Enrico
Tröger

    &author_mail;

Nick
Treleaven

    nick.treleaven@btinternet.com

Frank
Lanitz

    frank@frank.uvena.de

2005-2007

This document is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. A copy of this license can be found in the file COPYING included with the source code of this program and see .

# Geany &appversion;

## Introduction

### About Geany

Geany is a small and lightweight Integrated Development Environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages. Another goal was to be as independent as possible from a special Desktop Environment like KDE or GNOME, so Geany only requires the GTK2 toolkit and therefore you only need the GTK2 runtime libraries installed to run it.

The basic features of Geany are:

- Syntax highlighting

- Code completion

- Auto completion of often-used constructs like "if", "for" and "while"

- Auto completion of XML and HTML tags

- Call tips

- Many supported filetypes including C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl, Pascal, and others

- Tag/Symbol lists

### About this document

This documentation is available in various formats like HTML, text and PDF. The latest version is always available at &appurl;.

### Where to get it

You can obtain Geany from &appurl; or perhaps from your distributor.

### License

Geany is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. A copy of this license can be found in the file COPYING included with the source code of this program or see .

The included Scintilla library (found in the subdirectory scintilla/) has its own license, which can be found in the appendix (see ).

## Installation

### Requirements

For compiling Geany yourself, you will need the GTK (>= 2.6.0) libraries and header files. You will also need the Pango, Glib and ATK libraries and header files. All these files are available at http://www.gtk.org.

Furthermore you need, of course, a C compiler and the Make tool; a C++ compiler is also required for the included Scintilla library. The GNU versions of these tools are recommended.

### Source compilation

Compiling Geany is quite easy. The following should do it:

    					% ./configure
    					% make
    					% make install

The configure script supports several common options, for a detailed list, type

    					% ./configure --help

There also some compile time options which can be found in `src/geany.h`. Please see for more information.

In the case that your system lacks dynamic linking loader support, you probably want to pass the option --disable-vte to the configure script. This prevents compiling Geany with dynamic linking loader support to automatically load `libvte.so.4` if available.

Geany has been successfully compiled and tested under Debian 3.1 Sarge, Debian 4.0 Etch, Fedora Core 3/4/5, LinuxFromScratch and FreeBSD 6.0. It also compiles under Microsoft Windows.

If there are any errors during compilation, check your build environment and try to find the error, otherwise contact the author at &author_mail;.

### Binary packages

#### Fedora

You can use the Fedora Core 4 repository from http://naturidentisch.de/packages/fc4/.

You can also use the Fedora Core 5 repository from http://naturidentisch.de/packages/fc5/.

#### Debian

Geany is available through the official Debian archives.

`apt-get install geany`

#### SuSE

Packages for SuSE are not yet available.

#### Gentoo

An ebuild for Gentoo can be found on http://bugs.gentoo.de.

## Usage

### Getting started

You can start Geany in the following ways:

- From the Desktop Environment menu

  Choose in your application menu of your used Desktop Environment: Development Geany .

- From the command line

  To start Geany from a command line, type the following and press Return:

      								% &app_small;

### Command line options

#### Command line Options

Short option | Long option | Function
--- | --- | ---
| --column | Set initial column number for the first opened file.
-c dir_name | --config=directory_name | Use an alternate configuration directory. Default configuration directory is `~/.&app_small;/` and there resides `&app_small;.conf` and other configuration files.
-d | --debug | Run Geany in debug mode, which means being verbose and printing lots of information.
-i | --new-instance | Do not open files in a running instance, force opening a new instance. Only available if Geany was compiled with support for Sockets.
-l | --line | Set initial line number for the first opened file.
-m | --no-msgwin | Do not show the message window. Use this option if you do not need compiler messages or VTE support.
-n | --no-ctags | Do not load auto completion and call tip data. Use this option if you do not want to use them.
-s | --no-session | Don't load the previous session's files.
-t | --no-terminal | Do not load terminal support. Use this option if you do not want to load the virtual terminal emulator widget at startup. If you do not have `libvte.so.4` installed, then terminal-support is automatically disabled. Only available if Geany was compiled with support for VTE.
| --vte-lib | Specify explicitly the path including filename or only the filename to the VTE library, e.g. `/usr/lib/libvte.so` or `libvte.so`. This option is only needed when the autodetection does not work. Only available if Geany was compiled with support for VTE.
-v | --version | Show version information and exit.
-? | --help | Show help information and exit.
| [files ...] | Open all given files at startup. This option causes Geany to ignore loading stored files from the last session (if enabled).

Geany supports all generic GTK options, a list is available on the help screen.

### General

#### Startup

At startup, Geany loads all files from the last time Geany was launched. You can disable this feature in the preferences dialog(see ). If you specify some files on the command line, only these files will be opened, but you can find the files from the last session in the file menu under the "Recent files" item. By default this contains the last 10 recently opened files. You can change the amount of recently opened files in the preferences dialog.

You can start several instances of Geany, but only the first will load files from the last session. To run a second instance of Geany, do not specify any filenames on the command-line, or disable opening files in a running instance using the appropriate command line option.

#### Opening files from the command-line in a running instance

Geany detects an already running instance of itself and opens files from the command-line in the already running instance. So, Geany can be used to view and edit files by opening them from other programs such as a file manager. If you do not like this for some reason, you can disable using the first instance by using the appropriate command line option - see .

#### Virtual terminal emulator widget (VTE)

If you have installed `libvte.so` in your system, it is loaded automatically by Geany, and you will have a terminal widget in the notebook at the bottom.

If Geany cannot find `libvte.so` at startup, the terminal widget will not be loaded. So there is no need to install the package containing this file in order to run Geany. Additionally, you can disable the use of the terminal widget by command line option, for more information see .

You can use this terminal (from now on called VTE) nearly as an usual terminal program like xterm. There is basic clipboard support. You can paste the contents of the clipboard by pressing the right mouse button to open the popup menu and choosing Paste. To copy text from the VTE, just select the desired text and then press the right mouse button and choose Copy from the popup menu. On systems running the X Window System you can paste the last selected text by pressing the middle mouse button in the VTE (on 2-button mice, the middle button can often be simulated by pressing both mouse buttons together).

In the preferences dialog you can specify a shell which should be started in the VTE. To make the specified shell a login shell just use the appropriate command line options for the shell. These options should be found in the manual page of the shell. For zsh and bash you can use the argument `--login`.

Geany tries to load `libvte.so`. If this fails, it tries to load `libvte.so.4`. If this fails too, you should check whether you installed libvte correctly. Again, Geany also runs without this library.

It could be, that the library is called something else than `libvte.so.4` (e.g. on FreeBSD 6.0 it is called `libvte.so.8`). So please set a link to the correct file (as root).

    # ln -s /usr/lib/libvte.so.X /usr/lib/libvte.so.4

Obviously, you have to adjust the paths and set X to the number of your `libvte.so`.

#### Defining own widget styles using .gtkrc-2.0

You can define your widget style for many of Geany's GUI parts. To do this, just edit your `.gtkrc-2.0` (usually found in your home directory on UNIX-like systems and in the etc subdirectory of your Geany installation on Windows).

To get a defined style get noticed by Geany you must it assign to one of Geany's widgets. To do so, use the following line:

`widget "Geany*" style "geany_style"`

This would assign your already defined style "geany_style" to all Geany widgets. You can also assign styles only to specific widgets. At the moment you can use the following widgets:

1. GeanyMainWindow

2. GeanyEditMenu

3. GeanyToolbarMenu

4. GeanyDialog

5. GeanyDialogPrefs

6. GeanyDialogProject

7. GeanyDialogSearch

Example of a simple .gtkrc-2.0:

    style "geanyStyle"
    {
    	font_name="Sans 12"
    }
    widget "GeanyMainWindow" style "geanyStyle"

    style "geanyStyle"
    {
    	font_name="Sans 10"
    }
    widget "GeanyPrefsDialog" style "geanyStyle"

### Character sets and Unicode Byte-Order-Mark (BOM)

#### Using character sets

Geany provides support for detecting and converting character sets. So you can open and save files in different character sets and even can convert a file from a character set to another one. To do this, Geany uses the character conversion capabilities of the GLib.

Only text files are supported, i.e. opening files which contain NUL-bytes may fail. Geany will try to open the file anyway but it is likely that the file will be truncated because it can only opened up to the first occurrence of the first NUL-byte. All characters after this position are lost and are not written when you save the file.

Geany tries to detect the encoding of a file while opening it. It might be that the encoding of a file cannot be detected correctly so you have to set manually the encoding of the file in order to display it correctly. You can this in the file open dialog by selecting an encoding in the drop down box or by reloading the file with the file menu item "Reload as". The auto detection works well for most encodings but there are also some encodings known where auto detection has its problems. Auto detecting the encoding of a file is not easy and sometimes an encoding might be detected not correctly.

There are different ways to use different encodings in Geany:

1. Using the file open dialog

   This opens the file with the encoding specified in the encoding drop down box. If the encoding is set to "Detect from file" auto detection will be used. If the encoding is set to "Without encoding (None)" the file will be opened without any character conversion and Geany will not try to auto detect the encoding(see below for more information).

2. Using the "Reload as" menu item

   This item reloads the current file with the specified encoding. It can help if you opened a file and found out that a wrong encoding was used.

3. Using the "Set encoding" menu item

   In contrary to the above two options, this will not change or reload the current file unless you save it. It is useful when you want to change the encoding of the file.

#### Special encoding "None"

There is a special encoding "None" which is actually no real encoding. It is useful when you know that Geany cannot auto detect the encoding of a file and it is not displayed correctly. Especially when the file contains NUL-bytes this can be useful to skip auto detection and open the file properly at least until the occurrence of the first NUL-byte. Using this encoding opens the file as it is without any character conversion.

#### Unicode Byte-Order-Mark (BOM)

Furthermore, Geany detects an Unicode Byte Order Mark (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_Order_Mark for details). Of course, this feature is only available if the opened file is in an unicode encoding. The Byte Order Mark helps to detect the encoding of a file, e.g. whether it is UTF-16LE or UTF-16BE and so on. On Unix-like systems using a Byte Order Mark could cause some problems, e.g. the gcc stops with stray errors, PHP does not parse a script containing a BOM and script files starting with a she-bang maybe cannot be started. In the status bar you can easily see whether the file starts with a BOM or not. If you want to set a BOM for a file or if you want to remove it from a file, just use the document menu and toggle the checkbox.

If you are unsure what a BOM is or if you do not understand where to use it, then it is not important for you and you can safely ignore it.

### Editing

#### Drag and drop of text

If you drag selected text in the editor widget of Geany the text is moved to the position where the mouse pointer is when releasing the mouse button. Holding Control when releasing the mouse button will copy the text instead. This behaviour was changed in Geany 0.11 - before the selected text was copied to the new position.

#### Auto indentation

Geany knows three types of auto indentation: None, Basic and Advanced.

##### Auto indentation types

None

  Disables auto indentation completely.

Basic

  Adds the same amount of whitespace on a new line as on the last line.

Advanced

  Does the same as Basic but also indents curly brackets and adds a tabulator character (or spaces) on a new line after an opening '{' brace.

#### Construct completion

Built-in construct completion is available for C-like languages. By default the Tab key is used straight after typing the construct keyword.

Example: `for`<TAB>

typed into a C file expands to:

    for (i = 0; i < ; i++)
    					{

    					}

#### Bookmarks

Geany provides a handy bookmarking feature that lets you mark one or more lines in a document, and return the cursor to them using a key combination.

To place a mark on a line, either left-mouse-click in the left margin of the editor window, or else use Ctrl-m. Either way, this will produce a small green plus symbol in the margin. You can have as many marks in a document as you like. Click again (or use Ctrl-m again) to remove the bookmark. To remove all the marks in a given document, use "Remove Markers" in the Document menu.

To navigate down your document, jumping from one mark to the next, use Ctrl-. (control period). To go in the opposite direction on the page, use Ctrl-, (control comma). Using the bookmarking feature together with the commands to switch from one editor tab to another (Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn and Ctrl-Tab) provides a particularly fast way to navigate around multiple files.

#### Send text through definable commands

You can define several custom commands in Geany and send the current selection to one of these commands. The output of the command will be used to replace the current selection. So, it is possible to use text formatting tools with Geany in a general way. The selected text will be sent to the standard input of the executed command, so the command should be able to read from it and it should print all results to its standard output which will be read by Geany. To help finding errors in executing the command, the output of the program's standard error will be printed on Geany's standard output.

To add a custom command, just go to the Set Custom Commands dialog in the Format sub menu of the Edit and Popup menu. Then click on Add to get a new text entry and type the command. You can also specify some command line options. To delete a command, just clear the text entry and press Ok. It will be deleted automatically.

#### Context actions

You can execute a specified command on the current word near the cursor position or an available selection and this word is passed as an argument to this command. It can be used for example to open some API documentation in a browser window or open any other external program. To do this, there is an menu entry in the popup menu of the editor widget and also a keyboard shortcut(see ).

The command can be specified in the preferences dialog and additionally for each filetype (see "context_action_cmd" in ). At executing, the filetype specific command is used if available otherwise the command specified in the preferences dialog is executed.

The passed word can be referred with the wildcard "%s" everywhere in the command, before executing it will be replaced by the current word. For example, the command to open the PHP API documentation would be:

`firefox "http://www.php.net/%s"`

when executing the command, the %s is substituted by the word near the cursor position or by the current selection. If the cursor is at the word "echo", a browser window will open(assumed your browser is called firefox) and it will open the address: http://www.php.net/echo.

### Search, replace and go to

This section describes search-related commands from the Search menu and the editor window's popup menu:

- Find

- Find usage *

- Find in files

- Replace

- Go to tag definition *

- Go to tag declaration *

- Go to line

* These items are available from the editor window's popup menu, or by using a keyboard shortcut (see ).

#### Find

The Find dialog is used for finding text in one or more open documents.

##### Find dialog

##### Matching options

The syntax for the Use regular expressions option is shown in .

The Use escape sequences option will transform any escaped characters into their UTF-8 equivalent. For example, `\t` will be transformed into a tab character. Other recognised symbols are: `\\`, `\n`, `\r`, `\uXXXX` (Unicode chararacters).

##### Find all

To find all matches, click on the Find All expander. This will reveal several options:

- In Document

- In Session

- Mark

Find All In Document will show a list of matching lines in the current document in the Messages tab of the Message Window. Find All In Session does the same for all open documents.

Mark will set markers for all matching lines in the current document, if the Markers margin is visible. If not, the background colour of matching lines will be highlighted. Markers and highlighting can be removed by selecting the Remove Markers command from the Document menu.

#### Find usage

Find usage searches all open files. It is similar to the Find All In Session Find dialog command.

If there is a selection, then it is used as the search text; otherwise the current word is used. The current word is either taken from the word nearest the edit cursor, or the word underneath the popup menu click position when the popup menu is used. The search results are shown in the Messages tab of the Message Window.

#### Find in files

Find in files is a more powerful version of Find usage that searches all files in a certain directory using the Grep tool. The Grep tool must be correctly set in Preferences to the path of the system's Grep utility. GNU Grep is recommended.

##### Find in files dialog

The Extra options field is used to pass any additional arguments to the `grep` tool.

##### Filtering out version control files

When using the Recurse in subfolders option with a directory that's under version control, you can set the Extra options field to use `grep`'s `--exclude` flag to filter out filenames.

SVN Example: `--exclude=*.svn-base`

The GNU Grep project added support for excluding directories, using the `--exclude-dir` flag. At the time of writing (April 2007) this is unreleased outside of version control. Check your Grep manual to see if your version supports it.

Example: `--exclude-dir=.* --exclude-dir=CVS`

#### Replace

The Replace dialog is used for replacing text in one or more open documents.

##### Replace dialog

The Replace dialog has the same options for matching text as the Find dialog. See .

The Use regular expressions option applies both to the search string and to the replacement text; for the latter back references can be used - see the entry for '\n' in .

##### Replace all

To replace several matches, click on the Replace All expander. This will reveal several options:

- In Document

- In Session

- In Selection

Replace All In Document will replace all matching text in the current document. Replace All In Session does the same for all open documents. Replace All In Selection will replace all matching text in the current selection of the current document.

#### Go to tag definition

If the current word is the name of a tag definition (like a function body) and the file containing the tag definition is open, this command will switch to that file and go to the corresponding line number. The current word is either taken from the word nearest the edit cursor, or the word underneath the popup menu click position when the popup menu is used.

#### Go to tag declaration

Like Go to tag definition, but for a forward declaration such as a function prototype or `extern` declaration instead of a function body.

#### Go to line

Go to a particular line number in the current file.

#### Regular expressions

You can use regular expressions in the Find and Replace dialogs by selecting the Use regular expressions check box. The syntax is POSIX-like, as described below in .

Searching backwards with regular expressions is not supported.

##### Regular expressions

In a regular expression, the following characters are interpreted:
. | Matches any character.
( | This marks the start of a region for tagging a match.
) | This marks the end of a tagged region.
\n | Where n is 1 through 9 refers to the first through ninth tagged region when replacing. For example, if the search string was Fred([1-9])XXX and the replace string was Sam\1YYY, when applied to Fred2XXX this would generate Sam2YYY.
\< | This matches the start of a word.
\> | This matches the end of a word.
\x | This allows you to use a character x that would otherwise have a special meaning. For example, \[ would be interpreted as [ and not as the start of a character set. Use \\ for a literal backslash.
[...] | This indicates a set of characters, for example, [abc] means any of the characters a, b or c. You can also use ranges, for example [a-z] for any lower case character.
[^...] | The complement of the characters in the set. For example, [^A-Za-z] means any character except an alphabetic character.
^ | This matches the start of a line (unless used inside a set, see above).
$ | This matches the end of a line.
* | This matches 0 or more times. For example, Sa*m matches Sm, Sam, Saam, Saaam and so on.
+ | This matches 1 or more times. For example, Sa+m matches Sam, Saam, Saaam and so on.

##### Partial POSIX compatibility

Note that the POSIX '?' regular expression character for optional matching is not supported by the Find and Replace dialogs.

### Tags

#### Workspace tags

Tags for each document are parsed whenever a file is loaded or saved. These are shown in the Symbol list in the Sidebar. These tags are also used for autocompletion and calltips in other documents open in the current session.

The Go to Tag commands can be used with all workspace tags. See .

#### Global tags

Global tags are used to provide autocompletion and calltips without having to open the corresponding source files. This is intended for library APIs, as the tags file only has to be updated when you upgrade the library.

You can load a custom global tags file in two ways:

- Using the Load Tags command in the File menu.

- By creating a directory `~/.geany/tags`, and moving or symlinking the tags files there before starting Geany.

You can either download these files or generate your own. They have the format:

`libraryname.lang_ext.tags`

lang_ext is one of the extensions set for the filetype associated with the tags. See for more information.

##### Default global tags files

For some languages, a list of global tags is loaded when the corresponding filetype is first used. Currently these are for:

- C - GTK+ and GLib

- Pascal

- PHP

- HTML - `&symbol;` completion, e.g. for ampersand, copyright, etc.

- LaTeX

##### Generating a global tags file

###### Filetypes support

Currently this is not yet supported for Pascal, PHP and LaTeX filetypes.

You can generate your own global tags files by parsing a list of source files. The command is:

geany -g <Tag File> <File list>

- Tag File should be in the format described earlier - see .

- File list is a list of filenames, each with a full path (unless you are generating C/C++ tags and have set the CFLAGS environment variable appropriately).

Example for the wxD library for the D programming language:

    geany -g wxd.d.tags /home/username/wxd/wx/*.d

###### Generating C/C++ tag files

For C/C++ tag files, `gcc` and `grep` are required, so that header files can be preprocessed to include any other headers they depend upon.

For C/C++ files, the environment variable CFLAGS should be set with appropriate `-I/path` include paths. The following example works with the `bash` shell, generating tags for the GnomeUI library:

    CFLAGS=`pkg-config --cflags libgnomeui-2.0` geany -g gnomeui.c.tags
    /usr/include/libgnomeui-2.0/gnome.h

You can adapt this command to use CFLAGS and header files appropriate for whichever libraries you want.

###### Replacing the default C/C++ tags file

Geany currently uses a default global tags file `global.tags` for C and C++, commonly installed in `/usr/share/geany`. This file can be replaced with one containing tags parsed from a different set of header files. When Geany is next started, your custom tags file will be loaded instead of the default `global.tags`. You should keep a copy of the generated tags file because it will get overwritten when upgrading Geany.

This is a temporary solution - in later versions this will be unnecessary.

### Preferences

You may adjust Geany's settings using the Edit --> Preferences dialog. Any changes you make there can be applied by hitting either the Apply or the Ok button. These settings will persist between Geany sessions. Note that most settings here have descriptive popup bubble help -- just hover the mouse over the item in question to get help on it.

You may also adjust some View settings (under the View menu) that persist between Geany sessions. The settings under the Document menu, however, are only for the current document and revert to defaults when restarting Geany.

Note, in the paragraphs that follow, the text describing a dialog tab (if present) comes after the screenshot of that tab.

#### General tab in preferences dialog

The "Context Activation" setting needs to be documented.

#### Interface tab in preferences dialog

The open files list and the editor tabs are two different ways to switch between documents using the mouse. When you hit the key combination to move between tabs, the order is determined by the tab order, not alphabetical as shown in the open files list (regardless whether or not editor tabs are visible).

#### Toolbar tab in preferences dialog

#### Files tab in preferences dialog

#### Editor tab in preferences dialog

Line wrapping refers to the display of the text in the editor. Currently, there is no setting to have Geany automatically insert newlines into your document while you type.

#### Tools tab in preferences dialog

#### Template tab in preferences dialog

#### Keybinding tab in preferences dialog

There are some handy commands in here that are not, by default, bound to a key combination, and may in fact not even be available as a menu item (for example, the very handy "Hide and show all additional widgets").

For more information see .

#### VTE tab in preferences dialog

### Project Management

Project Management is optional in Geany. Currently it can be used for:

- Running Make from the project's base directory.

- Setting a custom Run command specific to the project.

As long as a project is open, the Make and Run commands will use the project's settings, instead of the defaults. These will be used whichever document is currently displayed.

The current project's settings are saved when it is closed, or when Geany is shutdown. When restarting Geany, the previously opened project file that was in use at the end of the last session will be reopened.

#### New Project

To create a new project, fill in the Name field. By default this will setup a new project file `~/projects/name.geany`. Usually it's best to store all your project files in the same directory (they are independent of any source directory trees).

The Base path text field is setup to use `~/projects/name`. This can safely be set to any existing path - it will not touch the file structure contained in it.

#### Project Properties

You can set an optional description for the project, but it is not used elsewhere by Geany.

The Base path field is used as the directory to run the Make command in.

The Run command overrides the default run command. You can set this to the executable or main script file for the project, and append any command-line arguments.

#### Close Project

Project file settings are saved when the project is closed.

#### Open Project

The Open command displays a standard file chooser, starting in `~/projects`.

### Build system

Geany has an integrated build system. Firstly this means that the current source file will be saved before it is processed. This is for convenience so that you don't need to keep saving small changes to the current file before building.

Secondly the output for Compile, Build and Make actions will be captured in the Compiler notebook tab of the messages window (assuming you have it visible). If there are any warnings or errors with line numbers shown in the Compiler output tab, you can double click on them and Geany will switch to the relevant source file (if it is open) and mark the line number so the problem can be corrected. Geany will also set indicators for warnings or errors with line numbers.

Depending on the current file's filetype, the Build menu will contain the following items:

- Compile

- Build

- Make all

- Make custom target

- Make object

- Execute

- Set Includes and Arguments

#### Compile

The Compile command has different uses for different kinds of files.

For compilable languages such as C and C++, the Compile command is setup to compile the current source file into a binary object file.

Java source files will be compiled to class file bytecode. Interpreted languages such as Perl, Python, Ruby will compile to bytecode if the language supports it, or will run a syntax check, or failing that will run the file in its language interpreter.

#### Build

For compilable languages such as C and C++, the Build command will link the current source file's equivalent object file into an executable. If the object file does not exist, the source will be compiled and linked in one step, producing just the executable binary.

Interpreted languages do not use the Build command.

#### Make all

This effectively runs "make all" in the same directory as the current file.

For each of the Make commands, The Make tool path must be correctly set in the Tools tab of the Preferences dialog.

#### Make custom target

This is similar to running 'Make all' but you will be prompted for the make target name to be passed to the Make tool. For example, typing 'clean' in the dialog prompt will run "make clean".

#### Make object

Make object will run "make current_file.o" in the same directory as the current file, using its prefix for 'current_file'. It is useful for compiling just the current file without building the whole project.

#### Execute

Execute will run the corresponding executable file, shell script or interpreted script in a terminal window. Note that the Terminal tool path must be correctly set in the Tools tab of the Preferences dialog - you can use any terminal program that runs a Bourne compatible shell and accept the "-e" command line argument to start a command.

After your program or script has finished executing, you will be prompted to press the return key. This allows you to review any text output from the program before the terminal window is closed.

#### Stopping running processes

When there is a running program, the Run button in the toolbar becomes a stop button and you can stop the current action. This works by sending a signal to the process (and its child process(es)) to stop the process. The used signal is SIGQUIT.

Depending on the process you started it might occur that the process cannot be stopped. This can happen when the process creates more than one child process. Therefore stopping any make actions is not possible because make creates child processes and these child processes creates again child process. There might be some other programs which cannot be stopped correctly. Xterm is known to work properly. If you are using "Terminal" (the terminal program of Xfce), you should add the command line option "--disable-server" otherwise the started process cannot be stopped. Just add this option in the preferences dialog on the Tools tab in the terminal field.

#### Set Includes and Arguments

By default the Compile and Build commands invoke the compiler and linker with only the basic arguments needed by all programs. Using Set Includes and Arguments you can add any include paths and compile flags for the compiler, any library names and paths for the linker, and any arguments you want to use when running Execute.

If you are using the Build command to compile and link in one step, you will need to set both the compiler arguments and the linker arguments in the linker command setting.

These settings are not saved when Geany is shut down. See below for how to set permanent arguments.

If you need complex settings for your build system, or several different settings, then writing a Makefile and using the Make commands is recommended.

#### Indicators

Indicators are red squiggly underlines which are used to highlight errors which occured while compiling the current file. So you can easily see where your code failed to compile. To remove the indicators, just click on "Remove all indicators" in the document file menu.

If you do not like this feature, you can disable it in the preferences dialog.

#### File type configuration settings

You can set the commands to run for compiling, building or executing by opening the relevant `filetypes.*` configuration file, and checking the [build_settings] section. See for more information.

### Printing support

Geany has basic printing support. This means you can print a file by passing the filename of the current file to a command which actually prints the file. However, the printed document contains no syntax highlighting. You can adjust the command to which the filename is passed in the preferences dialog. The default command is:

    % lpr %f

%f will be substituted by the filename of the current file. Geany will not show errors from the command itself, so you should make sure that it works before(e.g. by trying to execute it from the command line).

A nicer example, which I prefer is:

    % a2ps -1 --medium=A4 -o - %f | xfprint4

But this depends on a2ps and xfprint4. As a replacement for xfprint4, gtklp or similar programs can be used.

The printing support of Geany will be improved in the future. With GTK 2.10, better printing (including syntax highlighting) will be possible.

### Keybindings

Geany supports the default keyboard shortcuts for the Scintilla editing widget. For a list of these commands, see . The Scintilla keyboard shortcuts will be overridden by any custom keybindings with the same keyboard shortcut.

For all actions listed below you can define your own keybindings. Open the Preferences dialog, select the desired action and click on change. In the opening dialog you can press any key combination you want and it will be saved when you press OK. You can define only one key combination for one action.

Some of the default key combinations cannot be changed, e.g. menu_new or menu_open. These are set by GTK and should be kept, but you can still add other key combinations for these actions. For example to execute menu_open by default Ctrl O is set, but you can also define Alt O, so that the file open dialog is shown by pressing either Ctrl O or Alt O.

The following table lists all customizable keyboard shortcuts.

#### Keybindings action table

Action | Description
--- | ---
Menu items
New | Creates a new file.
Open | Opens a file.
Save | Saves the current file.
Save As | Saves the current file under a new name.
Save all | Saves all open files.
Close all | Closes all open files.
Close | Closes the current file.
Reload file | Reloads the current file. All unsaved changes will be lost.
Print | Prints the current file.
Undo | Undoes the last action.
Redo | Redoes the last action.
Select all | Makes a selection of all text in the current document.
Insert date | Inserts a customisable date.
Preferences | Opens preferences dialog.
Find Next | Finds next result.
Find Previous | Finds previous result.
Replace | Opens the Replace dialog.
Find in files | Opens the Find in files dialog.
Next message | Jumps to the line with the next message from the last call to Find usage.
Go to line | Opens the Go to line dialog.
Show Colour Chooser | Opens the Colour Chooser dialog.
Fullscreen | Switches to fullscreen mode.
Toggle Messages Window | Toggles the message window (status and compiler messages) on and off.
Toggle Sidebar | Shows or hides the sidebar.
Toggle all additional widgets | Hide and show all additional widgets like the notebook tabs, the toolbar, the messages window and the statusbar.
Zoom In | Zooms in the text
Zoom Out | Zooms out the text
Replace tabs by space | Replaces all tabs with the right amount of spaces.
Fold all | Folds all contractible code blocks.
Unfold all | Unfolds all contracted code blocks.
Build options
Compile | Compiles the current file.
Build | Builds (compiles if necessary and links) the current file.
Make all | Builds the current file with the Make tool.
Make custom target | Builds the current file with the Make tool and a given target.
Make object | Compiles the current file with the Make tool.
Next error | Jumps to the line with the next error from the last build process.
Run | Executes the current file in a terminal emulation.
Run (alternative command) | Executes the current file in a terminal emulation.
Build options | Opens the build options dialog.
Miscellaneous
Reload symbol list | Reloads the tag/symbol list.
Switch to Editor | Switches to editor widget.
Switch to Scribble | Switches to scribble widget.
Switch to VTE | Switches to VTE widget.
Switch to Search Bar | Switches to the search bar in the toolbar (if visible).
Switch to left document | Switches to the previous open document.
Switch to right document | Switches to the next open document.
Switch to last used document | Switches to the previously selected open document.
Editing operations
Convert selection to lower case | Converts the current selection to lower case.
Convert selection to upper case | Converts the current selection to upper case.
Duplicate line or selection | Duplicates the current line or selection.
Comment line | Comments current line or selection.
Uncomment line | Uncomments current line or selection.
Toggle line commentation | Comments a line if it is not commented or removes a comment if the line is commented.
Increase indent | Indents the current line or selection by one tabulator.
Decrease indent | Removes one tabulator from the indentation of the current line or selection.
Goto matching brace | If the cursor is ahead or behind a brace, then it is moved to the brace which belongs to the current one. If this keyboard shortcut is pressed again, the cursor is moved back to the first brace.
Toggle marker | Set a marker on the current line, or clear the marker if there already is one.
Goto next marker | Goto the next marker in the current document.
Goto previous marker | Goto the previous marker in the current document.
Complete word | Shows auto completion list.
Show calltip | Shows call tips for the current function or method.
Show macro list | Shows a list of available macros and variables in the workspace.
Complete construct | If you type a construct like `if` or `for` and press this key, it will be completed with a matching template.
Suppress construct completion | If you type a construct like `if` or `for` and press this key, it will not be completed, and a space or tab will be inserted, depending on what the construct completion keybinding is set to. For example, if you have set the construct completion keybinding to `space`, then setting this to `Shift+space` will prevent construct completion and insert a space.
Select current word | Selects the current word under the cursor.
Insert alternative whitespace | Inserts a tabulator character when spaces should be used for indentation and inserts space characters of the amount of a tabulator width when tabulators should be used for indentation.
Find Usage | Finds all occurrences of the current word (near the keyboard cursor) or selection and displays them in the messages window.
Go to tag definition | Jump to the definition of the current word (near the keyboard cursor). If the definition cannot be found (e.g. the relevant file is not open) Geany will beep and do nothing. See .
Go to tag declaration | Jump to the declaration of the current word (near the keyboard cursor). If the declaration cannot be found (e.g. the relevant file is not open) Geany will beep and do nothing. See .
Context Action | Executes a command and passes the current word (near the cursor postion) or selection as an argument. See .

## Configuration files

### Filetype definition files

All colour definitions and other filetype specific settings are stored in the filetype definition files. Those settings are colours for syntax highlighting, general settings like comment characters or word delimiter characters as well as compiler and linker settings.

The system-wide configuration files can be found in `$prefix/share/geany` and are called `filetypes.$ext`, where $prefix is the path where Geany is installed (commonly `/usr/local`) and $ext is the name of the filetype. For every filetype there is a corresponding definition file. There is one exception: `filetypes.common` - this file is for general settings, which are not specific to a certain filetype. It is not recommended to edit the system-wide files, because they will be overridden when Geany is updated.

To change the settings, copy a file from `$prefix/share/geany` to the subdirectory `filedefs` in your configuration directory (usually `~/.geany/`).

For example:

    % cp /usr/local/share/geany/filetypes.c /home/username/.geany/filedefs/

Then you can edit the file and the changes are also available after an update of Geany because they reside in your configuration directory. Alternatively, you can create a file `~/.geany/filedefs/filetypes.X` and add only these settings you want to change. All missing settings will be read from the corresponding global definition file in `$prefix/share/geany`.

#### Format

##### [styling] Section

In this section the colours for syntax highlighting are defined. The format is always: `key=forground_colour;background_colour;bold;italic`

Colours have to be specified as RGB hex values prefixed by 0x. For example red is 0xff0000, blue is 0x0000ff. The values are case-insensitive, but it is a good idea to use small letters. Bold and italic are flags and should only be "true" or "false". If their value is something other than "true" or "false", "false" is assumed.

##### [keywords] Section

This section contains keys for different keyword lists specific to the filetype. Some filetypes do not support keywords, so adding a new key will not work. You can only add or remove keywords to/from an existing list.

The keywords list must be in one line without line ending characters.

##### [settings] Section

###### General settings

Key | Description | Example
--- | --- | ---
wordchars | These characters define word boundaries when making selections and searching using word matching options. | (look at system filetypes.* files)
comment_open | A character or string which is used to comment code. If you want to use multiline comments, also set comment_close, otherwise leave it empty. | comment_open=/*
comment_close | If multiline comments are used, this is the character or string to close the comment. | comment_close=*/

comment_use_indent

Set this to false if a comment character or string should start at column 0 of a line. If set to true it uses any indentation of the line.

###### Comment indentation

comment_use_indent=true would generate this if a line is commented (e.g. with Ctrl D)

    	#command_example();

comment_use_indent=false would generate this if a line is commented (e.g. with Ctrl D)

    #	command_example();

This setting only works for single line comments (like '//', '#' or ';').

comment_use_indent=true

context_action_cmd

A command which can be executed on a certain word or the current selection. Example usage: Open the API documentation for the current function call at the cursor position. The command can be set for every filetype or if not set, a global command will be used. The command itself can be specified without the full path, then it is searched in $PATH. But for security reasons, it is recommended to specify the full path to the command. The wildcard %s will be replaced by the current word at the cursor position or by the current selection.

Hint: for PHP files the following could be quite useful: context_action_cmd=firefox "http://www.php.net/%s"

context_action_cmd=devhelp -s "%s"

##### [build_settings] Section

###### Build settings

Key | Description | Example
--- | --- | ---

compiler

This item specifies the command to compile source code files. But it is also possible to use it with interpreted languages like Perl or Python. With these filetypes you can use this option as a kind of syntax parser, which sends output to the compiler message window.

You should quote the filename to also support filenames with spaces. The following wildcards for filenames are available:

- %f - complete filename without path

- %e - filename without path and without extension

compiler=gcc -Wall -c "%f"

linker | This item specifies the command to link the file. If the file is not already compiled, it will be compiled while linking. The -o option is automatically added by Geany. This item works well with GNU gcc, but may be problematic with other compilers (esp. with the linker). | linker=gcc -Wall "%f"
run_cmd | Use this item to execute your file. It has to have been built already. Use the %e wildcard to have only the name of the executable (i.e. without extension) or use the %f wildcard if you need the complete filename, e.g. for shell scripts. | run_cmd="./%e"

#### Special file filetypes.common

There is a special filetype definition file called `filetypes.common`. This file defines some general non-filetype-specific settings.

##### General settings

Key | Description | Example
--- | --- | ---
default | This is the default style. It is used for styling files without a filetype set. | default=0x000000;0xffffff;false;false

selection

The style for colouring selected text. The format is:

- Foreground colour

- Background colour

- Use foreground colour

- Use background colour

The colours are only set if the 3rd or 4th argument is true. When the colours are not overridden, the default is a dark grey background with syntax highlighted foreground text.

selection=0xc0c0c0;0x00007F;true;true

brace_good | The style for brace highlighting when a matching brace was found. | brace_good=0xff0000;0xFFFFFF;true;false
brace_bad | The style for brace highlighting when no matching brace was found. | brace_bad=0x0000ff;0xFFFFFF;true;false
caret | The style for colouring the caret(the blinking cursor). Only the first argument is interpreted. | caret=0x000000;0x0;false;false
caret_width | The width for the caret(the blinking cursor). Only the first argument is interpreted. The width is specified in pixels with a maximum of three pixel. Use the width 0 to make the caret invisible. | caret=1;0;false;false
current_line | The style for colouring the background of the current line. Only the second and third arguments are interpreted. The second argument is the background colour. Use the third argument to enable or disable background highlighting for the current line (has to be true/false). | current_line=0x0;0xe5e5e5;true;false
indent_guide | The style for colouring the indentation guides. Only the first and second arguments are interpreted. | indent_guide=0xc0c0c0;0xffffff;false;false
white_space | The style for colouring the white space if it is shown. The first both arguments define the foreground and background colours, the third argument sets whether to use the defined foreground colour or to use the colour defined by each filetype for the white space. The fourth argument defines whether to use the background colour. | white_space=0xc0c0c0;0xffffff;true;true

folding_style

The style of folding icons. Only first and second arguments are used.

Valid values for the first argument are:

- 1 - for boxes

- 2 - for circles

Valid values for the second argument are:

- 1 - for straight lines

- 2 - for curved lines

folding_style=1;1;false;false

folding_horiz_line

Draw a thin horizontal line at the line where text is folded. Only first argument is used.

Valid values for the first argument are:

- 0 - disable, do not draw a line

- 1 - draw the line above folded text

- 2 - draw the line below folded text

folding_horiz_line=0;0;false;false

invert_all | Whether to invert all defined colours. This is useful if you like a dark background colour(e.g. black) and do not want to change every single line. Please note, at time of writing this was only tested with the C syntax highlighting. Only first argument is interpreted. Set it to 1 to invert all colours. | invert_all=0;0;false;false

### Filetype extensions

You can override the default extensions that Geany uses for each filetype using the `filetype_extensions.conf` file.

To override the system-wide configuration file, copy it from `$prefix/share/geany` to your configuration directory, usually `~/.geany/`. $prefix is the path where Geany is installed (commonly `/usr/local`).

For example:

    % cp /usr/local/share/geany/filetype_extensions.conf /home/username/.geany/

Then edit it and remove all the lines for filetype extensions that you do not want to override. The remaining lines can be edited after the `=` sign, using a semi-colon separated list of patterns which should be matched for that filetype.

For example, to set the filetype extensions for Make, the `/home/username/.geany/filetype_extensions.conf` file should look like:

    						[Extensions]
    						Make=Makefile*;*.mk;Buildfile;

### Templates

Geany supports the following templates:

- ChangeLog entry

- File header

- Function description

- Short GPL notice

- Short BSD notice

- Filetype template

To use these templates, just open the Edit menu or open the popup menu by right-clicking in the editor widget, and choose "Insert Comments" and insert templates as you want.

Some templates (like File header or ChangeLog entry) will always be inserted at the top of the file.

To insert a function description, the cursor must be inside of the function, so that the function name can be determined automatically. The description will be positioned correctly one line above the function, just check it out. If the cursor is not inside of a function or the function name cannot be determined, you cannot insert a function description.

#### Template metadata

Metadata can be used with all templates, but by default user set metadata is only used for the ChangeLog and File header templates.

In the configuration dialog you can find a tab "Templates" (see ). You can define the default values which will be inserted in the templates. You should restart Geany after making changes, because they are only read at startup.

#### Filetype templates

Filetype templates are templates used as the basis of a new file. To use them, choose the New (with Template) menu item from the File menu.

By default, templates are created for some filetypes. Other filetype templates can be added by creating the appropriate template file and restarting Geany. You can also edit the default filetype templates.

Filetype template files are read from the `~/.geany/templates` directory, and are named '`filetype.`' followed by the filetype name, e.g. `filetype.python`, `filetype.sh`. If you are unsure about the filetype name extensions, they are the same as the filetype configuration file extensions, commonly installed in `/usr/share/geany`, with the prefix '`filetypes.`'.

The file's contents are just the text to place in the document, except for the optional `{fileheader}` template wildcard. This can be placed anywhere, but is usually on the first line of the file, followed by a blank line.

There is also a template file `template.none` which is used when the New command is used without a filetype. This is empty by default.

#### Customizing templates

Each template can be customized to your needs. The templates are stored in the `~/.geany/templates/` directory (see for further information about the configuration directory). Just open the desired template with an editor (ideally Geany ;-) ) and edit the template to your needs. There are some wildcards which will be automatically replaced by Geany at startup.

##### Template wildcards

All wildcards must be enclosed by "{" and "}", e.g. {date}.

###### Template wildcards

Wildcard | Description | Available in following templates
--- | --- | ---
developer | The name of the developer. | filetypes, file header, function description, ChangeLog entry, bsd, gpl
initial | The developer's initials, e.g. "ET" for Enrico Tröger or "JFD" for John Foobar Doe. | filetypes, file header, function description, ChangeLog entry, bsd, gpl
mail | The email address of the developer. | file header, function description, ChangeLog entry, bsd, gpl
company | The company the developer is working for. | filetypes, file header, function description, ChangeLog entry, bsd, gpl
year | The current year in the format: YYYY | filetypes, file header, function description, ChangeLog entry, bsd, gpl
version | The initial version of a new file. | filetypes, file header, function description, ChangeLog entry, bsd, gpl
date | The current date in the format: YYYY-MM-DD | filetypes, file header, function description, ChangeLog entry, bsd, gpl
untitled | The string "untitled" (this will be translated to your locale), used in filetype templates | filetypes, file header, function description, ChangeLog entry, bsd, gpl
geanyversion | The actual Geany version, e.g. "Geany &appversion;" | filetypes, file header, function description, ChangeLog entry, bsd, gpl
datetime | The current date and time in the format: DD.MM.YYYY HH:mm:ss ZZZZ | file header, function description
filename | The filename of the current file. Only available for the file header template. | file header
gpl | This wildcard inserts a short GPL notice. | file header
bsd | This wildcard inserts a short BSD licence notice. | file header
functionname | The function name of the function at the cursor position. This wildcard will only be replaced in the function description template. | function description
fileheader | The file header template. This wildcard will only be replaced in filetype templates. | filetypes

If you need any other wildcards or a special date/time format, please email the author &author_mail;.

## Contributing to this document

This document is written in Docbook XML. The source file for it is located in the subdirectory "doc" of the source directory of Geany. If you intend on making changes, you should grab the source right from SVN to make sure you have got the newest version. After editing that file, to build the docs and see how your changes look, run "make doc" in the subdirectory "doc" of the source directory of Geany to build HTML pages and a text file. Your updated HTML docs will end up in the `./html` directory. To generate a PDF file, use the command "make pdf" which should generate a file called `geany-&appversion;.pdf`.

After you are happy with your changes, create a patch:

    				% svn diff geany.docbook > whatever.patch

and then submit that file to the mailing list for review.

Note, you will need the docbook-xml and xmlto software packages installed to build the docs.

&scikeybinding;

## Compile time options

There are some options which can only be changed at compile time. To change these options, edit the file `src/geany.h`. Look for a block of lines starting with #define GEANY_*. Any definitions which are not listed here should not be changed.

Most users should not need to change these options.

### Compile time options

Option | Description | Default
--- | --- | ---
GEANY_WORDCHARS | These characters define word boundaries when making selections and searching using word matching options. | (look at sourcecode)
GEANY_MAX_AUTOCOMPLETE_WORDS | How many auto completion suggestions should Geany provide. | 30
GEANY_MAX_AUTOCOMPLETE_HEIGHT | How many suggestions should be visible in the auto completion list. | 10
GEANY_PROJECT_EXT | The default filename extension for Geany project files. It is used when creating new projects and as filter mask for the project open dialog. | geany
GEANY_STRING_UNTITLED | A string used as the default name for new files. Be aware that the string can be translated, so change it only if you know what you are doing. | untitled
GEANY_CHECK_FILE_DELAY | Time in seconds between checking a file for external changes. | 30
GEANY_WINDOW_MINIMAL_WIDTH | The minimal width of the main window. | 620
GEANY_WINDOW_MINIMAL_HEIGHT | The minimal height of the main window. | 440
GEANY_WINDOW_DEFAULT_WIDTH | The default width of the main window at the first start. | 900
GEANY_WINDOW_DEFAULT_HEIGHT | The default height of the main window at the first start. | 600
Default values
GEANY_DEFAULT_TOOLS_MAKE | The make tool. This can also include a path. | "make"
GEANY_DEFAULT_TOOLS_TERMINAL | A terminal emulator. It has to accept the command line option "-e". This can also include a path. | "xterm"
GEANY_DEFAULT_TOOLS_BROWSER | A web browser. This can also include a path. | "mozilla"
GEANY_DEFAULT_TOOLS_PRINTCMD | A printing tool. It should be able to accept and process plain text files. This can also include a path. | "lpr"
GEANY_DEFAULT_TOOLS_GREP | A grep tool. It should be compatible with GNU grep. This can also include a path. | "grep"
GEANY_DEFAULT_MRU_LENGHTH | The length of the "Recent files" list. | "10"
GEANY_DEFAULT_FONT_SYMBOL_LIST | The font used in sidebar to show symbols and open files. | "Sans 9"
GEANY_DEFAULT_FONT_MSG_WINDOW | The font used in the messages window. | "Sans 9"
GEANY_DEFAULT_FONT_EDITOR | The font used in the editor window. | "Monospace 10"
Windows specific
GEANY_USE_WIN32_DIALOG | Set this to 1 if you want to use the default Windows file open dialog instead GTK's file open dialog. The default Windows file open dialog is missing some nice features like choosing a filetype or an encoding. Do not touch this setting when building on a non-Win32 system. | 0

&legal;

## License for Scintilla and SciTE

Copyright 1998-2003 by Neil Hodgson <neilh@scintilla.org>

All Rights Reserved

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation.

NEIL HODGSON DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL NEIL HODGSON BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.