad by editing the file tpad.conf. This file
uses the Tcl(n) syntax. Tcl provides a good reconfigurability but
when editing tpad.conf you must be care not to make any syntax
error otherwise tpad won't start. It is advisable to make a backup
copy of tpad.conf before modifying it or to make changes to a copy
of tpad.conf and check the syntax by running it with the Tcl
interpreter before overwriting the real tpad.conf with it. To do
those things you should use commands similar to the following:
$ cp tpad.conf tpad.conf.default
$ cp tpad.conf tpad.conf.copy
... editing tpad.conf.copy
$ tclsh8.4 tpad.conf.copy
$ mv tpad.conf.copy tpad.conf
If you want to make changes only for a single user, instead of
modifying the global configuration file, you can copy it as a
hidden per user configuration file named ~/.tpadrc and make changes
only there. If something goes wrong and tpad doesn't start anymore,
you can simply delete ~/.tpadrc and start again.
When you run tpad it will first search for ~/.tpadrc; if it
can't find this, it will try to load the global configuration file
tpad.conf, so ~/.tpadrc completely overrides tpad.conf. This means
all the options are required. You should not comment out any of the
options below otherwise tpad won't start.
This is the default global
configuration file shipped with this version.
Even though you don't know Tcl, you should not have too much
trouble to change the configuration file to suit your needs. Here
are some notes about every constant or variable to help you a bit.
The possible values a variable may assume are bracketed. If you get
stuck at something contact me, but first please read this page and
the Tcl documentation referenced here, and try to fix things
yourself :-)
When speaking of boolean values, no is the same as 0 and yes is
the same as 1. If you need to set a variable to a string which has
more than one word in it, remember to use the open braces around
(e.g. {word1 word2}) otherwise Tcl will complain.
- version [version number]
- This states what version tpad is. Unless you are a developer,
you shouldn't change this.
- types [nested Tcl lists]
- This option defines the list of types in the file types listbox
of a file dialog. You should not have too much problems editing
this following the example. For details, see tk_getOpenFile(n) or
tk_getSaveFile(n), especially the section titled SPECIFYING FILE
PATTERNS.
- tearoff [no,yes]
- Specifies whether or not the menu should include a tear-off
entry at the top. A tear-off appears as a dashed line at the top of
the menu. Invoking the tear-off entry causes a torn-off copy to be
made of the menu and all of its submenus. Even the popup menu can
be torn-off.
- palette [palette spec]
- Defines the color scheme. The most simple way to do this is by
specifying the name of a color to use as the normal background
color (see colors(n)); a complete color palette will be computed
from this background color. If you need more tuning, see
tk_setPalette(n). Note that the following options fg, bg, selfg and
selbg override some of the colors defined by this scheme and they
are required also.
- fg [color name]
- Text foreground color. See colors(n). I prefer black on white
as on paper. Just make sure there is enough contrast.
- bg [color name]
- Text background color. Ditto.
- selfg [color name]
- Selection foreground color. Ditto.
- selbg [color name]
- Selection background color. Ditto.
- editfont [font desc]
- Choose the font and size to use for the textarea. If you want
to change this you should read the font(n) manual page (skip at
section FONT DESCRIPTION if you are in a hurry). Also, for best
results and better performance, choose a font that is capable of
displaying all the glyphs you expect to display, depending on your
I/O encodings.
- statusfont [font desc]
- Font to use for the status bar. Ditto.
- lpr [shell command]
- This command will be invoked by the Print option in the File
menu to send tpad's buffer to a printer. It must be a filter
program. Under Unix you can use lpr(1). See this manpage for a
description of the option you can add. For example under FreeBSD if
you want to use pr(1) to paginate the output you can make this
variabile value as {lpr -p}. You can also change this variable at
runtime using the File/Print Setup menu option.
- logfac [no,yes]
- Turn log creation facility on/off. Log
creation facility is on by default, which is useful to people
who need to write log or diary files. If for some reasons you don't
want it, set this to no.
- timefmt [time description]
- A string that describes how the date and time inserted by the
Edit/Date/Time menu option are to be formatted. Please refer to the
clock(n) manual page (see the help about the clock format
subcommand). The default value is %c which stands for a locale
specific date and time format.
- titlefmt [format string]
- This controls the title bar string using a format(n)-like
string. %1$s, if present, will be substituted for the name of the
executable (tpad or tview) and %2$s for the current edited
filename.
- insertofftime [milliseconds]
- Specifies a non-negative integer value indicating the number of
milliseconds the insertion cursor should remain off in each blink
cycle. If this option is zero then the cursor doesn't blink: it is
on all the time. The display line with the insert cursor is redrawn
each time the cursor blinks, which causes a steady stream of
graphics traffic. Set this attribute to 0 avoid this.
- insertontime [milliseconds]
- Specifies a non-negative integer value indicating the number of
milliseconds the insertion cursor should remain on in each blink
cycle.
- maxundo [integer number]
- Specifies the maximum number of compound undo actions on the
undo stack. A zero or a negative value imply an unlimited undo
stack. Please note that the greater the undo stack becomes, the
more memory is required. For default this is 1 that means you can
only undo/redo the last edit action.
- browsercmd [command line]
- This command will be used to run an external browser when the
Help option under the Help menu is selected. You can also use
command line options understood by the browser of your choice
here.
- helpath [directory path]
- This must be set to the path to the directory where are located
these HTML help files. The index page file name (index.html) will
be concatenated with this path and the resulting argument will be
the last argument passed to the command specified by the previous
constant browsercmd.
- placing [{},pointer,widget,none]
- This controls how some tpad subwindows are placed on the screen
when they are displayed. Possible values are:
value |
meaning |
{} |
place subwindows in the middle of the screen |
pointer |
place subwindows centered on the pointer |
widget |
place subwindows centered over tpad main window |
none |
no placement, leave it to the window manager |
The none option is only useful if the window manager is smart
enough :) Note that this setting only applies to non-modal dialogs;
most modal dialogs are centered over tpad main window regardless of
this setting.
- maxopenrec [integer number]
- Maximum number of entries to keep into the "open recent" list;
default is 10 which should be enough for normal usage; use 0 if you
don't want any "open recent" list.
- openrecfile [file path]
- File where to save the "open recent" list; defaults to a
per-user file named ~/.tpad_history, but could also be a global
file writable by every user; if empty the list will be
non-permanent; ignored if maxopenrec is 0.
- fmtkind [GNU,BSD,none]
- fmt(1) is a simple text formatter which is accessible from tpad
as a plugin. Usually, by default, Linux has the GNU variant, while
FreeBSD uses a different version. Make sure to specify the right
type you have, otherwise you will not be able to invoke it
correctly from tpad. If you installed tpad from a package specific
to your platform, the default value should be ok.
- fmt [command path]
- Because under Linux and FreeBSD fmt(1) is part of the standard
utilities, you don't need to specify the full path to it. This can
only be useful if you want to use a different kind of fmt(1) that
can't be invoked simply by name using the current value of PATH or
has a different name. For example under FreeBSD, if you install the
Free Software Foundation's core utilities
(ports/sysutils/coreutils) you will get, among many others, the GNU
version of fmt renamed as gfmt. If you want to use this instead of
the default fmt shipped with FreeBSD, set this variable to gfmt and
fmtkind to GNU.
- tk_strictMotif [0,1]
- If set to 1 requires strict Motif compliance. It is better to
leave it to 0 because it may affect some key bindings. You can find
more information by reading the manpage Tk_StrictMotif(3).
- wrap [none,word]
- Specifies how to handle lines in the text that are too long to
be displayed in a single line of the text's window. The value must
be none or word. A wrap mode of none means that each line of text
appears as exactly one line on the screen; extra characters that
don't fit on the screen are not displayed. In the word mode each
line of text will be broken up into several screen lines if
necessary to keep all the characters visible and a line break will
only be made at word boundaries.
- pattern [string]
- What search pattern do you want for default? If none use the
empty string here.
- substr [string]
- Substitution string used by the Edit/Replace function. Defaults
to the empty string.
- dir [up,down]
- What search direction do you prefer for default? You will be
alerted when a search gets to the beginning or the end of the
file.
- case [no,yes]
- Do you prefer case sensitive or insensitive search for default?
What kind do you need most of the time?
- regexp [no, yes]
- If you use regular expression very often, setting this to yes
allows you to make the regexp mode for the Find and Replace
functions the default.
- status [no,yes]
- Whether or not you want the status bar for default.
- ascii [no, yes]
- Set to to yes to display the ASCII table plugin at
startup.
- format [no, yes]
- Set to to yes to display the Text Formatter plugin at
startup.
- wf [no, yes]
- Set to to yes to display the Expat xmlwf plugin at
startup.
- inputEnc [system,encoding name]
- Default encoding to use when reading files. Here the special
value "system" stands for the current system encoding; most of the
times you will want the system encoding to be the default encoding
for tpad I/O, so don't change this option, unless your system
encoding is not what you want by default with tpad. Be careful when
setting this option to a value other than "system"; in fact if you
don't use the right encoding for the language that the document you
are editing belongs to, you can lose some characters when you read
or save files (these will be displayed or written as a ?). If you
sometimes need to edit or view files using a different encoding
from what your system uses, you can always change the encodings at
runtime inside tpad, using the Format/IO Encodings menu option;
when finished, using the same option or exiting and re-entering
tpad, you can switch back to the system encoding.
- outputEnc [system,encoding name]
- Default encoding to use when writing files. Ditto.
As you can see there are also some options related to plugins.
They are grouped under a unique "namespace" named after the plugin
name. I will not describe the meaning of these options here in
detail, to avoid repetitions with the respective tool
documentation. For example, you can find a more detailed
description of the text formatter by running one of these commands,
depending on your flavor of Unix:
$ fmt -h
$ man fmt
$ info fmt
A common problem after having upgraded tpad is that the old
configuration files are left in place and must be upgraded
manually. tpad will fail on startup if one of these conditions is
true:
- it can't find a config file
- it found a config file, but an error occurred when sourcing
it
- it found a config file, but the file version doesn't match the
program version
Case 3 is commonly encountered after a tpad upgrade and requires
a configuration upgrade.
Since the config file may change from version to version, the
following configuration upgrading procedure is recommended, for
both global and user level config files:
- backup your old config file, if you made any changes to it you
don't want to lose, or alternatively take note of the changes you
made.
- copy the new version default configuration file *over* the old
one. Administrators should make sure the global config file can be
read by any users interested in using tpad with the default system
configuration.
- edit the new version configuration file copied in step 2 to
redo the changes you made to the old config file.
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