USER HELP GUIDE
WISH Supernotepad 2009 is a fairly simple, fairly powerful text and HTML editor written entirely in the Tcl/Tk programming language; it requires at least version 8.5 of Tcl and Tk to run. To run the program from the Linux/Unix command line, enter supernotepad & to open it blank, or supernotepad [insert name of file you want to view] & to open it with a file already displayed. WISH Supernotepad has been reported to work on Windows too (except for printing and Palm Doc conversion).
Many of the features of WISH Supernotepad are pretty easy to understand. In case you need help with any of them, here are some explanations. (To search for help in this User Help Guide, enter text to search for in the text-entry box at the top of the User Help window; then click the Find button or press the accelerator key, F2. To see if you can get any more help, do it again. First, though, you might check the links directly below this paragraph to see if there's a link for the topic you want.)
MINI-TOOLBAR
New
Open
Insert
Save
Backup
Print?
Cut
Copy
Paste
Undo
Redo
Special
Find
Replace
Quit
FILE MENU
New Text
New HTML
New Window
Open Any
Open Recent
Open (New Window)
Save
Save As
Backup
Backup As
Move/Rename
Import Palm Doc
Export Palm Doc
Print?
Exit
EDIT MENU
Cut, Copy, Paste
Delete
Supercut, Supercopy
Superpaste
Undo, Redo
Undo All Since Last Save
Title, Untitle
Select All
INSERT MENU
Recent File
Any File
Special Characters
Color Code
Time/Date
SEARCH MENU
Find
Replace (Standard)
Replace (Multiple)
Line Number/Word Count
HTML MENU
Plain Text to HTML
Link-Text to HTML
Heading
Font
Anchor
Link
Image
List
Table: Create
Table: Continue
Paragraph
Line Break
Italics
Bold
Center
TCL/TK MENU
New Script
Run Selected Code
Find Closing
Auto-tab
More Tabs
Fewer Tabs
Curly Braces
Next Braces
Leave Braces
Brackets, Parentheses, Quotes
DISPLAY MENU
Colors
Font
HTML in Browser
Change Browser
Link-Text
Format/Window Size
Omit Needless Newlines
Word Wrap
Most obviously, there's a mini-toolbar with some buttons for common actions. Here's what the buttons do. If there's an "accelerator" key combination that does the same thing, I'll say so. As usual with accelerator key combinations, first you hold down the "modifier" key (usually Control), and then you press the other key (just in case you didn't already know that). Click this ACCELERATOR KEYS link to see a list of all these keys and what they do (arranged in alphabetical order by what they do), right near the bottom of this User Help Guide.
New (Control+n): Blanks out the WISH Supernotepad window, so you can enter something completely different. If there was unsaved text for a named file in the window, it will be automatically saved first. If there was unsaved text and no named file, you'll be asked whether you want to give the text a name before blanking out the window. If you want to leave the the old window unchanged and open a new blank window, use the New Window item in the File menu, or hit Control+n.
Open (Control+.) (yes, that's Control plus a period--easy to type with one hand): Opens a listbox showing names of recently viewed files--up to 9999 of them, if you wish. You probably don't want to scan the names of 9999 files visually--or even 100 or 1000 files--to see if the one you want is on the list. So, in the entry box next to the "Search" button below the listbox, enter some text that you're sure the file name contains, and then click Search or hit Enter. All the file names on the "recently viewed" list that contain the text you entered will be selected (use the scrollbar to see the ones that don't appear at first). To open one, either right-click, double left-click, or single left-click and then click Open. (If you try to open more than one file at once, you'll get a friendly error message asking you to select exactly one.)
If the file you want isn't on the list, click Open Any to find it by the old-fashioned method of slogging through directories and scrolling through filenames. To open a file in a new window instead of the same old one, check the "New Window" box at the bottom left. In the spinbox between "Show" and "files," you can change the number of files to display; either (1) type the number in or (2) hold down the left mouse button on the "up" or "down" button in the spinbox. To unlist one or more files, click Unlist after selecting the file names. (Hold down Control and left-click to select more than one individual file; hold down Shift and left-click to select all files between and including the last one selected and the present one.) The listbox will close automatically when you open a file; if that isn't soon enough for you, click Close.
Insert (Control+,) (that's Control plus a comma): A lot like "Open," except it won't replace your present text or open a new window either; instead, it will insert the contents of a file at the cursor location in your present text. That's why the "New window" checkbox is grayed out.
You may not even need to see the listbox to insert a file, though. If you're pretty sure you know a part of the file name that uniquely identifies a recently viewed file, you can use a shortcut. Just type the unique part where you want the file to be inserted, and then click Insert or press Control and the comma key. If the identifier really was unique, the file will be inserted in place of the identifier right away. If it wasn't, or if it didn't match any part of a file on the list, the listbox will open up after all. (This assumes that your file name doesn't have any spaces in it. If it does, and if your identifier does too, then select the identifier with the mouse before trying to insert the file.)
Save (Control+s): Does what it says, except it will automatically change to "Save As" if your text doesn't have a name yet; then you'll be asked to give it one. If you have unsaved text, the word "(Save?)" should appear on the title bar. After you save the text, the word "Saved" will appear in front of the file name for one second; then it will go and the file name will stay.
Backup: Like "Save/Save As," only you keep working on the file with the original name, while the one with the new name becomes the backup file. Once your backup file has a name, this button will back up your working file under that name; it won't prompt you for yet another name. If you want to keep a handy series of backups from different times under different names, while keeping the newest version of the file in view, use the Backup As menu item.
Print? (Control+q): If you're not running a Unix-type operating system, don't bother with this; WISH Supernotepad will print only on Linux and other Unix-type systems. If you are, and you click this, then a dialog bar will appear below the mini-toolbar, above the text window. This bar has a spinbox to let you set the width (in characters) of the printed text. If the X Printing Panel (XPP) is in your system's path, the main button will say "Print with XPP"; click it, and XPP will open up so you can set additional printing options. Otherwise, the ancient "lpr" program will be used to print your text. When you click the main button, the width of the WISH Supernotepad window will temporarily change to the specified width for the printed text; when a copy of the text has been formatted for printing, the window will return to normal. Click Close if you don't want any of this to happen after all.
*** NOTE: *** If you have some text selected, only that text will be printed. Otherwise, all the text in the WISH Supernotepad window will be printed.
Cut (Control+x): Cuts out the selected text and puts it on the clipboard, ready to be pasted in. Easy.
Copy (Control+c): Copies the selected text and puts it on the clipboard, ready to be pasted in. Equally easy.
Paste (Control+g) (it was supposed to be "Control+v," but that didn't work quite right for some reason unknown to me): Pastes in text from the clipboard at the cursor location. The cursor goes to the end of the pasted-in text, and the text scrolls to the new cursor position if necessary. You can paste in the same text more than once, so long as you haven't cut or copied any other text more recently. If you have, the newly cut or copied text replaces whatever was on the clipboard before.
*** WARNING: *** If you cut or copy text from one WISH Supernotepad window and you want to paste it into another, keep both windows open until you've pasted the text; you may lose it if you close the window you cut or copied it from!
Undo (Control+z): Undoes the last significant action performed (e.g., typing a word, deleting some text, etc.). You can undo an unlimited number of actions, but the stacks of actions to undo and redo are emptied when you save a file, so make sure the file is OK before you save it. If one "undo" gives you a blank window, try another "undo" to get back the previous contents; some actions work by first blanking out the window and then inserting new text, so there are two separate steps to undo.
Redo (Control+r): If you're inclined toward unlimited vacillation, you can redo an unlimited number of actions after undoing them; then you can undo them again, redo them again, and so on ad infinitum. (Ugh!)
Special (F4): Opens up a box of buttons that you can click to insert special characters into your text, like these: ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö × Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý Þ ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ñ ò ó ô õ ö ÷ ø ù ú û ü ý þ ÿ. Unlike special-character boxes in many other programs, this one doesn't go away when you've inserted a character, so you can click quick to insert as many as you want. If you really want it to go away, just click the Close button at the bottom.
The darker buttons near the bottom of the box, just above the Close button, are different from the regular special-character buttons. These buttons will insert strange-looking HTML codes for the characters shown on the buttons; the codes are necessary to make these characters display properly in a browser. The double-width blank button will insert --an HTML code for a non-breaking space. You can also insert these characters into other text and entry boxes (such as Find, Replace, HTML Table Data Entry, and more), as well as into the main text box. Just click on the window containing the box you want to use, and then click the button for the special character.
Find (F2): Opens a dialog bar containing a "Find" entry box, into which you can type text to search for. Click Match case to find only text with the same capitalization or lack of capitalization (e.g., searching for "OK" won't find "ok" if "Match case" is selected). Click Up to search backward toward the beginning of the text. To find the first instance, you can either press F2 or click the Find (F2) button. If you've found all the instances of matching text, or there aren't any, the dialog bar will change to say so. To change what you're searching for, click New Search. To find the next instance, do either of these things again. To quit searching, click Close.
The "Find" dialog bar in WISH Supernotepad 2009 has some new features to make easy searching more powerful, and powerful searching much easier, than before. As the label at the top of the box says, you can use a period (.) to substitute for any one character; a plus sign (+) for one or more; and an asterisk (*) for zero or more characters. This means text characters, numbers, or underscores; these "wildcards" (".", "+", and "*") won't match spaces, punctuation marks, etc. For example, a search for "comp.ti+" will find "computing," "compatible," "competition," and many more words, but it won't find "comp time." A search for "Scarlet Pimp+" or "Scarlet Pimp." will find "Scarlet Pimpernel" (even if the two words are separated by a single line break), but it won't find "Scarlet Pimp"; a search for "Scarlet Pimp*" will find both.
You can also click buttons to insert "OR" (|) or "AND" ( & ) connectors (or you can just type them in; put spaces around the & for "AND," but no spaces around the | for OR). An "OR" search will find any text that matches any of the expressions joined by "OR." An "AND" search will find only those paragraphs or sentences (click a radiobutton to select which) that have all of the expressions joined by "AND."
If you have both "OR" and "AND" in the search terms, your search criteria will first be split at each "AND"; an "OR" search will be done on each part; and paragraphs or sentences will be found if they have at least one of the items specified in each part. For example, "P.ppy|Mandriva & Linu+|*nix" without case matching will find "Puppy Linux," "Mandriva Linux," "Pappy Unix," and more, but not "Poppy Mandriva" or "Linus Nixon."
Replace (Control+F2): Opens up a "Replace" dialog bar, like the "Find" bar but with entry boxes for (1) text to search for ("Replace") and (2) text to replace it with ("with"). Press Enter or click Find First to find the first instance of matching text. If there is one, "Find First" will change to Replace This, which you can then click to replace the first instance and go on to the next. Click Skip if you don't want to replace an instance, or Replace All to replace all of them at once. The New Search button will change "Replace This" back to "Find First," and set you up to do another search. Close will close the dialog bar, even if you weren't done with the search. "Replace" has the same new enhancements as "Find," except you can't use the "AND" connector and you have to type in the "|" for "OR" yourself.
***WARNING:*** While the "Replace" dialog bar is open, do not press Enter to do anything other than replace an item, and don't move the cursor manually; if you do, any selected text could be deleted!
Quit: Does what it says. If you have unsaved text for a named file in the text window, it will automatically be saved. (If you do not want this to happen, make sure to click Undo All Since Last Save in the Edit menu before quitting.) If you have text that you haven't yet saved with a name, you'll be asked if you want to.
As usual with computer menu items, you can open a menu either by clicking with the mouse or by holding down Alt and pressing the underlined letter for the menu (e.g., F for File; then you can select a menu item either by clicking with the mouse or by releasing Alt and pressing the underlined letter for the item (e.g., O for Open), if there is an underlined letter. As I mentioned when describing the mini-toolbar, some items have "accelerator" keys to get things done really fast.
FILE MENU
File--New Text: Use this to close out the text you've been working on and start fresh. Unsaved text will automatically be saved first if you have a named file open; if not, you'll be asked if you want to save changes. This menu item will then replace the old text with a blank text window. If you want to keep the old text and get a new blank window too, use New Window or hit Control+n.
File--New HTML: Like "New Text," only instead of a blank text area you get a preformatted document in simple Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). This document contains color codes for black text (text), blue links (link) that turn red when you click on them (alink) and stay red after you're done (vlink), and white background (bgcolor). If you don't like these colors, do this: (1) Delete the code for the color you don't like, including the quotation marks (for example, "#FF0BCD" is a color code I might well delete on sight). (2) Under the "Insert" menu, click "Color" and select a color you like (see Color Code under "Insert menu" below for details). (3) With the cursor in the place you just deleted the bad color code from, click the colored button at the top of the color selection box; this will insert the code for the color you like.
File--New Window (Control+n): Does the same thing as the New button on the mini-toolbar.
File--Open Any: You can open any file that can be read and edited in the form of plain (ASCII/ISO Latin-1) text, such as TXT, HTML, Tcl/Tk or other program source code, RTF, and more.
File--Open Recent (Control+F1): Does the same thing as the Open button on the mini-toolbar.
File--Open (New Window): Another way to open a file in a new window and leave the old one intact.
File--Save (Control+s): Does the same thing as the Save button on the mini-toolbar.
File--Save As: If your text is already saved under one file name, "Save As" will save a copy of it under a new name. The original will remain as it was when you clicked "Save As"; if you have unsaved changes in the original, they'll automatically be saved under the original name before the copy is made. The newly named file then becomes the one you work on, while the original remains as a backup. If your text isn't already saved, you can give it a name.
File--Backup: Does the same thing as the Backup button on the mini-toolbar.
File--Backup As: Backs up your file under a new name; then you keep working on the file under the same old name.
File--Move/Rename: Like "Save As," only there's no backup file. The file you were working on gets a new name, location, or both, but the contents stay the same. Unsaved changes will be saved at once under the new name.
File--Import Palm Doc: On a Unix-type system with the free "txt2pdbdoc" program installed, WISH Supernotepad can import and export files in Palm Doc (.pdb) format for handheld devices running Palm OS. After you've backed up the contents of your handheld device to your desktop computer (using KPilot or some such program), click this menu item and navigate to your Palm backup directory; then select a Doc file, pick a name for its plain-text equivalent, hit Enter or click Open, and the plain-text equivalent will open up in WISH Supernotepad, with its contents already saved.
File--Export Palm Doc: To reverse the procedure, use this menu item when you have a plain text or HTML file open. Give the proposed Palm Doc a descriptive title, which can contain spaces; then hit Enter or click Save. The title bar will briefly inform you that you exported a Palm Doc, and then return to normal.
File--Print? (Control+q): Does the same thing as the Print? button on the mini-toolbar.
File--Exit: Does the same thing as the Quit button on the mini-toolbar.
EDIT MENU
You can cut, copy, paste, or delete selected text with the keyboard or the mouse. To select text, in addition to the obvious method of holding down the mouse button while moving the pointer from one end to the other end of the text you want to select, here are some things you can do.
To add more text to an existing selection (such as when you want to select a lot more than will fit on the screen), hold down Shift and single-click the left mouse button at the end of the text to be added. If you want to select even more, keep holding down both Shift and the mouse button, and drag to extend the selection further. The text will scroll to extend the selection if the mouse pointer reaches the bottom of the text area.
To select a single word, double-click the word with the left mouse button. To add more words, hold down both Control and Shift while using the left or right arrow key. (The fastest way to select a bunch of words, I think, is to double-click on the first word and then shift-click at the end of the last word.)
To select an entire line, triple-click the line with the left mouse button. (If word wrap is turned on, several lines may appear to be selected, but they will appear as only one line if word wrap is turned off--see below.) To add more lines, hold down both "Control" and "Shift" while using the left or right arrow key.
To keep the selection the same but put the cursor somewhere else, hold down "Control" and single-click the left mouse button where the cursor is to go.
Edit--Cut (Control+x), Copy (Control+c), Paste (Control+g): Guess what--these do the same things as the Cut, Copy, and Paste buttons on the mini-toolbar.
Edit--Delete (Del): Cuts out selected text and doesn't put it on the clipboard; it's gone (although you may still be able to get it back with "Undo."
Edit--Supercut (Control-X), Supercopy (Control-C): Note the capital letters in the accelerator keys. These items do the same as Cut and Copy, but they also add the cut or copied text to the mighty "Superpaste" list (see below), which is permanently stored in a file called "superpaste.tcl" in the "wishes" subdirectory of your home directory.
Edit--Superpaste (F1): This menu item is for people who aren't satisfied with a puny little clipboard that only holds one cut or copied selection at a time. It opens a listbox that looks a lot like the one for opening or inserting recent files, only the contents aren't names of files; they're text selections in the "Superpaste" list. You can save up to 9999 of them and search for the ones you want, just like in the recent-file listbox. Select an item and click Paste (or right-click or double-click the item) to insert it in the main text window. If you click another text or entry box (e.g., HTML Data Entry) to make it the active window, then the "Superpaste" text will go there instead. If you're not sure you should do anything with it because you can't see the whole thing, click See Whole and you'll see the whole thing in a scrolling text box. The whole "Superpaste" list will be saved (to a file called "superpaste.tcl" in the "wishes" subdirectory of your home directory) every time you add an item to it.
Not only that--you don't even need the listbox if you know some text that uniquely identifies an item on the "Superpaste" list. Just as you can insert a file, you can also insert a "Superpaste" item by typing the unique text where you want the item to go, and then pressing the accelerator key (F1) or clicking the "Edit--Superpaste" menu item. If the unique text has any spaces in it, select it with the mouse before pressing F1 or whatever. If you guessed wrong about the uniqueness, the listbox will open up.
Edit--Undo (Control+z), Redo (Control+r): More menu items that do the same things as the mini-toolbar buttons that bear their names.
Edit--Undo All Since Last Save: Does what it says. Returns you to the last saved version of your file, if you have unsaved changes. If you don't, it won't do anything. If there isn't a last saved version, this menu item returns you to the original blank window.
Edit--Title, Untitle: If text is selected, "Title" will turn it into a proper English title, with all initial letters capitalized except in articles, conjunctions, and prepositions of four letters or less. "Untitle" will make all letters in the selected text lower-case. If no text is selected, these menu items won't do anything.
Edit--Select All (Control+/): Obviously, selects every bit of text in the text area, whether you can see it or not. What's not quite so obvious is that you can select almost all the text by (1) selecting all and (2) then shift-clicking inside the selected portion to deselect some text at the beginning or the end. (You can do this more than once, and you can do it with any selection, not only one created with "Select All.") To add text back onto the selection, shift-click outside the selected portion; the part between the selected portion and the place where you shift-click will be added.
Tcl/Tk--Auto-tab: Useful for writing indented paragraphs, as well as Tcl/Tk or other indented program code. If the beginning of a line has one or more tabs, every paragraph you type after that point will have the same number of tabs until you get rid of them--or until you do some code-writing things that will cause more or fewer tabs to be inserted. The code-writing tab tricks are supposed to be in accordance with standard Tcl style; let me know if you find any that aren't. (Note: Auto-tab is automatically turned off during HTML list creation, which uses its own method of tab insertion. Then, if it was on before, it's turned back on when the list is finished.)
INSERT MENU
Insert--Recent File (Control+t): Does the same thing as the Insert button on the mini-toolbar.
Insert--Any File: Like "File--Open Any" except it doesn't get rid of the text you were working on and put a new file into the blank text area; instead, it inserts the text from the new file at the cursor location even if the cursor is already surrounded by text.
Insert--Special Characters (F4): Does the same thing as the Special button on the mini-toolbar.
Insert--Color Code (Control+F4): Opens a box with sliders to change the proportions of red, green, and blue in a color you might or might not want to select, and a button to display the color. The sliders go from 0 (none) to 255 (maximum). There's also a listbox containing color names; you can right-click or double left-click to select a color, and then modify it with the sliders if you wish. The color-display button displays the hexadecimal (base 16) code for the selected color in black letters if the color is light or white ones if the color is dark. For example, if you select a color with 255 parts red, 204 parts green, and 153 parts blue, the hexadecimal code (displayed in black letters) will be "FFCC99" because "FF" in hexadecimal numeration means 255, "CC" means 204, and "99" means 153. If you click the color-display button, the hexadecimal code (in quotation marks) will be inserted into your document at the cursor location. Click the "Close button to select a color for use in HTML code and to close the box.
Insert--Time/Date: If you ever want to put the time (in 24-hour format) and the date (in MM/DD/YY format) into your text (e.g., 21:12 PM 07/14/02) without typing in the letters and numbers, this menu item will do it.
SEARCH MENU
Search--Find (F2): Does the same thing as the Find button on the mini-toolbar.
Search--Replace (Standard) (Control+F2): Does the same thing as the Replace Button on the mini-toolbar.
Search--Replace (Multiple) (Control+F3): Lets you have as many "Replace" boxes at once as you want (so long as they'll fit on your screen). They come in pairs of "Replace" and "with" boxes. It doesn't matter if some of the pairs are both blank--but it does matter if only one in a pair is blank. If the first one is blank, the pair will simply be skipped in the search; the program isn't going to waste time searching for nothing. If the second one is blank, though, whatever is in the first one will be replaced with nothing wherever it shows up in the text. "O ay, can you ee any ign of abue?"--that's "O say, can you see any sign of abuse?" after all the s's were replaced with nothings. This is quick and really simple; only exact matches (except for case) can be searched for here.
Press Enter or click Show More Pairs to get another pair of boxes. You can replace all the expressions you put in the "Replace" boxes with all the expressions in the corresponding "with" boxes at once, with a single click of the Replace All button. If you decide you don't want to do that, click Close. If you decide you didn't want to do that, but you already did, click Undo (or press Control+z) twice. The first undo will get rid of all the new text; the second undo will give you back the old text. (Just don't save the new text; if you do, the old text will be gone!)
Search--Line Number/Word Count (Control+w): If you've ever done any computer programming, you've probably received obnoxious error messages telling you there was something wrong with your program at line 666, or wherever. This menu item will open a dialog bar that (1) tells you what line the cursor is on and (2) lets you type in a line number that you can go to by pressing "Enter" or clicking "OK." (NOTE: The lines are numbered as they would appear with word wrap off, not on.)
On the same dialog bar, there's also a "Word Count" box. Obviously, the number in the box is supposed to represent the number of words in your text. The number won't change every time you add or delete a word, though, so click "Recount" to get an up-to-date word count (and line-number identification) if you've left this dialog bar open and changed some text. (Note to Tcl connoisseurs: this word count works in the ordinary way, by counting blocks of text separated by whitespace--not in the bizarre way used in some Tcl subcommands, in which punctuation marks and things are counted as separate "words.")
HTML MENU
HTML--Plain Text to HTML (Control+H): Converts all plain text in the text area to simple HTML. If you have unsaved, unnamed text, you'll be asked whether you want to save it first; text for a named file will automatically be saved. Use "Save As" to save the HTML under a different name than the plain text. If you don't want the HTML after all, click one of the New or Open buttons or menu items, and then don't save your changes.
HTML--Link-Text to HTML: Converts Link-Text to HTML. With this option, you will not be asked whether you want to save your Link-Text; unsaved changes will be lost. (I had to do it that way, I thought, to make the conversion work right. If you don't want to examine the program code for yourself, please don't ask why.)
HTML--Heading (Control+F9): If you select some text, this menu item will turn it into an HTML heading of the size you select, from H1 (really big) to H6 (really small). If you enter text in the "HTML Heading" entry box on the dialog bar, that text will turn into a heading. (Don't select some text and put some into the box; just do one or the other.) If you don't do either of these things but you click Insert in the heading box, you'll get heading codes and a place to put text between them in your document. (To get none of the above to happen, click Close.) The heading will go into the HTML Table Data Entry box (see below) or into the main text box, whichever is the active window at the time.
HTML--Font (Control+F8): Put this code in your document if you want to make text show up in different sizes and colors when displayed in a browser. (You can either select the text first or type it in afterward.) Enter a positive number from 1 to 4 in the "Font Size" spinbox on the dialog bar to make the text bigger, or a negative number from -1 to -2 to make it smaller. Click Open Color Selector to pick a color; you'll see the color code show up next to "Font Color" in the "Font" selection box. (For details about the color selector, see "Color" under "Insert Menu" in this guide.) Then click Insert Color, Insert Size, or Insert Size + Color--or Close if you don't want to do this after all.
HTML--Anchor (Control+F7): If an HTML document contains a link to another place in the same document, an "anchor" is what indicates where the other place is. First, in the "Anchor name" entry box on the dialog bar, you put in the anchor code, which looks like this: <a name="#Anchor Name Here">»</a>. Then you go to where the link is to be inserted, and insert it (see below).
HTML--Link (F7): You, too, can make links that people can click on to view web pages, send e-mail, etc.! After selecting this menu item, click one of the buttons on the "Link" dialog bar to put in the right prefix for World Wide Web (WWW), E-mail, or File Transfer Protocol (FTP). If you've inserted any anchors and you click Anchor, the name of the last anchor you inserted will show up in the "Link to URL" entry box after the anchor symbol (#). The "Other" button won't put in any prefix. The Link-Text button won't either; instead, it will make the "Insert Link" button (or the Enter key) insert a Link-Text link instead of an HTML link. (See the Link-Text section below for information about the extremely simple Link-Text format, in which this User Help Guide is supplied with WISH Supernotepad.)
Put the rest of the code for the link (such as "blablabla.org" for a website, "hogwasher@blablabla.org" for an e-mail link, or "file:/usr/local/bin/supernotepad", with no prefix selected, for a file on your computer) after the prefix (if any) in the "Link to URL" entry box; if the entry box contains anything you don't want, just delete it. If you have some text selected in the text area, press Enter or click Insert Link after putting in the link code; the selected text will then turn into the link name, which will be underlined in blue (or whatever) when displayed in a browser. Otherwise, type the link name into the "Show name" entry box and then press Enter or click Insert Link. If you don't really want to do any of this, click Close.
HTML--Image (Control+F11): To have an image appear in your document when displayed in a browser, click this menu item. If the image is going to be in the same directory as the document, pick the "relative" path to the image (this will be just the name of the file, e.g., "papenguin.gif"). Type the name into the "Image file name" box or click the "Pick" button to select the image file. If the document might be in a different directory, pick the "absolute" path (including the entire URL, e.g., "http://www.penguineer.com/pa/papenguin.gif"). Then type the URL for the directory (not including the file name) into the "Directory URL" box.
"Left" and "right" alignment mean the image will appear on the left or the right side of the screen with text flowing around it; "Top," "Middle," and "Bottom" mean the text will be aligned with the top, the middle, or the bottom of the image (or will continue below the image, if the image is in a separate HTML line or paragraph). To let people read about your image even when they can't see it (if they have image loading turned off or they use a text-only browser), put a description of the image in the "Image description" entry box. If you know the height and width of your image in pixels (the little dots of light that appear on the monitor screen), you can put them in the "Height" and "Width" spinboxes. If you want some blank space or a border to appear around the image, put numbers of pixels into the "Horiz," "Vert," or "Border" spinboxes. Then click Insert to put all the codes into your document, or Close to avoid doing so.
HTML--List (F11): To make an HTML list quickly with numbered or un-numbered items, first click to select the style of numbering or un-numbering (bulleting) you want. Then type each item into the "HTML Link" entry box on the dialog bar, and insert it by hitting Enter or clicking Insert. Click Done when done, and the HTML code to finish off the list will be inserted. (It will be inserted even if there's no list; in that case, just use Undo to get rid of it.)
If you haven't thought of any items yet but you want some numbers or bullets ready in case you think of any, just hit Enter the correct number of times; then you'll see <li> (list item) and </li> (end list item) codes in your document. When you think of the items at last, just type each item into your document right between an <li> code and the following </li> code (like this: <li>Pa Penguin</li>). You won't see numbers or bullets in the HTML code, but they'll show up when the document is displayed in a browser window.
HTML--Table: Create (F12): If a simple list isn't good enough for you, you can make a table with rows and columns. Click this menu item to get an HTML Table Setup box with spaces for a table summary (like "Image description," only for a table); "Horiz," "Vert," etc., just like in the "Insert Image" box; space inside and between cells, to keep your table from looking too cramped; and buttons to select or deselect a background color for the table.
After you're done with these, click Make Table or hit Enter. You'll get an HTML Table Data Entry box where you can type in the cell contents, make a cell spread over more than one row or column, choose how to align the contents of cells or entire rows, and select a different background color for each row or even for every cell if you don't have anything better to do with your time. (These color codes won't show up in the Data Entry box, but they will in the document when you hit Enter or click Insert.) Unless you say different by changing the selection in the "Cell type" option menu, the first row of the table will contain "Header" cells (probably shown in bold type in the browser) and the other rows will be ordinary "Data" cells. When you've hit Enter or clicked Insert enough times to fill in the top cell of each column you want to appear in the table, click Begin new row to start another row. Don't forget to click Done to insert the codes that go at the end of the row.
HTML--Table: Continue (Control+F12): To go on entering data into a table you started before, click the blank line just below any </tr> (end of row) code. Then use this menu item; the HTML Table Data Entry box will open up. When you enter some data, the codes for a new row and cell will automatically be inserted. If you have to stop again before you're done, click "Done" to insert the end-of-row codes; when you start up yet again, click below the last </tr> code and get going as before.
HTML--Paragraph (F6): Web browsers don't care how many times you hit "Enter"; they want to see <br /> to display text on a new line, and <p> to leave some blank space before a new paragraph. It's considered better form to put </p> at the end of a paragraph, too (although, in simple HTML, you don't really have to). So, if you've already written your paragraph, you need to select it (triple-clicking should work) before you press F6 or click this menu item to put <p> before and </p> after the paragraph. Otherwise, you can type the paragraph in after you've inserted the codes. The F6 key (but not the menu item) will insert these characters into other text and entry boxes (such as "Find," "Replace," "HTML Table Data Entry," and more), as well as into the main text box. Just click on the window containing the box you want to use, and then click the button for the special character. (The F3, F8, F9, and Control+F6 keys, mentioned below, will also work with entry boxes.)
HTML--Line Break (F3): Puts in a <br /> code to make the browser display the following text on a new line, but without extra space above the new line. For this, you don't need to select the text before pressing F3 or clicking this menu item.
HTML--Italics (F8): Either select the text to be italicized before inserting the codes, or type the text in afterward; <i> (to begin the italics) will be inserted at the beginning, and </i> (to stop them) at the end. This works for Link-Text too (see below).
HTML--Bold (F9): To turn weak, cowardly text into bold text, <b> goes at the beginning. To say "Thus far and no farther" to boldness, </b> has to go at the end. Select the text to be emboldened first or type it in afterward. Works for Link-Text too.
HTML--Center (Control+F6): If you want your entire HTML document to have equally squiggly margins on the left and the right, insert a <center> code first and then type in your text. Otherwise, type in only the text you want centered, or select it first. (This code will work to center a table horizontally, too.) After the point where </center> (end centering) appears, the margins won't squiggle any more. Works for Link-Text too.
TCL/TK MENU
Tcl/Tk--New Script (Control+F5): If you have any idea how to write computer programs in the almost superbly simple Tcl/Tk programming language, this menu item will start you off right by giving you the first couple of lines for the program script. If you don't have any idea how to write programs but you'd like to learn, you might try the books that enabled me, starting with approximately no programming experience, to write WISH Supernotepad. These books are Graphical Applications with Tcl and Tk by Eric Foster-Johnson, Tcl/Tk Programmer's Reference by Christopher Nelson, and Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk by Brent Welch. With the help of the relevant parts of these books, you should actually be able to read the program code for WISH Supernotepad and figure out how it works.
Tcl/Tk--Run Selected Code (F5): You've actually written some Tcl/Tk program code and now you want to find out whether it works? Select the code and hit F5 (or select this menu item) to run it. If all goes well, you'll see a window open up with the widgets you've configured to run your commands, and you can test them to see if they work right. If all doesn't go well, click "Details" in the obnoxious error message box to see where and how your program went wrong.
*** WARNING: *** Don't test any widgets that invoke the "exit" command. If they work, they'll shut down WISH Supernotepad as well as the program you're testing, and they won't even pause to save your changes! Instead, click the "close" box on your program's title bar when you're done testing the program.
Tcl/Tk--Find Closing (Control-Alt-[ ): Braces, brackets, and quotes are very important in Tcl/Tk program code. They always have to come in pairs, and they have to be in the right places too, or else you get obnoxious error messages. To find out whether you have a pair of them in the right places--or to identify the wrong places you have them in instead--select the opening brace ( { ), bracket ( [ ), or quote ( " ) and click this menu item or hit Control-Alt-[ (that's a bracket). Everything from the opening to the closing brace, bracket, or quote will be selected. If there isn't a closing one, you'll get a friendly error message.
Tcl/Tk--Auto-tab: Useful for writing indented paragraphs, as well as Tcl/Tk or other indented program code. If the beginning of a line has one or more tabs, every paragraph you type after that point will have the same number of tabs until you get rid of them--or until you do some code-writing things that will cause more or fewer tabs to be inserted. The code-writing tab tricks are supposed to be in accordance with standard Tcl style; let me know if you find any that aren't. (Note: Auto-tab is automatically turned off during HTML list creation, which uses its own method of tab insertion. Then, if it was on before, it's turned back on when the list is finished.)
Tcl/Tk--More Tabs (Control-+): In Tcl/Tk code, you should have everything properly indented for maximum legibility. If you change your code, sometimes a section will end up indented too much or too little. Instead of manually inserting or removing tabs on every line that needs to be changed, you can select all the lines and put an extra tab in each one by clicking this menu item or pressing Control, Shift, and + (the plus/equals key) all at once. The selection will remain; just do the same thing again and again, quick, if you need more and more tabs.
Tcl/Tk--More Tabs (Control-+): Likewise, if you have too many tabs, you can get rid of one tab on each line all at once by clicking this menu item or pressing Control and the "minus" key. If a line has no tabs in front of it any more, this function will stop working so you don't start hacking out text instead of tabs.
Tcl/Tk--Curly Braces { } (Control-{ ): Hitting Control-{ (actually Control-Shift plus the key with the "{" character) or clicking this menu item will give you a closing brace ( } ) for every opening brace ( { ) to help you keep track.
Tcl/Tk--Next Braces (Control-Insert): Takes the cursor out of one pair of braces and puts it into a new pair, separated from the old pair by a space. Very useful when typing expressions such as this:
for {set a 1} {$a <= 100} {incr a} {
puts "$a. I will not write Tcl/Tk code with unmatched braces!"
}
Tcl/Tk--Leave Braces (Shift-Enter): WISH Supernotepad employs automatic indentation to help you write good-looking, comprehensible Tcl/Tk code. The expression above was written with automatic indentation. To get the last "}" to return to the left margin, I pressed Shift-Enter. You can do this too--but note that it will only work right if the cursor is before the last "}" when you press these keys.
Tcl/Tk--Square Brackets [ ] (Control-[ ): Like braces, square brackets need to come in pairs; you need a "]" for every "[". Hitting Control-[ or clicking this menu item will give you one.
Tcl/Tk--Angle Brackets < > (Control-< );
Tcl/Tk--Parentheses ( ) (Control-( );
Tcl/Tk--Quotes " " (Control-" ): Same basic idea: A pair of containing marks are inserted, and the cursor goes between them.
DISPLAY MENU
Display--Colors: This menu item will open up a "WISH Color Picker Plus" box to let you determine what colors will appear in the program's windows. In the box, you'll see sliders to change the proportions of red, green, and blue, and a button to display the color. The sliders go from 0 (none) to 255 (maximum). There's also a listbox containing color names; you can right-click or double left-click to select a color, and then modify it with the sliders if you wish. The "PICK" button displays the selected color, with its name or hexadecimal (base 16) code in black letters if the color is light, or white ones if the color is dark. For example, if you select a color with 255 parts red, 204 parts green, and 153 parts blue, the hexadecimal code (displayed in black letters) will be "FFCC99" because "FF" in hexadecimal numeration means 255, "CC" means 204, and "99" means 153.
To the right of the color names, there's a label that says "CHOOSE COLOR TO CHANGE," followed by a bunch of things you can change the color of (e.g., window background, buttons, boxes, labels, and more). On each line here, there's a radiobutton, then the name of something to change the color of, and finally a little button displaying the current color and name or code of that thing. Click a radiobutton to select a line; then click the big "PICK" button, or a little color button on another line. The color from the button you click will be copied to the color button on the selected line. The change won't show up elsewhere until you click the "Apply Picked Colors" button below the color-name listbox.
Near the bottom left corner of the box, there's a color-scheme listbox with an entry line for adding or changing color-scheme names. Some names of sample color schemes should be in the listbox. (They come from a subdirectory of your home directory, "/home/[you]/.wishes/colorschemes"; the code for each color scheme is kept in a separate, human-readable file.) To apply a color scheme, select it and then click "Apply Color Scheme" (you can also just right-click or double-click the color name). To create a new color scheme, pick the colors for the scheme and click "Apply Picked Colors"; then put a name for the scheme on the entry line and click "Name This Color Scheme" or hit Enter. To revise an existing color scheme, change some colors and enter the scheme name on the entry line (if it isn't already there); then hit Enter or click "Yes" in the box that will ask whether to revise the color scheme. Obviously, click the color-scheme name and "Delete Color Scheme" to delete a color scheme. Finally, click OK to save the currently applied colors as your preferred colors, or Close to close the color-selection box without saving.
Display--Font: Opens a box with a list of the fonts on your system. No fancy stuff here: only one font at a time is displayed in each WISH Supernotepad window; bold and italic are displayed in Link-Text (see below), otherwise not. The name and size of your current font will be displayed, in the font of that name and size, in the lower left corner of the box. Single-click a font name to see that font displayed in the lower left corner; spin the spinbox up or down to change the size of the font. (Not every font comes in every size, as you probably know already.) When you're satisfied, double-click or right-click the font name in the list, or hit Enter or click OK, to apply the selected font to your WISH Supernotepad window. Do it again if you don't like the results. Click Close if you get tired of messing with fonts and just want to keep the one you've got. For best results in activities like writing program code and preparing e-texts formatted with newlines everywhere, use a fixed-width font ("lucidatypewriter" is one of my favorites).
Display--HTML in Browser: What you don't see in WISH Supernotepad is what you get, if you save an HTML file and then click this menu item. If a default browser has been designated, your HTML file will open up in that browser. Otherwise, you'll get a chance to name a browser (use the "official name" that you would use to run the browser from the command line--e.g., konqueror or mozilla-firefox).
Display--Change Browser: If you have a default browser but you want to try another one, click this menu item, enter the "official name" of the browser, and click OK.
Display--Link-Text: Like HTML, only much simpler, Link-Text uses simple link tags (see below) and the following markup codes: <b> and </b> for bold; <i> and </i> for italic; <c> and </c> (or, if you insist, <center> and </center>) for centered text. (You can also make combinations, like <bic>, </cbi>, or whatnot. If you want angle brackets to be displayed and not interpreted, as in this paragraph, just surround them with «angle quotes» from the Special Character box.)
This User Help Guide comes in Link-Text format with the program. Just click the Link-Text menu item to get WISH Supernotepad to display a Link-Text file with clickable links and bold, italic, and centered text; click it again to get it to stop. You can edit the file when the Link-Text display is either on or off.
The link tags, in plain text, look like this: <link "Link-Text">»Link-Text</link>. The part in quotes refers to a unique segment of text that is searched for when you click a displayed link--it can be anything, as long as it's unique and exactly the same as the part of the link in quotes. If it isn't unique, only the first instance of it will be found; if it isn't exactly the same, it won't be found at all. That's about all there is to Link-Text--the world's simplest hypertext format, I believe.
Display--Format/Window Size: To format text with line breaks ("newlines") so it will stay the same whether word wrap is on or off, use this menu item. Use the "Format to Width" spinbox on the dialog bar to set the desired width of text with line breaks; then click "Format" or hit Enter. The width of the WISH Supernotepad window will temporarily change to the specified width for formatted text, so the program can replicate the appearance of the text in the window. If you have text selected, only that text will get the line breaks; otherwise, all the text will get them. If the text is long, you'll see a label that says "Formatting ... may take a while for long text .... Please wait."
You can also use the "Format/Window Size" dialog bar to change the height and width (in characters) of text displayed in the WISH Supernotepad window; that's what the "Height" and "Window Width" spinboxes are for. Click "Change display" when the numbers are right. Click "Close" when done.
Display--Omit Needless Newlines: Opens a dialog bar that lets you get rid of unwanted line breaks ("newlines") in text. If you've inserted some text that has words broken in the middle, click "Reunite broken words"; otherwise, use "No broken words." If you want all the text to be mushed together with no line breaks at all, uncheck "Keep paragraphs separate"; otherwise, line breaks with tabs, and double line breaks, will be retained as they were. Hit Enter or click "Eject needless newlines" to do the job, or "Close" to get rid of the dialog bar.
Display--Word Wrap: Click this item (turn word wrap off) to see the ends of your long lines of text disappear over the horizon; click again (turn word wrap on) to see them reappear.
In the Help menu, "About" gives you a little title box with an "OK" button in it. "User Help" gives you this User Help Guide. You already know that.
Somewhere up above, I promised you a list of accelerator keys and what they do. Here, at last, it is.
Braces, Curly : Control+{
Braces, Leave : Shift+Enter
Braces, Next : Shift+Home
Brackets, Angle : Control+<
Brackets, Square : Control+[
Color Code : Control+F4
Convert to HTML : Control+H
Copy : Control+c
Cut : Control+x
Delete : Del
Find : F2
Find Closing (Tcl/Tk) : Control+Alt+[ (bracket)
HTML Anchor : Control+F7
HTML Bold : F9
HTML Center : Control+F6
HTML Font : Control+F8
HTML Heading : Control+F9
HTML Image : Control+F11
HTML Italics : F8
HTML Line Break : F3
HTML Link : F7
HTML List : F11
HTML Paragraph : F6
HTML Table (Continue) : Control+F12
HTML Table (Create) : F12
Insert Recent : Control+, (comma)
Line Number/Word Count : Control+w
New Script (Tcl/Tk) : Control+F5
New Window : Control+n
Open Recent : Control+, (period)
Parentheses : Control+(
Paste : Control+g
Print? : Control+q
Quotes : Control+"
Redo : Control+r
Replace (Multiple) : Control+F3
Replace (Standard) : Control+F2
Run Selected Code (Tcl/Tk) : F5
Save : Control+s
Select All : Control+/
Special Characters : F4
Supercopy : Control+C
Supercut : Control+X
Superpaste : F1
Undo : Control+z
David McClamrock <mcclamrock@locl.net>
November 2008
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