Preferences Quick Reference

• General Settings
• Display Settings
• Editor Settings
• Colour Settings
• Sound Settings
• IconBar Settings
• Menus

The preferences editor is for making changes to the operation of CodeBench itself. From here you can adjust settings relating to requesters, display, the editor, certain colour choices and the icon bar. All these options affect the program, as opposed to the project. Project specific settings are changed using the Project settings window. Selecting Save after any changes will apply the settings permanently. Please note not all options will be available in the free licence versions.

General Settings

The General section of the preferences deals mostly with requesters and confirmations. Each option is explained below for completeness:

• Confirm Quit
  This option will prompt you to confirm exit from the program.
  
  
• Confirm overwriting files
  When a file is saved, enabling this option will ask you to confirm.
  
  
• Automatically save files
  This option will save the file, if modified, when switching tabs in the editor. This option is recommended to ensure data integrity.
  
  
• Save all before building
  When building the project, this option enables all modified files to be saved to disk. This option is recommended to ensure data integrity.
  
  
• Snapshot windows on exit
  This option will save all of the various windows positions when the program exits.
  
  
• Use Hints
  Enables the gadget help hints for various parts of the interface.
  
  
• Show "Handy Hints"
  These are shown after loading a project, and give a brief overview about a specific topic which may not be instantly obvious. There are a considerable amount of these, and any hints that may be of interest may offer the chance to look at the documentation for a more detailed view. This is accessed by selecting "Show me more". These hints can also be shown at any time by selecting the "Show me a Handy Hint" menu item.
  
  
• Save cursor positions for each file
  By setting this option, you can save information in the project that specifies where the cursor was placed when the saving took place. This helps to assist the recreation of the project when it is loaded in again, and will place the cursor for each file as it was in the last session.
  
  
• Show this many items in the recent list
  You can configure the amount of items to show in the recent list. The default is 16, and this cannot be changed in the free licence versions.
  
  
• Look here for projects by default
  The string gadget at the bottom allows you to set a directory that will be used as the default when loading a project. By default, the directory that CodeBench is in will be used, but you can redirect this by setting a directory here. Either type the directory name into the gadget, or use the gadget and select the directory you require from the requester.
  
  
• Printer Device
  This allows you to set the DOS device that encompasses the general printer setting. You may configure the printer specifics with the "Configure..." button which will open the system Printer preferences editor for you. You may also set this to an AmigaDOS file for printing later.
  

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Display Settings

The display options are described below:

• Use Workbench screen
  This is enabled by default and will force CodeBench to use the same screen as the Workbench. Disabling this option will allow you to select a screenmode for a custom screen to open on. Simply click the screenmode selection button and select the mode of your choosing. The selected mode will be shown in the Screen Mode gadget.
  
  
• Screen Mode
  You may select the screen mode on which to have CodeBench appear by clicking the gadget on the far right. This will open a requester where the mode you require may be chosen.
  
  
• Make default pubscreen when active
  This option is useful if you have other applications that you want to open on the CodeBench screen. Normally, applications that do not use a specific screenmode will use the Workbench screen, and this option will force them to use the CodeBench screen instead. This only applies if the CodeBench screen is currently the front-most one. If the CodeBench screen is sent to the back to reveal the Workbench, or other screen, the Workbench screen is made the default screen again. This allows you to actually choose when to force applications to use your screen.
  
  
• Disable window effects
  If you have window effects enabled for the Workbench screen, this may not always be appropriate for the CodeBench custom screen, so by setting this option those effects are turned off. This means no transparency or drop-shadows.
  
  
• Use Default screen font.
  This option is not available unless you set CodeBench to use a custom screen, in which case the default screen font will be used. You can override this setting by selecting the font you wish to use with the font selection gadget. The chosen font and size will be shown in the Screen Font gadget. This setting does not affect the editor itself, as it will only used "fixed-width" fonts. Proportional fonts are not a good idea when programming!
  
  
• Open Clip Manager
  The Clip manager window displays any sections of text that may have been transferred to the clipboard in this session. As each section is placed on the clipboard, that text is also added to the top of the list in this window. The current text in the clipboard is also highlighted in green, so that the normal "Paste" operation may be used.
  
  
• Open Quick-Link window
  Enabling this option will automatically open the Quick-Link window when a project or file is loaded. This option is recommended for your convenience
  
  
• Display prototypes in Function menu
  Enabling this option will show the function definition in the popup menu from the Project window
  

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Editor Settings

These options affect the editor and its functionality directly, and are as follows:

• Editor font
  This option allows the font used by the editor to be changed. It works in exactly the same way as the screen font above, except it will only change the font in the actual editor, and will only allow "fixed width" fonts. This means that each character is the same width, so 'i' takes up the same space as 'w', which makes formatting source code much easier, thus making it easier to read.
  
  
• LookAhead
  This option sets a certain amount of lines of code that the user will always keep in view when scrolling the page, allowing the user to see what text is following. This can be up to 20 lines, or set it to ZERO to turn off the feature.
  
  
• Use Clipboard unit
  By default, CodeBench uses unit 0, which allows interaction with most other applications that support the clipboard. There may be occasions where you do not want outside influences to affect the Clipboard manager so you can set which clipboard unit (up to 255) to use here.
  
  
• Page Guide Column
  When the top ruler is being displayed, a draggable page guide is available to make it easier to format texts to specific widths. This setting tells the editor which column to "park" the column guide in.
  
  
• Indent new lines
  When starting a new line, the previous line will be used as a reference point for indentation. Whichever column the text starts on that line will determine the position at which the text starts on the new line. Further indentation options can be set from the Project Settings window.
  
  
• Show Ruler at top of page
  Render a column ruler across the top of the editor view. A configurable column marker is also displayed for ease of aligning text to a set size.
  
  
• Show Line Number column
  Will render the line numbers down the left hand side making it easier to jump around in the text.
  
  
• Show End Of Line markers
  This option will visually mark the end of the lines. These replacement characters do not form part of the actual text.
  
  
• Show Tabulation markers
  This option will visibly replace tabulation characters in the editor with a '>'. These replacement characters do not form part of the actual text.
  
  
  
  Key Bindings Editor
  The key strokes which specify an action to be performed in the editor can be adjusted to suit your needs here.
  

  The list contains all the actions that can be configured. A default set of key bindings has been supplied, but you are free to edit any of these to be more familiar to those keystrokes that you are more used to.

  At the top right, you will see which qualifiers should be set for this particular action, and below it is the key. Some keys produce a non-printable character, so in those cases the keys have to be described by a special text. Selecting a few of the default bindings will show you how the actions are described.
  
  You can alternatively use the "Learn..." button. Once clicked, the input to the binding editor is blocked while it waits for you to press a key (plus any qualifiers) you may want. The description fields will then be filled in for you, and the "Save" button activated.

  If you decide you do not want a particular binding, the "Clear" button will omit any description for this action.
  
  

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Colour Settings

This page gives the options for setting colours.

The first section defines the foreground and background colours of the "functions" and user defined "labels" in the Quick-Link window.

The second section allows you to specify an editor "Theme". This is a colour configuration which sets the editor colours to the settings provided in it. There are a number of preset themes that come with CodeBench, and you can create your own by clicking the "Edit Theme" button. This opens the configuration window, and allows you to set any settings you require.

While you edit a theme, you will have an editor preview, which you can use to see the results of the changes you have made. Each configurable colour is shown in the list on the left hand side, and it can be edited by simply double-clicking the option in the list. This will open the colour configuration requester where the specific colour option can be set. Once you are happy with the colour, click "OK" to return to the theme editor, and the applied change will be shown in the preview.

The name of the theme you are editing is shown in the title window, and will be used when you click on "Save As". You can save this theme with any name you like, effectively creating a new custom theme.

This custom theme can be selected from the preferences editor by clicking on the gadget, and selecting the name of your new theme from the resulting requester.

The new theme will be used automatically when saving the preferences. Below is a few examples of the themes in action, and these are supplied as presets in the "Themes" directory.

GreyDays.theme Petes.theme

Vi.theme

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Sound Settings

Sounds can be used to notify you that a certain event has taken place. As you can see from above, the supported events are currently:

• A project has finished loading.
• A build operation completed successfully.
• A build operation completed but had some warnings.
• A build operation completed but had some errors.
  

You may use any sound files that are supported by the AmigaOS Datatypes system. You may enter the name of the sound file directly into the string gadget, or you may select it from a file requester by clicking on the "Popfile" gadget next to the string gadget. Once you have selected the sound file, you may optionally decide to test it with the "Play" button to the far right.

This feature may be of most use to those users that switch to another screen to work while a build operation is in progress. As usual, you will also get a system notification that the build has completed, but now you can be notified by a sound being played too.

Due to the nature of copyrights, no sound files are currently distributed within the CodeBench distribution. If you have any freely-distributable sound files that you think would be appropriate to be part of the distribution, please get in touch with us, and we can include them as a contribution.

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IconBar Settings

These are icons that provide shortcuts to launch specific programs of your choosing. By default, the CodeBench shell and the AutoDoc viewer are configured for your convenience. The icons used to represent these programs will be automatically scaled from the program icon, or the alternative icon, to suit the current size of the IconBar.

As you can see above, we have also configured the "Filer" program and "MultiView" as app-links. The options above are described below:

• Show icon and button bar
  If you decide you do not want to use the IconBar, it can be turned on and off with this option. Currently, because of the dynamics involved, enabling this option requires a restart of CodeBench.

• Activate IconBar when showing
  This makes the IconBar window become active as it comes into view. The main reason for this is that the Help-Hints supplied for each AppLink will be shown automatically when hovering the mouse over each one (see below). This saves having to manually activate the IconBar, and enabling this feature will also reactivate the previously active window before the IconBar appeared.
  
  
• 
  Opens the help panel. (see below)
  
  
• App-Links
  Here is where you can configure each of the App-Links. The list on the right is all the current App-Links that are available. You can select one of these to edit it, or you can change the order by using the up and down arrow buttons. This will change the order in which they are shown in the IconBar, the item at the top will be the first item on the left, and so on.
  
  Name
  This is the name of the App-Link, and is used to reference the item in the right hand list.
  
  Path
  This is the AmigaDOS path to the actual executable you want to run when this App-Link is selected in the IconBar. This can also take parameters in order to allow the program to work with the current file, directory or project target (see below).
  
  Alt Icon Path
  If you want to use a different icon for this App-Link in the IconBar, you can choose which icon is to be used here.
  
  Help Hint
  You may enter a descriptive text here, and it will be shown when hovering the mouse pointer over this App-Link when the IconBar is active. This helps to identify each App-Links purpose easily.
  
  

The help panel describes the parameters that you may supply in order to make each App-Link work with the current file or directory.

Here we describe which parameters can be added to each App-Link.

Adding "{f}" into the path string will expand to the current file when the program is executed.

For example, "MultiView {f}" would run the MultiView program and show the current file when this App-Link is selected.

Alternatively, "Filer {d}" would open a new lister with the projects home directory as current.

We can also supply the projects target, and this would allow us to run an external debugger on the finished program, like so: "MyDebugger {t}".

This makes the use of App-Links much more useful than simply running programs "ad-hoc".

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