Cooledit - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The information in this file is provided without warranty
for its accuracy or completeness. Use of this file or its
information is entirely at your own risk.

  
CONTENTS

     * 1 Introduction and General Information
          + 1.1 What is Cooledit?
          + 1.2 Who has written it?
          + 1.3 Does it run on my machine?
          + 1.4 Does Cooledit require any proprietary libraries to run?
          + 1.5 Is Cooledit copyrighted? What is the licensing agreement?
          + 1.6 What is the latest version of Cooledit?
     * 2 Network Sources and Resources
          + 2.1 Where can I get Cooledit?
          + 2.2 Does Cooledit have a mailing list?
          + 2.3 Does Cooledit have a world wide web home-page?
          + 2.4 What other applications are called 'cooledit'?
     * 3 Common Problems
          + 3.1 How do I get the commands from the 'Scripts' menu to work?
          + 3.2 How do I get the man page browser to work?
          + 3.3 The man page browser displays the man page, but gives a warning.
          + 3.4 In what ways does Cooledit behave differently to other X applications?
          + 3.5 How do I get Emacs key-bindings, or bindings of other editors?
          + 3.6 How do I get function keys F13 and up with my keyboard?
          + 3.7 How do I paste into an input widget like the file browser input line?
          + 3.8 How do I get my Alt/Meta key to work?
          + 3.9 My other 'Drag 'n Drop' applications don't work with Cooledit + about Dnd.
          + 3.10 Where can I get more info on drag and drop?
          + 3.11 How do I get mail to work?
     * 4 International Characters
          + 4.1 How do I enable international character support?
          + 4.2 How do I compose and insert international characters?
          + 4.3 My keyboard doesn't have a right-control key.
          + 4.4 Where can I get more information on UNIX and ISO?


     _________________________________________________________________
  
1 INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL INFORMATION
                                      
1.1 What is Cooledit?

   Cooledit is a full-featured text editor, for Unix computers that run
   the X Window System. Cooledit was born from a need for a user
   friendly text editor that would rival editors of other operating
   systems in ease of use and convenience. Lately Cooledit is also a
   powerful programmer's editor. It is also small and fast, making it
   ideal for interface with applications that allow for, or require, an
   external editor. See 'Features' in the man page for a more elaborate
   description of what Cooledit can do.
  
1.2 Who has written it?

   Cooledit was written by Paul Sheer. A few odd C functions and the
   regular expression library were taken from Rxvt, Dnd and the Midnight
   Commander (thanks guys). Their respective authors are acknowledged in
   the source. See THANKS in the man page for help that I received from
   users.

1.3 Does it run on my machine?

   Cooledit was initially written only for Linux, but now uses GNU
   autoconf, and will therefore compile under any Unix compatible
   system, provided that system is running the X Window System, Version
   11. If it doesn't compile or run as expected, please email me ASAP.
   Cooledit does not require any of the X11 extensions that many other
   programs need to compile or run. Cooledit has run on all the
   computer's listed in the man page.

1.4 Does Cooledit require any proprietary libraries to compile/run?

   No. Cooledit requires only the basic X11 library (libX11) to run
   which is available as free-ware. On some systems this may mean
   linking with addition basic libraries (like libsocket?), which are
   automatically determined by the ./configure script. In particular,
   note that Cooledit does not require the Motif (libXm) library which
   is not yet available for free.

1.5 Is Cooledit copyrighted? What is the licensing agreement?

   Cooledit is licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. This means
   that you can freely distribute Cooledit under certain conditions. The
   file COPYING contains the full licensing agreement. You are advised
   to read this license to be sure of your restrictions and obligations
   when modifying or distributing Cooledit.

1.6 What is the latest version of Cooledit?

    The distribution that this README file was packed into is
	Cooledit Version 3.6.2
    created on
	1 May 1998
    See 'Where can I get Cooledit?' below.

2 NETWORK SOURCES AND RESOURCES

2.1 Where can I get Cooledit?

   The latest development version can be obtained from
       ftp://lava.obsidian.co.za/pub/unix/cooledit
   The latest stable release can be obtained from
       ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/editors/X

2.2 Does Cooledit have a mailing list?

   The mailing list is
       cooledit@mail.obsidian.co.za

   To subscribe, email
	majordomo@mail.obsidian.co.za
   with the following line in the body of the message:
       subscribe cooledit

2.3 Does Cooledit have a world wide web home-page?

   Yes. The Cooledit page is now up and can be viewed at
       http://www.obsidian.co.za/cooledit
   This has some nice screen shots of Cooledit.

2.4 What other applications are called 'cooledit'?

   I havn't done a search myself, but users tell me that
   a program 'cooledit', for editing sound files, exists
   for one non-unix operating system.


3 COMMON PROBLEMS

3.1 How do I get the commands from the 'Scripts' menu to work?

   If a script doesn't function properly, try run it stand-alone from a
   terminal to see what happens. Some of the scripts are not standard
   Unix commands and require installation of other free-ware packages.
   You may need to install

      ispell
      indent
      latex
      xdvi
      rxvt
      ghostview
      dvips

   (Look on you local  sunsite  or  tsx  mirror for these and other
   free-ware packages.) You can edit the script from the Script menu.
   Look at the script's text and try run the script (make appropriate
   substitutions for the filenames) from a terminal. This will usually
   indicate the problem.

3.2 How do I get the man page browser to work?

    (As of version 3.3.3, the configure script automatically
     checks if man accepts '-a')
   Look in the file ~/cedit/.cooledit.ini
   Somewhere in the file is the line:
       option_man_cmdline = man -a %m
  
   You should try:
       Start cooledit from a terminal.
       See your man man-page (type  man man  at the terminal) to see if
           command-line options or environment variables are needed.
       See if the -a option is supported.

   Then see if the command-line needs changing.

3.3 The man page browser displays the man page, but gives a warning.

   This can safely be ignored.

3.4 In what ways does Cooledit behave differently to other X applications.

   Cooledit is more similar to applications from 'other' operating systems
   than to standard X applications.

   - Only two mouse buttons are supported. Mouse button 1 is recognised as
       the 'Left' button, while all other buttons are recognised as the
       'Right' button.
   - Double clicking is synonymous with acknowledgement or pressing Enter.
   - The Tab key is always used to cycle between items in a dialog box.
       The arrow keys can also be used where they are not bound to some
       other function. Shift-Tab or back-tab is used to cycle backward.
   - Shift-arrow text highlighting works along with its well known keys:
       Control-Ins and Shift-Ins. In addition Alt/Meta-Ins brings up
       a cut and paste history which is very useful.
   - Dragging and dropping bits of text poses the problem of how to
       tell if the user wants to copy or to move the text being highlighted:
       use the Left mouse button to copy and the right mouse button to move
       ('move' = 'copy and then delete the original'). Dragging always works
       by highlighting the text with the mouse or cursor keys, and then
       Clicking (with the appropriate button) and dragging from within
       the highlighted region.
   - Clicking with button 2 to copy text from another application doesn't
       work --- instead you must use Shift-Insert. If text is highlighted
       in another application it will then be inserted at the cursor.
       Cooledit also does not discriminate between different kinds of data,
       so any data being copied to Cooledit will be accepted and inserted.
   - Copying of text to another application works as usual: highlight it
       with the mouse and click the middle mouse button in the window of
       the application. You can also highlight it with the arrow keys and
       press Control-Ins, and then click the middle mouse button in the
       window of the application.

3.5 How do I get Emacs key-bindings, or bindings of other editors?

   The key learning dialog box is easy to use. Just go through the list,
   pressing the keys you would like. Double key combinations will not
   work however.

3.6 How do I get function keys F13 and up with my keyboard?

   Shift with a function key is analogous to adding 10 to the function
   key. i.e. Shift-F3 is F13 etc.

3.7 How do I paste into an input widget like the file browser input line?

   Press Shift-Insert in the input line.

3.8 How do I get my Alt/Meta key to work?

   On some machines, what the system thinks is an Alt/Meta key is
   actually one of the other hyper keys (on my Sun I have to use the key
   with the diamond on it). Try using one of these other keys as a
   Alt/Meta. The header file  global.h  contains the definition of the
   Alt/Meta key which you can change if you know what you are doing.

3.9 My other 'Drag 'n Drop' applications don't work with Cooledit + about Dnd.

   Cooledit supports the Dnd Protocol Version 1.0 and Version 0. You
   should first check what drag-and-drop protocol your application
   claims to support. Cooledit can receive drag-n-drop's from an
   application supporting either version of the protocol. However
   drag-n-drop's sent to other applications can be of one type only. The
   Options (General...) dialog contains a radio button to switch between
   older and newer versions of the protocol. Note that Dnd is not the
   same as proprietry/commercial protocols like those of Motif or XView,
   and hence won't work with those applications. Hopefully the
   proprietry world will soon have the good sence to support Cesar
   Crusius' freely distributable Dnd protocol, especially since it has
   now gained wide acceptance within the free software community.

   If drag-and-drop still does not work after correcting the version
   number, it may be because that application only supports particular
   data types. Some authors choose for their applications to reject
   certain kinds of data even though they could be inserted. For
   instance, rxvt-2.20 (Recompile rxvt with OFFIX_DND set in the
   src/features.h file) accepts file-names, links and directory-names,
   but not straight text -- so you can drag file-names (remember:
   highlight, and then drag from WITHIN the highlighted [yellow] text)
   from the Cooledit file browser, but neither text from the input lines
   nor the editor window. Cooledit, on the other hand, will accept and
   insert _any_ kind of data, although it will only perform
   interpretation on a few types of data.

   If you can program in C, you will find it easy to modify an application
   to support recieving of any drag-and-drop. Do the following in that
   application's source:
    - to change to version 1 of the protocol search for the strings
       "DndProtocol" and "DndSelection" and change them to "_DND_PROTOCOL"
       and "_DND_SELECTION" (used with the XInternAtom() function).
    - Also search for where the application verifies the protocol version;
       something like an 'if' statement with
           xclient.data.l[4] == 0	/* for version '0' */
       in it. And change it to '1'. (Some applications may not bother with
       this however.)
    - Search for where the application checks for the data type; something
       like
           xclient.data.l[0] == DndFile
       and add in similar conditions for DndText, DndDir, DndLink, DndExe,
       DndURL and DndMIME as you see fit (The numerical #definitions of
       these can be found in coolwidget.h), BUT, be wary of what data types
       might break the applications (avoid DndFiles, and DndRawData unless
       you know what your doing).

   I'm not sure how many apps' source code will support these generic
   steps though.

3.10 Where can I get more info on drag and drop?

   See the file cursor/DND.dvi in the source distribution of Cooledit.
   This file is included for the promotion of the Dnd protocol.

3.11 How do I get mail to work?

   If mail doesn't work, your mail command probably doesn't support one
   of the command line options (see the mail dialog). You will have to
   create a mail script that ignores these options. The command is not
   currently configurable. Watch cooledit's stdout when sending mail to
   see mail error messages.

4 INTERNATIONAL CHARACTERS

4.1 How do I enable international character support?

   In the `Options' menu, click on `General..' and set the `Display
   international characters' switch.

4.2 How do I compose and insert international characters?

   Use Right-Control and the character that the international
   character most looks like. Then press a second character that
   would compose that character typographically.
       Eg. Ctrl-a o inserts a ''
   The file INTERNATIONAL in the source distribution contains a
   complete list of character compositions. Note that cooledit does
   not compose characters in a standard way.

4.3 My keyboard doesn't have a right-control key.

   The header file  global.h  contains the definition of the Compose
   key which you can change to one of the others in the list of examples.
   You will have to recompile though with
       make clean
       make
       make install
   For the change to take effect.
   (you can, alternatively, just remove the file coolnext.o to re-make.)

4.4 Where can I get more information on UNIX and ISO?

   See the 'ISO 8859-1  National Character Set FAQ'
   The most recent version of this document is available via anonymous
   ftp from ftp.vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at under the file name
       /pub/8bit/FAQ-ISO-8859-1"


