Code Browser Documentation

The application supports two independent features:

A loaded file can be displayed in zero, one or more windows.

Usually, a text editor has only one window per file. When you want to open a file that is already opened, it just brings its window to front. With Code Browser, a file is loaded only once but several windows can be opened on it.

Each window can show one or more panes: each one displays the content of the folder or link selected by its predecessor. The layout of the active window can be changed using the View menu.

There is 3 classes of layouts.

There is an unlimited undo stack for each loaded file.

You must be careful since a window can display several files and several windows can display the same file: undo may cancel a change made in another window if the focus is in the wrong pane. Anyway an undo operation can always be undone with the redo command.

Code Browser has two types of search and replace: iterative and global. The global one searches all occurrences of a string and displays a list of links to matching lines. The two modes does not support same features:

The editor uses two configuration files:

For each configuration file, the program first loads the file in the program directory, then merge it with the file in the home directory if any. In addition an extra configuration file can be merge to preferences.cb-config when using the -c option from the command line.

The files from the program directory contain original settings that can be overriden by the settings from the file in home directory. It will be erased and replaced when upgrading (using make install on unix or the installer on windows). So avoid modifying it.

The files from the home directory contain your customizations and won't be lost when upgrading. This file if not exist is a copy of the default preferences.cb-config for easier use, but you can remove everything from this file and just add your changes.

The file specified in command line (-c) is typically used for project specific customizations. e.g. user tools to compile and run a specific project.

A configuration file is just a sequence of properties and elements.

A property name starts with a letter and can contain letters, digits and dashes (-).

property = value

The parenthesis are not required and can be omitted when there is no ambiguity.

An element is a named object containing properties and other elements.

def name
	...
end

The name has the same restrictions as property names.

An element can contain a special property 'prototype' that references another element. If this property is set, this element inherits all properties of the specified target element.

A property can overwrite directly an existing value in a sub-element:

sub-elem-1.sub-elem-2.property = value

A configuration file is not restricted to properties recognized by the editor, you can define your own and reuse them at different places.

The preferences have access to the following builtin properties: There is builtin properties accessible in preferences.cb-config. These properties are used to define the system color themes but you can use them.

Use the Options command from the Tools menu to edit the preferences.

If there is no preference file in the home directory, the file is loaded from the program directory and is immediately renamed with the home directory, so it will be saved to the right location. If the directory does not exist, it will be created automatically.

def name
  auto-indentation = (true|false)
  expand-tabulation = (true|false)
  tabulation-size = size
  word-wrap = (true|false)
end

def name
  caption = caption
  command = command name
  arguments = list of arguments
  directory = initial directory
  save-all = (true|false)
  show-window = (true|false)
  language = language definition
  layout = 0-8
  tree-view = (true|false)
  hot-key = key
  auto-close = (true|false)
end

filename:line:message
filename(line):message

If you want to edit the language file, either copy languages.cb-config in your home directory, or backup it before re-installing a new version.

code-browser [-c config] file1 file2 ...

Starts the editor and opens a window for each file specified in command line.