__________________________________________________________________________ WinEdt Shell (TM) ================= Release 1.41-c April, 1997 --- Shareware Version --- Copyright (C) 1995-1997 by Aleksander Simonic. All rights reserved. E-mail: alex@cs.dal.ca __________________________________________________________________________ This file contains some important information on the shareware distribution of WinEdt Shell(TM), a state of the art text editor and Shell for Windows. All product names referenced herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. __________________________________________________________________________ Contents: ========= * What is WinEdt? * What is WinEdt NOT (as yet)? * Future Plans * Registration, Licensing Agreement, Disclaimer * What's New in this Release? * Upgrading WinEdt * Installing WinEdt * More about WinEdt * Getting Started * Hints * Troubleshooting and Support * History __________________________________________________________________________ * What is WinEdt? =============== WinEdt(TM) is a fast and flexible text Editor and Shell for Win32 (Windows 95 or Windows NT). WinEdt can be used to edit HUGE text files. The user can open many files at once and can switch between them using the Window Menu or "Ctrl+Tab" switch, according to Multiple Documents Interface (MDI) standards. Besides standard editing features, WinEdt supports: Wrapping, Block/Column Selection and Operations, Highlighting, Spell-Checking and on-the-spot highlighting of misspelled words, Delimiters matching, Translation Tables, Restoring the Desktop, Macro Facility, user-definable Graphic Interfaces, DDE, etc... WinEdt can collect certain information (such as "Table of Contents" or "Labels") in your documents and use it for quick moving and referencing. WinEdt's flexibility includes: * completely customizable Menu Bar (including shortcut keys) * completely customizable Tool Bar (with up to three lines of Icons) * User-Defined Popup Menus for context sensitive response to the right mouse button and/or shortcut key For advanced users, WinEdt provides further means to customize the program by also offering: * Transparent conversion of TeX equivalents to 8-bit international characters (such as umlauts and accented characters) during Reading and Saving * A Simple Macro Language * A definition of double-stroke shortcuts through a flexible Popup Menu mechanism * The ability to set-up context sensitive commands * Special Graphic Interfaces that allow users to associate an array of Icons with certain commands or macros (see Insert/LaTeX Symbols Menu for some examples) * Fast Compilation of a "Table of Contents" or "Labels" for quick positioning or referencing (respectively) WinEdt comes with a comprehensive, Context-Sensitive Help. WinEdt Shell can be customized to run with different utilities and is particularly suitable for writing TeX documents. WinEdt allows the user to install DOS and Windows Applications and activate them by using a Menu Command or a Tool Bar Button. Furthermore, WinEdt can pass currently opened files as parameters, making sure that changes are automatically saved before the files are compiled. After defining utilities (such as TeX, LaTeX, BibTeX, DVIWIN), most of the common tasks associated with writing a TeX document or a project are reduced to clicking a Tool Bar Button or selecting a Menu Command. WinEdt is suitable for writing papers, theses or books, using a simple but efficient strategy to manage projects. WinEdt is designed as a flexible, GUI (Graphical User Interface) oriented shell and editor that performs all routine tasks related to the compiling, previewing and spell-checking of ([La]TeX) documents, allowing the author to focus on their contents. * What do you need to run WinEdt? =============================== IBM Compatible PC 386 / 33MHz CPU (or better) 8Mb RAM (recommended 16Mb or more) 8Mb Hard Drive Space available (recommended 20Mb or more) Win3x, Win95 or WinNT (recommended Win95 or NT4.0) __________________________________________________________________________ * What is WinEdt NOT (as yet)? ============================ WinEdt 1.41 is NOT a native 32-bit application. However, WinEdt detects the presence of a 32-bit API if you are running Win32 and in that case uses over one hundred 32-bit API functions. This accounts for WinEdt's ability to handle long filenames and interact with other 32-bit applications on your system. This release of WinEdt will run on Win3.x as well as on Win95/WinNT; however, the appearance of standard Windows Dialogs and WinEdt's Main Window as well as the I/O operations are affected by the absence of 32-bit API. The next major release, WinEdt 1.414 (planned for later this year), will be compiled with Borland's Delphi as a native 32-bit application. Users who are resistant or unable to upgrade their Win3.x can be assured that I will be maintaining a separate 16-bit version of the program. This release of WinEdt also lacks the following features: * Syntax Highlighting of multi-line Environments Highlighting is limited to one line. This allows WinEdt to efficiently maintain your screen (which is especially important on slower computers). Removing this restriction would imply that the insertion of a single character can in principle affect the rest of your document and would significantly complicate and slow down the highlighting algorithm... * Soft Returns WinEdt's Wrapping is based on the concept of a paragraph that conforms to TeX conventions. Furthermore, WinEdt allows users to disable wrapping of lines starting with certain characters. This is particularly useful when parts of a text (such as displayed equations or TeX definitions) should not be formatted in any way... * Variable Sized Fonts The restriction to the use of fixed pitched fonts is of a technical nature. Certain features (such as column selection and operations) only work properly with fixed width characters. * 16-bit character sets WinEdt only supports 8-bit characters. While this is sufficient for language sensitive support of most European versions of Windows it does not allow the use of Chinese or Japanese alphabets and their associated fonts. Should these features turn out to be an imperative for a large enough number of users I will consider their implementation and include them as an option in one of the future releases of the program. WinEdt does not require a setup utility and it can be run as is. While this leaves it up to you, the potential user, to place the appropriate shortcut in Windows Start Menu, it also gives you the peace of mind that WinEdt won't mess-up your Windows Registry in any way. If you decide to remove the program from your system simply erase WinEdt's base directory and no trace of the program will be left behind. WinEdt is a project in progress. If you have any suggestions, comments or criticisms, do not hesitate to contact me. __________________________________________________________________________ * Future Plans ============ The first priority is to compile a native 32-bit version of WinEdt. WinEdt already acts like a 32-bit application in many respects and it disposes of all dynamically loaded and created objects. While the speed and functionality of a 32-bit version will not significantly increase, the appearance of certain objects (scroll bars and dialogs) will be improved. A 32-bit platform will also make it easier for me to maintain and further improve the program. Macro language will be extended to include expressions, loops and conditional statements. Documentation will be improved and a printed manual will eventually be produced together with a better on-line help. As before, suggestions and reports from registered users will be processed and implemented (as time permits). I am also encouraging contributions from users who have configured WinEdt for any particular task (including new Interfaces, LaTeX Macros, Templates, Dictionaries, useful hints, etc...). If you are willing to document your custom setup and share it with others please let me know and I'll include your contribution as a part of the support for WinEdt (with the appropriate credit and copyright notice). Below is the list of the immediate suggestions that will be implemented over the next few months for the next major release (1.41-d): * Bold, Italic and Underline Attributes in Highlighting * New Project Manager (default directories) * Split Windows * Regular Expressions (Search and Replace) * Repetitive Tasks (Record & Play) * Printing: Enumerate, Wrap and Headers (Optional) * More than One Dictionary * Dynamically allocated String Parameters (besides %0..%9) I'll also accept further suggestions and continue to work on the minor problems that I was not able to resolve for this release. __________________________________________________________________________ * Registration, Licensing Agreement, Disclaimer ============================================= WinEdt is distributed as shareware (try-before-you-buy software). The program may be used for an evaluation period of 31 days. Any further use requires a license from the author obtained through the Registration Procedure. Registration of a personal copy of WinEdt carries a fee of US $40. Special rates are available for students, multiple-users and/or site licenses. Purchasing a license (i.e., registering) for WinEdt entitles you to use the program on any and all computers available to you, provided that you do not operate WinEdt on more than one computer or terminal at the same time and you do not operate WinEdt on a network. Copying/duplicating this software is permitted only for the purposes of backup and/or archiving. This software cannot be sold without written authorization from the author. You may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer or modify this software in any way. Upgrades are FREE for registered users, who also qualify for free technical support from the author. Information on new releases and upgrades of WinEdt are communicated to registered users who subscribe to the WinEdt Mailing List (for details see below, "Troubleshooting and Support"). Details concerning the method of payment and the latest version of the program can be obtained by contacting the author at: alex@cs.dal.ca (Subject: WinEdt [Release 1.41-c]) Inquiries are normally answered within 24 hours. This shareware version of WinEdt is fully functional and is not crippled in any way. Note that some commands only make sense in certain contexts (for example, when part of the text is selected). For your convenience such commands are automatically disabled when they cannot be applied. After the trial period has elapsed, WinEdt will begin issuing warning messages reminding you that the registration is overdue. While such warnings won't cause any damage to your documents they will prove to be rather annoying and distracting. If you are using WinEdt for serious work you are advised to contact the author regarding the registration before the end of your trial period. DISCLAIMER: THE AUTHOR OF THIS PROGRAM ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND MAKES NO WARRANTY, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IT IS, AND YOU, ITS USER, ASSUME ALL RISKS WHEN USING IT. __________________________________________________________________________ * What's New? =========== WinEdt's online help contains detailed information on what has been added to the program in the last three releases. Here is a brief summary of the changes in this release. WinEdt 1.41-c has been thoroughly tested over a period of six weeks on all Windows platforms. Let's first address the (major) problems and their solutions in WinEdt 1.41-c: The problem with crashes on Win3x has been resolved. The problems with help and launching the applications on WinNT have been solved. WinEdt now supports long filenames both on WinNT and Win95. WinEdt's dialogs and Common Dialogs on WinNT and Win95 now have the new (standard) 3-dimensional looks (BWCC is no longer a part of the WinEdt package). On Win3x the Dialogs look plain white (like standard templates for common dialogs, message boxes etc). WinEdt 1.41-c has only one small incompatibility with 1.41-b or 1.41-a: The ASCII code for the symbol used as a "bullet" has changed from 128 to 127. This was necessary to avoid problems with OEM to ANSI translations. If you are upgrading you'll have to modify the definition of the "Bullet" filter set in the Highlighting Dialog (straightforward 128->127) and replace all standard LaTeX and BibTeX templates included in WinEdt package. Furthermore, you'll have to use Replace (Multifile Option) to fix your existing customized templates (I already made the change in the last beta version of WinEdt 1.41-c). This affects all (template) files in: ...\EDT\bib ...\EDT\env ...\EDT\Template If you didn't customize any of these files you can simply replace them with the new ones. Otherwise you'll have to replace all the bullets with the new ones... Sorry about this but I hope you agree that I had to address this problem for international users of emTeX (there are plenty) that use OEM page code... Beside a series of minor bug fixes and consistency corrections the following new features have been implemented for this release: The status line now has an extra (Optional) field displaying the name of the current "Main File". This might be useful for users who are working on more than one project simultaneously. Clicking on this field brings up the Project Setup Dialog... A new Macro function "PutPreamble" copies the preamble to a file. This should make Compile Selected Text work better, if the preamble is contained in the same document as the selected text. Alternative Backup and Auto Save behaviour. WinEdt now provides a few macro functions that can be used to provide an interface to DDE Servers. Configuration Dialog now has a few OS specific Options that should prevent any problems related to loading 32-bit API on different platforms. Spell Checking Dialog has a new option that instructs WinEdt to detect words repeated twice in a row (a common typing mistake). MiKTeX 1.07 has changed the location of help files. The new default settings take this into consideration. Those MiKTeX users who are upgrading will have to change the appropriate entries in the Help Menu. The default settings for WinEdt 1.41-c come with a new set of Dialogs representing AMS Symbols (courtesy of Jannie Hofmeyr). The Macro interfaces and Bitmaps defining these Dialogs are in "...\EDT\AMS". If you want to define menu Items (or a popup menu) corresponding to these Dialogs in your upgrade you'll have to define corresponding macro menu items (based on the ones in "Insert/LaTeX Symbols" [such as Greek Letters]; it should be pretty straightforward to do so). German users might be interested in checking out a new German Dictionary (already uploaded on CTAN "...winedt/dict/de2.dic", courtesy of Robert Lieske) that contains correctly capitalized words... In the file "winedt.bmp" (containing the description of all tool bar icons) a few Icons were replaced with others more relevant for TeX users (courtesy of Manfred Moser). The syntax highlighting now contains lists of C and Pascal Keywords and Directives. The default WinEdt settings (winedt.ini) now comes with fully functional examples of LaTeX Documents in "...\EDT\SAMPLES". A few inconsistencies have been fixed and a number of cosmetic changes have been made for this release. Help has been extended on topics that were puzzling many new and old users. Among much else, some vital information on the Translation Tables and Screen Layout Dialog has been added along with the new topic consisting of the answers to FAQs. __________________________________________________________________________ * Upgrading WinEdt ================ If you have an old version of WinEdt prior to WinEdt 1.41-a you'll have to install the program from scratch. Please read the sections "What's new?" and "Installing WinEdt" and proceed as instructed. Any customization will have to be done again. You may want to keep the old version until you customize the new one. If you are upgrading from WinEdt 1.41-a (or later) all your custom settings will be preserved but you may want to take advantage of certain new features added in subsequent release(s). Please read the section on "What's new?" and then proceed as follows: Rename your old WinEdt base directory. Unzip the file "WinEdt.zip". Start the new "winedt.exe" program. Enter your registration data in Help/ Register Dialog. Start Options/ Configuration Dialog and make sure that the Options related to your OS are correctly set (see the Context Sensitive Help in Configuration Dialog for more details). If you didn't make many custom settings you may prefer to proceed with customization of the new version. However, if you spent a lot of time setting the Options and installing utilities in your previous version, you should exit WinEdt and copy your old "winedt.ini" file to the new WinEdt base directory (replacing the new one). Upon restarting the program your old settings are effective. If you customized any files in "...\EDT" directory you should manually copy them to the new location. The same applies to "winedt.bmp" file if you defined your own tool bar icons. WARNING: WinEdt is becoming loaded with new features and on some systems with low memory and slow processors its performance might get affected by its size and enhanced interface. Please keep the old version of WinEdt as a backup until you are sure that the new version is fully operational on your system and is not causing any stability problems. WinEdt 1.41-c has been well tested on a variety of platforms and computers and is performing reasonably well and appears to be very stable. However, it is impossible to be absolutely certain that there are NO problems on ANY platform... __________________________________________________________________________ * Installing WinEdt ================= The file "winedt.zip" contains all the files needed to install WinEdt on your system. The file is compressed with the standard "pkware". Unpack this file and move down to "...\Winedt" folder. This is WinEdt's base directory on your system. WinEdt 1.41-c is now ready to run. Please read and follow the instructions below before you proceed... (a) The following file is down-loaded and unzipped from ftp.borland.com pub/techinfo/techdocs.../*.zip (courtesy of Borland International, Inc.) and is included in this package for your convenience: borte1.fon - BorTE Font Library (optional) Optional: BorTE family is an excellent choice as a font for WinEdt. If you want WinEdt to use this font you should first install it: Settings / Control Panel / Font ... The file borte1.fon (pub/techinfo/techdocs/other/misc/borte1.zip) is provided for this purpose. Initially WinEdt uses "Courier New" Font on your System. However, you can change the font through Options/Fonts... Dialog. (b) The following files should be in WinEdt's base directory: dlg32.exe - [Essential] Interface to 32-bit Common Dialogs winedt.exe - [Essential] WinEdt Executable winedt.hlp - [Essential] WinEdt Help winedt.dat - [Essential] WinEdt Data winedt.ini - [Essential] WinEdt Initialization File winedt.wed - [Essential] WinEdt Startup Data (Binary) winedt.bmp - [Essential] Tool Bar Buttons winedt.dic - Default (very basic) English Dictionary winedt.txt - Important Text to Read about WinEdt winedt.log - The listing of default key bindings (produced with WinEdt's "Tools/Key Bindings" Command) Please note that a special interface "dlg32.exe" (courtesy of Michael Gile) is used for Common Dialogs (such as Open and Save) when the Option "Uses 32-bit Common Dialogs" in the Options/ Configuration Dialog is enabled. This is necessary on Win95 but on WinNT WinEdt can access these dialogs directly which is a preferred (and faster) method. Read also the context sensitive help in the Configuration Dialog. (c) The folder "EDT\..." contains samples, batch files, templates, macros, and Graphic Interfaces used by WinEdt. ...\EDT\Samples This folder contains samples of LaTeX documents. These samples illustrate how to use SRC specials and might prove useful for beginners. They are based on my own work and should be looked upon only as examples. As you probably observe with your own work, one's style of writing TeX documents changes with practice and I myself would typeset many things differently now... ...\EDT\BIN BIN Folder contains ".bat" and ".pif" files that can run MiKTeX. If your MiKTeX is installed in its default directory ("c:\texmf") you don't have to make any changes. Otherwise you'll have to modify the ".bat" files. "MakePK.bat" can be used by DVIWIN to generate the required fonts. See MiKTeX's documentation for more information. WinEdt can be configured to run any application on your system (see the Help topic, "Running Applications from WinEdt"). ...\EDT\COMPILE This folder contains a sample of how to compile a selected part of the text (in the background) and display it with DVIWIN when finished. You can perform similar tasks based on this example... ...\EDT\HELP This folder contains a sample of how to call LaTeX context sensitive help. The macro will first select your current word or TeX command and then call Windows Help with the selected string as a keyword. If you explicitly select a string then your string is assumed to be the Keyword. If you want to take advantage of this macro you should define the macro "Keyword" as "%b\edt\help\latex.edt" (do not enclose the definition in "[...]"). Please note that the help file "c:\texmf\doc\hlp\latex2e.hlp" is a part of MiKTeX distribution. ...\EDT\TEMPLATE This folder contains templates for the "New Document..." command. You may add more files and fill in some information (such as your address and signature). To add or remove a template you should insert or delete the appropriate line in "new.edt". You may decide to replace the "New" command in WinEdt's "File" Menu with this "Macro Interface" which is initially placed in the "Insert" Menu. ...\EDT\GUI This folder contains graphic interface to WinEdt's Insert/Latex Symbol commands. Each command is defined by the Macro Interface (".edt" file) and the bitmap (".bmp" file) containing the array of buttons. You should try out these commands to see how they work. If you decide to define more GUI commands you should check the ".edt" files for more hints. The ".bmp" files in this directory were created as follows: while displaying a page with DVIWIN the contents of the screen were copied as a bitmap into the clipboard by pressing the "Print Screen" Key. The image was then pasted into Windows Paint program where it was appropriately clipped and sized while the background was painted gray. You may take a look at the bitmaps using Windows Paint accessory. ...\EDT\AMS This folder contains graphic interface to WinEdt's Insert/AMS-TeX Symbol commands. The templates were created by Jannie Hofmeyr. The same comments as to "GUI" apply here... ...\EDT\GATHER The Macro Interfaces in this directory are used by the commands in "Tools/Gather" Menu. These commands are used to collect certain information in your document (such as "table of contents" or LaTeX labels) and display the appropriate information in a pop-up list box. You can then quickly move through your document and/or insert a reference to the selected label. For more info read the comments in the appropriate ".edt" files. This mechanism is flexible beyond the applications included with WinEdt and you can utilize it for further purposes... ...\EDT\ENV This folder contains templates for certain LaTeX environments that can be inserted through Insert/Latex Environments Commands. You'll probably want to change and/or add your own templates. Note the use of "bullets" to mark the places where information has to be entered. You may also want to install these commands in a Popup Menu that can be activated by a shortcut (let's say Alt+E). WinEdt allows you to create "invisible" popup menus for the purpose of two-level shortcut keys (for example a stroke Alt+E Alt+T can be defined to insert a tabular environment). For more information see the Help topic, "Popup Menus". Refer also to Help on "Context Sensitive Commands" for certain features that you might want to utilize in further customizing the program. ...\EDT\BIB This folder contains templates for certain BibTeX Items that can be inserted through Insert/Bib Items Commands. The same remarks as in LaTeX environments apply. ...\EDT\MISC This folder contains the backup for "winedt.ini" file (note that your own .ini file will contain all the details of your menu setup and customizations). This backup may be used if by accident you "mess up" the settings and want to restore the defaults. The file "ascii.txt" contains all ASCII characters [#0..#255], which is useful for setting up custom Translation Tables or configuring WinEdt to work with international (8-bit) characters. The following files deal with the insertion of SRC specials for Inverse Search with DVIWIN (see Help topic "DVIWIN Forward and Inverse Search" for more information). It is important that you use the package designed for your version of LaTeX2e because the package "srcltx.sty" redefines the output routine. You should copy the file "srcltx**.sty" corresponding to your version of LaTeX to "srcltx.sty" and then proceed with the instructions below. If you are using an older release of LaTeX please copy the file "srcltx06.sty" to "srcltx.sty", and then read and follow the instructions below. You are advised to take a look at the "srcltx.sty" for more details on how the SRC specials are implemented... srcltx06.sty - SRC Specials and WinEdt Source File tracking [LaTeX2e 06 December 1, 1996] *** LaTeX in MiKTeX 1.07 srcltx05.sty - SRC Specials and WinEdt Source File tracking [LaTeX2e 05 June 1, 1996] srcltx04.sty - SRC Specials and WinEdt Source File tracking [LaTeX2e 04 December 1, 1995] *** LaTeX in MiKTeX 1.05 srctex.sty - SRC Specials and WinEdt Source File tracking TeX If you decide to use "srctex.sty" and "srcltx.sty" [La]TeX packages you should place them in any directory where your [La]TeX searches for input files. (See the Help topic "DVIWIN Forward and Inverse Search" for more information). (d) You can install WinEdt by creating a shortcut in one of the Program Groups. Windows Explorer is a tool for creating and maintaining shortcuts as well as associating applications with certain file types. You may decide to try WinEdt before installing the program. In that case you can activate the program using your favorite Windows method to start an application (for example: Run... or Windows Explorer...). The WinEdt startup directory (namely the directory in which the Open Dialog searches for files when first activated) can be specified by creating a shortcut to "winedt.exe". The shortcut's startup directory can be set through Explorers' Properties Dialog. You can also change the Icon and create a shortcut key. Win95 Explorer is a tool that allows you to create shortcuts and set their properties. You will likely place the shortcut in one of the "Windows/Start Menu/Programs" subfolders. This way WinEdt can be activated through the Start Button... If you activate WinEdt by clicking the associated document then the document's location can become the startup directory, depending on the settings you choose in WinEdt/ Options/ Preferences Dialog ("Reset Folder on Open" option). You can define more than one shortcut to "winedt.exe" for different tasks that WinEdt is performing for you. If you are, for example, writing a book you may define a shortcut BOOK defined as: winedt.exe -C=MY_BOOK -P book.tex See WinEdt Help/Command Line Parameters for more information on the admissible parameters and qualifiers. If you decide to use WinEdt as a text editor on your system it is useful to associate it with certain file types (such as "*.txt;*.tex"...) through Windows Explorer/ View /Options... /File Types Dialog. WinEdt does not come with a "smart" setup utility that would perform tasks like this. While that leaves you (the user) with some work it also gives you the complete freedom to configure the system to your liking, without messing-up the Windows Registry. WinEdt does not place any files in your Windows directory and should you decide to remove it from your system you can do so (without leaving any traces) by simply removing the WinEdt base directory. (e) You are now ready to start WinEdt: - Start the program - Start the Options/ Configuration Dialog and choose the proper OS specific settings (read context sensitive help in this dialog)... - Choose the "File Menu/Open" Command and select the file "winedt.txt" - Read the file and follow the instructions - If you encounter problems, press F1 for Help __________________________________________________________________________ * More about WinEdt ================= WinEdt provides a flexible integrated environment for Windows or DOS based applications that require ASCII input (such as TeX or compilers). It was designed for easy and intuitive use by beginners, as well as for more demanding use by advanced users who may want to create their own Graphic Interfaces and take advantage of macro facilities. WinEdt is flexible with line terminators and does not require any conversion if a file is transferred from another system (depending on the settings in "Options/ Advanced/ Translations" Dialog, any sequence of CR or LF is considered a line terminator). If you want to save the document in a different format (for example, Unix) you should check the "Tools/ Document Status" Dialog! WinEdt allows users to customize almost every aspect of its behaviour and appearance (including the contents of the Menu). Shell setup is performed through "Options" Dialogs that deal with certain aspects of WinEdt's behaviour. Some dialogs can be invoked in response to a right-mouse button click in the appropriate Window area. For example, clicking on the Tool Bar puts WinEdt in a special mode in which you can rearrange your Tool Bar by simply dragging the icons (buttons) to the desired place. Similarly, clicking on the menu bar starts the Menu Setup Dialog. Status line responds to the right-mouse button by invoking the Screen Layout Dialog. Other right-mouse clicks display user-defined popup menus. Status line also responds to the left mouse button. Depending on the field that was clicked, it toggles the value of WRAP/NO-WRAP, Insert/Overwrite, Line/Block and Spell/No-Spell Parameters, etc... WinEdt does not support soft-returns. However, if you enable "WRAP" the editor will format paragraphs on the spot (the way WYSIWYG word processors do). Nevertheless, WinEdt assumes that paragraphs start and end with either an empty line or a TeX control sequence or an indented line. By disabling formatting of indented lines it is possible to use the Wrap option even when parts of text (such as displayed math equations) should not be formatted. Try different settings in "Options/ Screen Layout" and "Options/ Advanced/ LaTeX Mode" Dialogs! You will probably install your own utilities and documents to get access to frequently used tools on your system (such as TeX, DVI Driver, etc..) and define some shortcut keys. However, once you become more familiar with the Shell you'll see that you can customize other aspects, as well. Note that you have full control over the Menu, Shortcut Keys, Tool Bar Appearance, Syntax Highlighting, Background and Text Colors, Fonts used in Editing Window and Status Line, Delimiters, and much more... The possibilities are practically unlimited -- take your time and explore them! __________________________________________________________________________ * Getting Started =============== This is a good moment to browse through the Menu and see the WinEdt Menu Commands. You may notice that some commands and Tool Bar Buttons are Grayed (disabled). That means that they currently do not make sense (for example due to the lack of the selected text). You may also notice that most commands in the Utilities and Documents Menus appear not to work properly. Please note that items in these menus are defined by the user through the Menu Setup Dialog (click the menu with the right mouse button). You should find it easy to modify these menus in order to install the accessories on your system. You can open a new window and try to type something. Note that the names of all opened windows are appended to the Window Menu making it easy to switch between them (try also Ctrl+Tab "cool" MDI switch). You may also want to Paste the Selected Text to/ from another Application using the Edit Menu Commands which refer to the Windows ClipBoard. The "Tools/ Gather/ Table of Contents" Command displays the Table of Contents for this file and allows you to move quickly between the sections in this document. When you become more familiar with WinEdt 1.41 you may check out how the "Gather" feature works and how it can be customized for different purposes. Note that WinEdt can Undo and Redo any sequence of commands. The only limit to Undoing is the size of the Undo Buffer, which can be specified through the "Options/ Preferences" Dialog. If you usually don't run more than one application with Windows 95 this may be a good moment to change your habit. Press the "F1" key in order to get Help on WinEdt. Help is a different application, and your WinEdt window is (partially) covered by the Help Window; but WinEdt is still there exactly as it was before. You can press Alt+Tab "cool" switch to return to the WinEdt window (now the Help Window is in the background). Windows 95 also provides the Task Bar for easy switching between applications. Now is the moment to read the On-Line Help. It is well worth investing an hour or so (depending on your experience with Windows 95 Applications) to read the information and try different WinEdt features, as described in Help. Learning how to use Windows Help will make you a survivor and (if you don't already know it) you are NOT wasting your time getting familiar with it. Hint: You may want to leave certain details for later. That's fine. At this stage it is important to remember that certain features exist and you can return to them later. The more you know about WinEdt the more likely you'll be able to use it efficiently, allowing you to focus on your work, while WinEdt is performing the routine tasks for you. WinEdt offers plenty of Options that determine its behaviour. You should take your time and try different commands in the Options Menu. If any Option is not self-evident try to read the context sensitive help by pressing the Help Button in the corresponding Dialog. You may have different suggestions regarding the default settings and the shortcuts defined in the original distribution of WinEdt. However, you should keep in mind that our personal preferences are often influenced by our experience with other applications and no two users (with the possible exception of hard-line emacs addicts) will agree on how the Menu should be "logically" arranged and the shortcuts assigned. WinEdt's flexibility is to a great extent the result of many (reasonable but contradictory) suggestions, in the attempt to provide users with an easy-to-use interface to configure the Shell to their standards (whatever they may be). __________________________________________________________________________ * Hints ===== If you decide to use WinEdt as a text editor it is useful to associate it with files of a certain type. WinEdt can then be activated by double-clicking the associated file while browsing your computer. Windows Explorer lets you associate WinEdt with certain file types. Note that you can also drag a file into the running instance of WinEdt. WinEdt's behaviour is determined, to a large extent, by the initialization file. By default WinEdt assumes the file "winedt.ini" in the base directory to be the initialization file. However, if the FIRST parameter invoking WinEdt is "-E=myfile.ini" then the file "myfile.ini" is read as the initialization file. Note that you should NEVER edit the initialization file directly. In WinEdt 1.41, all changes must be made through the appropriate dialogs. Remember that the folder "...EDT\MISC" contains a backup of the original "ini" file. If you have customized WinEdt and don't quite like the result, you can always restore the original settings by copying this file to the base directory (replacing the "winedt.ini" which has taken your modifications into account). It is very unlikely that you'll want to run more than one instance of WinEdt Shell. And as such, you won't have to worry about any qualifiers because the default behaviour will likely suit your purpose... WinEdt does not support soft returns. WinEdt's Wrapping is based on the concept of a paragraph that conforms to TeX conventions. If you want to take advantage of the Wrapping feature you should first set the parameters (such as the right margin) in the "Screen Layout" Dialog. For your convenience this dialog gets activated by clicking on the status line with the right mouse button. Note that WinEdt does not reset the margins according to the size of your Window and the right margin should be set explicitly. In order to avoid annoying horizontal scrolling it is recommended that the right margin is set to one or two characters less than the physical size of your window. Also for your convenience, the size of your current window is displayed in the "Screen Layout" Dialog. You can specify whether formatting applies to indented text or not. By disabling the wrapping of indented lines feature you can easily handle parts of text that should not be formatted by simply indenting them (rather than switching the Wrapping Mode), as in the case of displayed math. Of course in such a text block it is up to you to enter a new line at the appropriate place... WinEdt uses a few parameters to determine which parts of the text should (not) be formatted in [La]TeX mode. The LaTeX Mode Dialog (in Options/ Advanced) has a field containing a list of specified characters that prevents WinEdt formatting the lines starting with any such character. It is recommended that, when working on a TeX document, you disable formatting of lines starting with " ","\" and "%" in order to ensure intelligible behaviour on the part of the Shell. The lines starting with any of the characters in the list serve as paragraph breaks and are not formatted (unless explicitly selected). While most of the lines starting with the [La]TeX command "\" should indeed be left alone there are (as always) a few exceptions. Control sequences (for example, "\cite", "\ref", "\%", "\$", "\#", etc...) are often part of your paragraph and should be treated as ordinary words. This can be achieved by entering such strings in the "Paragraph Break Exceptions" field (one per line). If you are using WinEdt's formatting abilities you'll probably notice that by a suitable choice of these parameters (in Tools/ Layout Settings) you can easily develop a style of writing TeX documents that is easy to maintain and relatively readable (for example, the displayed math should be indented). WinEdt has quite a few formatting commands in its Edit Menu. These commands can be used to align or move a selected block. You can also Insert or Append a string to the selected text. The formatting commands work both in Line and Block (Column) Selection Modes. If you have never used Block selections you should apply them for manipulating columns. WinEdt also supports Drag and Drop moving of selected blocks (once the Drag and Drop option is enabled in Options/ Preferences Dialog). If you press Ctrl Key while dragging the cursor to the desired position the block is copied to the new position (rather than moved). If you make a mistake while experimenting with these commands recall that WinEdt allows you to Undo any sequence of commands... Finally, a comment on the "srcltx.sty" package: the package is designed to insert "SRC" specials in the DVI file produced by LaTeX. This package DEPENDS on your version of LaTeX! If you encounter problems you should take a look at the package and try to make necessary changes (consulting "latex.ltx" source code). "SRC" specials are used by DVIWIN 2.9 to implement Search and Inverse Search. If you are not using DVIWIN there is no point inserting these specials. Some DVI utilities (such as dvips) may not like these specials and will consequently issue a warning every time they encounter them. If you want to "export" the DVI file or use other utilities on it you should compile your source without "SRC" specials. If you manage to fix the package for a particular LaTeX version (currently not supported) please send me the details and I'll include your patch as a part of the support for WinEdt. __________________________________________________________________________ * Troubleshooting and Support =========================== WinEdt has been thoroughly tested on all Windows platforms. It proved to be very stable and reasonably fast. All reported bugs form the previous release have been eliminated. However, should you encounter a bug or (god-forbid) experience a crash, please send me a report containing as many details as possible. I'll do my best to track down the problem and fix it for the next release. If you have trouble setting up WinEdt for a particular task first read the relevant information in this document and check the online help for more details. For certain (advanced) commands you should also consult the ".edt" files included in this release. If all this proves to be insufficient to solve your problem you can contact me by e-mail. I'll do my best to assist you with your problem. All such communications will be compiled into an "FAQ" document, to be included as a technical support in future releases of WinEdt. WinEdt's online Help already contains many FAQ's and answers! Due to the interest expressed in the new release of WinEdt 1.41, there is now a mailing list available for users who want to swap ideas, ask questions, draw on the expertise of others, are desperate for help, etc., etc... This will also be the new venue for news about upcoming patches, new releases, etc. To subscribe, please send an empty e-mail to the following address: winedt+list-request@wsg.net Make sure that the return address in your e-mail is correct. On subscribing you will also be sent instructions on how to remove yourself from the list, should you so wish. A few important things that you should know: ============================================ * Clicking the Menu with the right mouse button brings up the Menu Setup Dialog * Clicking the Tool Bar with the right mouse button brings up the Tool Bar Setup Dialog and puts you in a special mode. You can now rearrange the Tool Bar by dragging the Icons around. * Clicking the Status Line with the right mouse button brings up the Screen Layout Dialog. This Dialog allows you to set up certain parameters regarding wrapping, line width etc... * Fields "WRAP, "INS/Over", "LINE/Block" and "Spell" can be toggled by clicking them with the left mouse button. * The Options Menu contains all the commands that allow you to customize WinEdt... Check them (one by one) and if you are puzzled by the meaning of any parameters try the Help Button. By the appropriately chosen options in the Configuration Dialog WinEdt will remember and restore the desktop (all opened documents and the current position inside them) the next time you activate the program... If you want to use your custom dictionary or enable on-the- spot highlighting of misspelled words you should start Dictionary Manager ("Options/ Dictionary" Dialog) and reset the relevant parameters... A Note on Highlighting: WinEdt's default settings define different colors for certain sets of characters (Digits are displayed in Green, Uppercase Letters are Dark Blue, etc...). These settings look reasonably well on a (default) white background. However, if your Windows uses different colors for edit controls (or for some reason you don't like the default colors) you might want to change or disable these settings. To do so, start "Options/ Highlighting" Dialog, choose Filter Sets, and Disable the coloring of these sets by selecting the appropriate item in the list and removing the check mark in the "Enabled" Check Box (or you might want to choose a different color). However, DO NOT REMOVE (delete) any sets: that would affect other settings (including TeX Commands, Comments and Reserved Words)! If you want to add more sets you should append them at the end of the list. Inserting a new set item anywhere other than at the end of the list might affect other settings... __________________________________________________________________________ The possibilities are practically unlimited -- take your time and explore them! If you encounter any problems or bugs please contact me by e-mail: alex@cs.dal.ca Have fun! alex __________________________________________________________________________ * History ======= *** August 1995: WinEdt 3.1 (for Windows 3.1) *** October 1995: WinEdt 95 1-a (for Windows 95) *** November 1995: WinEdt 95 1-b (for Windows 95) *** December 1995: WinEdt 95 1-c (for Windows 95) *** February 1996: WinEdt 95 1-d (for Windows 95) *** June 1996: WinEdt 1.4-a (Windows 95,NT,3.x) WinEdt 1.4-a is the first serious attempt to turn WinEdt into an easy-to-use Shell for Windows. Users can modify almost every aspect of the Shell's behaviour through very intuitive Dialogs. All Dialogs come with a context sensitive help... *** July 1996: WinEdt 1.4-b (Windows 95,NT,3.x) WinEdt 1.4-b supports long file names on Win95... *** August 1996: WinEdt 1.4-c (Windows 95,NT,3.x) Bug Fixes and a few enhancements... __________________________________________________________________________ *** February 1997: WinEdt Shell 1.41-a (Windows 95,NT,3.x) A major upgrade. Many new features and enhancement... A brief summary of new features: * Delimiters (Auto-Matching) * Block Mode * Tool Bar * Tabs * C++ Errors * Status Line * Print Layout * Save Desktop * Menu + Shortcuts * Context Sensitive Mouse response: Popup Menus * Popup Menus and Double-Stroke Shortcuts * Translation Tables: Keyboard: Char->Char Screen: Char->Char Read: String->String Write: String->String Custom... Translate Command * Insert File * New %Input Parameters are available * Flexible Margins for formatting * Simple Commands: - DeleteLine - DeleteWord - ClearRight - ClearLeft - SelectWord ... * DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) * Drag and Drop Editing * Auto Save Timer * Bullets * Templates * Context Sensitive Commands * Graphic Interfaces * Simple Macro Language for Advanced Customization * Dictionary Manager and Spell Checking * A new help file *** March 1997: WinEdt Shell 1.41-b (Windows 95,NT,3.x) Bug Fixes, Extended Help and a few enhancements... *** April 1997: WinEdt Shell 1.41-c (Windows 95,NT,3.x) Major problems on Win3x and WinNT has been resolved New appearance of Dialogs and 32-bit Common Dialogs Bug Fixes, Extended Help and a few enhancements... *** Official Release of WinEdt Shell 1.41-c (April 13, 1997) ======================================================== - uploaded to CTAN (and its mirrors) ftp.dante.de (Germany) /tex-archive ftp.tex.ac.uk (England) /tex-archive (systems/win32/winedt/...) - uploaded to WinSite (and its mirrors) (ftp.winsite.com pc/win95/txtutil/winedt.zip) __________________________________________________________________________ THIS PROJECT DEPENDS ON THE NUMBER OF REGISTERED USERS! If you decide to use the program, please register your copy and support further development of WinEdt! Note that future releases and upgrades are FREE for registered users. __________________________________________________________________________