fancier requests...

MultiEdit has a mechanism built in, that it called "templates"; this allowed user to type two letters of a language construct, then SPACE, and it would expand it into a complete language block. For example, I could type "wh[space]" and it would expand to:

while () {
}

with the cursor sitting in the parentheses... I got very accustomed to this, and somewhat miss it. While I can live without it, and there are many other things that PsPad does MUCH better than ME, I just wanted to ask if something like this exists in PsPad already ??

I see something called "Edit Clip Definition File", but don't know what it actually does, nor how to use it. (BTW, I have no help in the program at all, the Help and FAQ buttons are greyed out, don't know if that's expected behavior...)

If something of this nature does *not* already exist, I would ask our developer to please put this on his "think about" list... however, this is clearly a massive endeavour to attempt, don't know if it's reasonable to try to completely implement. (ME provided a complete set of dialogs to configure the formatting of the templates for each language).

PSPad offers 2 tools.

1. Autocomplete
this tool can be called by Ctrl+J (or you can set interval for automatical calling). It offers you any words from existing text, e.g. names of your defined functions.

2. Clips
list of clips are called with Ctrl+Space or Shift+Space (or you can assign shortcut).
Write wh and press Ctrl+Space. It shows you list of the clips begining of WH and you can choose and insert same text as ME and cursor stays between brackets.

PSPad allows you to use simple clips like this, include use selected text for clip or write complex interactive clips as you can see in HTML language.
Whole definition is in TEXT files with simple syntax. Description is in PSPad help file.

To add new clip, select any part of your code and press Ctrl+Alt+Space. Fill in name, description and save it.

Gorlash:

(BTW, I have no help in the program at all, the Help and FAQ buttons are greyed out, don't know if that's expected behavior...)

There is a PSPad.chm help file in pspad root. It should open from within the toolbar. Don't know why it is greyed out at yours. I can open it on Win 7 64 from toolbar.

Please note that this file is from 2007. There are some online resources where you can read this file too. gogogadgetscott.info

Okay, I'll try both of these and see how they work for me.

BTW, I don't *have* a pspad help file... I don't know why; I don't recall how I originally installed the program, whether it was from an installer, or just a zip file... more recently, I've just been unzipping the updates.

I'll just download the current .zip installer and see if it has a help file in it.

Later Note: I don't have any .chm in pspad root. I'll look in more-recent files, as I noted before.

Thank you for the help-website link!

Even later note: Okay, I downloaded the portable version, copied the .chm file over to my pspad directory, and now I have the Help and FAQ entries working!! Problem Solved.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2014-10-07 17:47 by Gorlash.

It's currious. In PSPad full ZIP is PSPad.chm
I just installed PSPad using English installer and there is PSPad.chm in PSPad root folder.

If you used a developer build, it contains changed files ONLY. It means you have limites PSPad functionality. Download the current full ZIP (portable), unzip it (keep subfolders) into folder where is your PSPad located. As the next step, download the current PSPad developer build and do the same.

PSPad is portable, installer is for users comfort only. You can simple move it into any folder and run.

Well, Ctrl-J wasn't that useful for me, but clips are perfect !!!
I created clips with all my commonly-used blocks; I can then hit Ctrl-Space, type the first letter of the block I want to use, hit Enter, and it's there, with the cursor just where I want it!!!

PsPad gets more magnificent every day that I use it!!!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-10-07 18:53 by Gorlash.

You can do it by opposite way - start write your clip, e.g. wh and press Ctrl+Space. It will show you all clips, starting wh

PSPad comes with predefined clips for many languages. Did you really unpacked current full version? If you use developer build, you are lacking lot of PSPad's functionality.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-10-07 19:05 by pspad.

okay, I installed V4.58, then extracted build 2507, then copied over the previous INI files and a couple of other recent files (my colors file and cpp.def), and everything (including help) works fine, including your fix for my new-file issue.

Thank you once again for all your efforts!!

oops... I *did* unzip the full pspad458en.zip, but I copied my cpp.def over the original!! In the immortal words of "Yes Man"... "That was probably pretty dumb, huh?"... I'll recover the original and check it out again!

Okay, everything works fine now... the help files are present, I have the entire cpp.def file, with my mods installed (to change the block format to meet my usage).

I believe that every ability that I had in MultiEdit, I now have in PsPad; not only that, but backups are *much* easier with PsPad than they were with ME, because ME stored its configurations in a binary file buried somewhere the User directory; I love the fact that when I zip up the pspad directory, Everything that I need is in the file!! That is megaexosuperlative !!!!!!!