[Geany] first experiences with geany, and some questions

[John Gabriele]

On 7/19/06, Enrico Tröger <enrico.troeger at uvena.de> wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 01:33:39 -0400, "John Gabriele" <jmg3000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> > 1. One problem I noticed right off the bat: auto-completion. I opened
> > a new file (some Ruby), and typed:
> >
> > def foo
> >     puts "hi"
> > end[<-- cursor here]
> >
> > then when I hit <Enter> to end the line, geany quickly tacks on
> > "DocumentSAXFunc" leaving me with:
>
> This is fixed in the current SVN version.

Ah. Ok. Grabbed the svn version. Works great. Thanks. :)

> > 2. How can I write my own syntax highlighting colorscheme? I'd like to
> > maybe make something like this:
> > http://radarzombies.org/slinky/zenburn-snapshot.png
> > (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=415).
>
> Please read http://geany.uvena.de/manual/ch03s09.html
> and if you need more information, just ask here.

Whoops. Sorry. Dunno how I missed that.

Ahh.. ok. I see. The filetypes.foo file knows *all* about the foo
language. Keywords, syntax highlighting colors, everything. Hm... but,
I'd like to be able to have the same colorscheme for all my files --
whether it's a config file in /etc, a Ruby source file, a C file,
etc... Looks like I need to edit my own
~/.geany/filedefs/filetypes.common as well as the others in there too.
I think it would be very nice if syntax highlighting color schemes
could be abstracted out of the filetypes files. This way the editor
could provide *two* separate settings here: filetype, *and*
colorscheme.

BTW, I see that setting "Document --> Set File Type --> Config file"
works good for editing these filetypes.foo files. Though, after I set
a file type, I think it should place a checkmark next to the menu item
for the current setting (next to "Config file" in this case).

> If you finished your sheme and you think it is nice, it would be cool
> if you send it to the list, so other people can use it too.

Ok. But it seems to me so far that making a "theme" will entail making
my own versions of *all* the filetypes.foo files. :(

Incidentally, search/replace seems a bit scary: when I hit the Replace
button, I don't really have any way of knowing which text it's going
to replace next. I think what might be better is to have a Find button
that takes you to the next bit of found text, then also provide
"Replace" and "Replace and Find again" buttons as well.

> > 3. How can I learn about more text editing keybindings such as
> > up-/down-by-paragraph, indent-/dedent-current selection, go to
> > definition, hop between matching brackets/braces/parenthese, etc.?
>
> Please read
> http://geany.uvena.de/manual/ch03s08.html
> and http://geany.uvena.de/manual/apa.html.

Ahh... thanks.

> > 4. How do I shut off current-line-highlight?
> At the moment it can't be completely disabled. You can just set the
> background of the current line to 0xffffff, so it has the same
> background with most styles. How to this, is described in
> http://geany.uvena.de/manual/ch03s09.html.
> There will be a feature to completely disable it.

Cool. Thank you.

>
> > 5. "Find next" isn't Ctrl-G. :) Ctrl-g seems to duplicate the current
> > line. Just a personal preference (and I think lots of folks may be
> > used to it too). The 'f' keys on my keyboard are tiny little things
> > that I never touch and try to avoid. :)
> Where is the problem? You can reassign the shortcuts in the preferences
> dialog.

Sorry. No problem. I should've put a winky ( ;) ) instead of a smiley ( :) ). :)

> > And also, a few other questions:
> >
> > Regarding regexes, what library does geany use for those? pcre, or are
> > you rolling your own?
>
> Regexps are passed to Scintilla.
> The regexps are described here http://geany.uvena.de/manual/ch03s04.html
> and since yesterday(so only in the SVN version) POSIX-like regexps are
> also possible.

Sorry, I don't understand. What's the difference between the regexes
that the stable version of geany supports and posix regexes?

I asked about them just because I'm familiar with the
Perl/Python/Java/Ruby style, and had just figured that the other way
was an older style.

> > By the way, although I'm not familiar with GTK programming, I think
> > I'd read that some GTK-based editors (such as Anjuta and GEdit) use
> > GtkSourceview (http://gtksourceview.sourceforge.net/). Does geany use
> > Scintilla in place of that? If so, just curious, why?
>
> As Luzi already mentioned, we already had this discussion on  Thu, 13
> Jul 2006 18:26:48.
> The main reason for Scintilla was: it had more features than
> GtkSourceView when i started writing Geany.

I see.

> > Finally, stuff I really like so far:
> >
> > * All the helpful pop-up help text (in the yellow boxes). Very nice --
> > please keep it up. :)
> > * Edit --> Insert Comments --> GPL notice. Nice touch. :) (though why
> > the extra indent there?)
> Do you mean between # and the text?

Yes.

> You can edit these templates, please read
> http://geany.uvena.de/manual/ch03s10.html

Thanks. Will look into it.

Oh, one other thing I just noticed: under the "Build" menu it says
"Execute", but the icon on the button bar says "Run". You might
consider changing the one under Build to say "Run" also.

> > * geany is quite fast.
> > * Color chooser seems handy to have around.
> > * built-in help feature found firefox right off the bat.
> > * <Control>-click-drag rectangual selection! :)
> > * Web page looks great.
>
> Thanks for all.

You're welcome. Thank you for all your hard work. :)

> Regards,
> Enrico

---John