.. |(version)| replace:: 0.16

=======
 Geany
=======

-------------------------
 A fast, light, GTK+ IDE
-------------------------

:Authors: Enrico Tröger,
          Nick Treleaven,
          Frank Lanitz
:Date: $Date$
:Version: |(version)|

Copyright © 2005-2009

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 also in the chapter `GNU General Public License`_.


.. contents::



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 -
Geany only requires the GTK2 runtime libraries.

Some basic features of Geany:

* Syntax highlighting
* Code folding
* Symbol name auto-completion
* Construct completion/snippets
* Auto-closing of XML and HTML tags
* Call tips
* Many supported filetypes including C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl,
  Pascal, and others
* Symbol lists
* Code navigation
* Build system to compile and execute your code
* Simple project management
* Plugin interface



Where to get it
---------------

You can obtain Geany from http://www.geany.org/ or perhaps also from
your distributor. For a list of available packages, please see
http://www.geany.org/Download/ThirdPartyPackages.



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 and in the chapter, `GNU General Public License`_.

The included Scintilla library (found in the subdirectory
``scintilla/``) has its own license, which can be found in the chapter,
`License for Scintilla and SciTE`_.



About this document
-------------------

This documentation is available in HTML and text formats.
The latest version can always be found at http://www.geany.org/.

If you want to contribute to it, see `Contributing to this document`_.




Installation
============


Requirements
------------

You will need the GTK (>= 2.8.0) libraries and their dependencies
(Pango, GLib and ATK). Your distro should provide packages for these,
usually installed by default. For Windows, you can download an installer
which bundles these libraries from the website.


Binary packages
---------------

There are many binary packages available. For an up-to-date but maybe
incomplete list see http://www.geany.org/Download/ThirdPartyPackages.


Source compilation
------------------

For compiling Geany yourself, you will need the GTK (>= 2.8.0)
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, but very often your distro will provide development
packages to save the trouble of building these yourself.

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.

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

    $ ./configure
    $ make

Then as root::

    % make install

Custom installation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The configure script supports several common options, for a detailed
list, type::

    $ ./configure --help

You may also want to read the INSTALL file for advanced installation
options.

* See also `Compile-time options`_.

Dynamic linking loader support
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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.

Build problems
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If there are any errors during compilation, check your build
environment and try to find the error, otherwise contact the mailing
list or one the authors. Sometimes you might need to ask for specific
help from your distro.




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::

      % geany



Command line options
--------------------

============  =======================  =================================================
Short option  Long option              Function
============  =======================  =================================================
*none*        +number                  Set initial line number for the first opened file
                                       (same as --line, do not put a space between the + sign
                                       and the number). E.g. "geany +7 foo.bar" will open the
                                       file foo.bar and place the cursor in line 7.

*none*        --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 ``~/.config/geany/`` and there
                                       resides ``geany.conf`` and other configuration files.

*none*        --ft-names               Print a list of Geany's internal filetype names (useful
                                       for snippets configuration).

-g            --generate-tags          Generate a global tags file (see
                                       `Generating a global tags file`_).

-P            --no-preprocessing       Don't preprocess C/C++ files when generating tags.

-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 symbol completion and call tip data. Use this
                                       option if you do not want to use them.

-p            --no-plugins             Do not load plugins or plugin support.

*none*        --print-prefix           Print installation prefix, the data directory, the lib
                                       directory and the locale directory (in this order) to
                                       stdout, each per line. This is mainly intended for plugin
                                       authors to detect installation paths.

-s            --no-session             Do not 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.

*none*        --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 auto detection does not work. Only
                                       available if Geany was compiled with support for VTE.

-v            --verbose                Be verbose (print useful status messages).

-V            --version                Show version information and exit.

-?            --help                   Show help information and exit.

*none*        [files ...]              Open all given files at startup. This option causes
                                       Geany to ignore loading stored files from the last
                                       session (if enabled).
                                       Geany also recognizes line and column information when
                                       appended to the filename with colons, e.g.
                                       "geany foo.bar:10:5" will open the file foo.bar and
                                       place the cursor in line 10 at column 5.

                                       Projects can also be opened but a project file (\*.geany)
                                       must be the first non-option argument. All additionally
                                       given files are ignored.
============  =======================  =================================================

You can also pass line number and column number information, e.g.::

    geany some_file.foo:55:4

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 `General tab in preferences dialog`_). 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.

You can also pass line number and column number information, e.g.::

    geany some_file.foo:55:4

This would open the file ``some_file.foo`` with the cursor on line 55,
column 4.

If you do not like this for some reason, you can disable using the first
instance by using the appropriate command line option -- see the section
called `Command line options`_.


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 any ``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 the section called `Command line options`_.

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``.

.. note::
    Geany tries to load ``libvte.so``. If this fails, it tries to load
    some other filenames. 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`` (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

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

You can also specify the filename of the VTE library to use on the command
line (see the section called `Command line options`_) or at compile time
by specifying the command line option ``--with-vte-module-path`` to
./configure.


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:

* GeanyMainWindow
* GeanyEditMenu
* GeanyToolbarMenu
* GeanyDialog
* GeanyDialogPrefs
* GeanyDialogProject
* 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"


Documents
---------

Switching between documents
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The documents 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 documents list (regardless
of whether or not editor tabs are visible).


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
NULL-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 a NULL-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:

* 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).

* 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.

* 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.

* Specifying the encoding in the file itself

  As mentioned above, auto-detecting the encoding of a file may fail on
  some encodings. If you know that Geany doesn't open a certain file,
  you can add a special line to the beginning of the file to force an
  encoding when opening the file (for details see below).


In-file encoding specification
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Geany detects meta tags of HTML files which contain charset information
like::

    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-15" />

and the found charset is used when opening the file. This is useful if the
encoding of the file cannot be detected properly.
For non-HTML files you can also define a line like::

    /* geany_encoding=ISO-8859-15 */

or::

    # geany_encoding=ISO-8859-15 #

to force an encoding to be used. The used #, /\* and \*/ are only examples
for filetype-specific comment characters. It doesn't matter which
characters are around the string " geany_encoding=ISO-8859-15 " as long
as there is at least one whitespace character before and after this
string. Whitespace characters are in this case a space or tab character.
An example to use this could be you have a file with ISO-8859-15
encoding but Geany constantly detects the file encoding as ISO-8859-1.
Then you simply add such a line to the file and Geany will open it
correctly the next time.

Since Geany 0.15 you can also use lines like::

    # encoding = ISO-8859-15

or::

    # coding: ISO-8859-15

The used regular expression to find the encoding string is:
``coding[\t ]*[:=][\t ]*([a-z0-9-]+)[\t ]*``

.. note::
    These specifications must be in the first 512 bytes of the file.
    Anything after the first 512 bytes will not be recognized.


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 NULL-bytes this can be useful to skip auto
detection and open the file properly at least until the occurrence
of the first NULL-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.

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



Editing
-------


Folding
^^^^^^^

Geany provides basic code folding support. Folding means the ability to
show and hide parts of the text in the current file. You can hide
unimportant code sections and concentrate on the parts you are working on
and later you can show these sections again. In the editor window there is
a small grey margin on the left side with some [+] and [-] symbols. By
clicking on these icons you can simply show and hide sections which are
marked by vertical lines within this margin. For many filetypes nested
folding is supported, so there may be several fold points within other
fold points.

If you don't like it or don't need it at all, you can simply disable
folding support completely in the preferences dialog.

The folding behaviour can be changed with the "Fold/Unfold all children of
a fold point" option in the preference dialog. If activated, Geany will
unfold all nested fold points below the current one if they are already
folded (when clicking on a [+] symbol).
When clicking on a [-] symbol, Geany will fold all nested fold points
below the current one if they are unfolded.

The usage of this option can be instantly inverted by pressing the Shift
key while clicking on a fold symbol. That means, if the "Fold/Unfold all
children of a fold point" option is enabled, pressing Shift will disable
it for this click and vice versa.


Column mode editing (rectangular selections)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There is basic support for column mode editing. To use it, create a
rectangular selection by holding down the Control and Shift keys
(or Control and Alt if it doesn't work) while
selecting some text. It is also possible to create a zero-column selection
but be careful because there is no visual indication of this selection.
Once a rectangular selection exists you can start editing the text within
this selection and the modifications will be done for every line in the
selection.


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.


Indentation
^^^^^^^^^^^

Geany allows each document to indent either with a tab character or
multiple spaces. The default indent mode is set in the `Editor Features
tab in preferences dialog`_ (see the link for more information). But
this can be overridden using either the *Document->Indent Type* menu,
or by using the *Detect from file* indentation preference. When enabled,
this scans each file that is opened and sets the indent mode based on
how many lines start with a tab vs. 2 or more spaces.

The indent mode for the current document is shown on the status bar
as follows:

TAB
    Indent with Tab characters.
SP
    Indent with spaces.
T/S
    Indent with tabs and spaces, depending on how much indentation is
    on a line.


Auto-indentation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

When enabled, auto-indentation happens when pressing *Enter* in the
Editor. It adds a certain amount of indentation to the new line so the
user doesn't always have to indent each line manually.

Geany knows four types of auto-indentation:

None
    Disables auto-indentation completely.
Basic
    Adds the same amount of whitespace on a new line as on the last line.
Current chars
    Does the same as *Basic* but also indents a new line after an opening
    brace '{', and de-indents when typing a closing brace '}'. For Python,
    a new line will be indented after typing ':' at the end of the
    previous line.
Match braces
    Similar to *Current chars* but the closing brace will be aligned to
    match the indentation of the line with the opening brace.


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.


Code Navigation History
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

To ease navigation in source files and especially between
different files, Geany lets you jump between different navigation
points. Currently, this works for the following:

* `Go to tag declaration`_
* `Go to tag definition`_
* Symbol list items
* Build errors
* Message items

When using one of these actions, Geany remembers your current position
and jumps to the new one. If you decide to go back to your previous
position in the file, just use "Navigate back a location". To
get back to the new position again, just use "Navigate forward a
location". This makes it easier to navigate in e.g.  foreign code
and between different 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 section called
`Keybindings`_).

The command can be specified in the preferences dialog and additionally
for each filetype (see "context_action_cmd" in the section called
`Format`_). 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.


User-definable snippets
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Snippets are small strings or code constructs which can be replaced or
completed to a more complex string. So you can save a lot of time by
not typing often used strings and letting Geany do the work for you.
To know what to complete or replace Geany reads a configuration file
called ``snippets.conf`` at startup.

The system-wide configuration file can be found in
``$prefix/share/geany``, where ``$prefix`` is the path where Geany is
installed (commonly ``/usr/local``). It is not recommended to edit the
system-wide file, because it will be overridden when Geany is updated.

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

For example::

    % cp /usr/local/share/geany/snippets.conf /home/username/.config/geany/

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

The file ``snippets.conf`` may contain several sections for each
filetype. It also contains two additional sections "Default" and
"Special". Default contains all snippets which are available
for every filetype. You may define another section for a certain
filetype(e.g. C++) containing the same snippets. Then when using
such a snippet in a C++ file the snippet defined in the C++ section will
be used. In any other file the snippet defined in the Default section will
be used unless a section for the current filetype exists and the used
snippet is defined in this section. The section "Special" contains special
snippets which can only be used in other snippets. So you can define often
used parts of snippets and just use the special snippet as a placeholder
(see the ``snippets.conf`` for details).

To define snippets you can use several special characters which
will be replaced when using the snippet:

**Wildcards for snippets**

================  =========================================================
\\n or %newline%  Insert a new line (it will be replaced by the used EOL
                  char(s): LF, CR/LF, or CR).

\\t or %ws%       Insert an indentation step, it will be replaced according
                  to the current document's indent mode.

\\s               \\s to force whitespace at beginning or end of a value
                  ('key= value' won't work, use 'key=\\svalue')

%cursor%          Place the cursor at this position after completion has
                  been done. You can define multiple %cursor% wildcards
                  and use the keybinding ``Move cursor in snippet`` to jump
                  to the next defined cursor position in the completed
                  snippet.

%...%             "..." means the name of a key in the "Special" section.
                  If you have defined a key "brace_open" in the "Special"
                  section you can use %brace_open" in any other snippet.
================  =========================================================

Snippet names must not contain spaces otherwise they won't
work correctly. But beside that you can define almost any
string as a snippet and use it later in Geany. It is not limited
to existing contructs of certain programming languages(like ``if``,
``for``, ``switch``). Define whatever you need.

Maybe you need to often type your name, so define a snippet like this::

    [Default]
    myname=Enrico Tröger

Every time you write ``myname`` <TAB> in Geany, it will replace "myname"
with "Enrico Tröger". The key to start auto completion can be changed
in the preferences dialog, by default it is TAB. The corresponding keybinding
is called ``Complete snippet``.

Since Geany 0.15 you can also use most of the available templates wildcards
listed in `Template wildcards`_. All wildcards which are listed as
`available in snippets` can be used. For instance to improve the above example::

    [Default]
    myname=My name is {developer}

this will replace ``myname`` with "My name is " and the value of the template
preference ``developer``.

You may change the behaviour Geany recognizes the word to complete,
i.e. where define the start and end of a word. The section "Special" may
contain a key "wordchars" which lists all characters a string may contain
to be recognized as a word for completion. Leave it commented to use
default characters or define it to add or remove characters to fit your
needs.


Inserting Unicode characters
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

With GTK 2.10 and above, you can hit Ctrl-Shift-u, then still holding
Ctrl-Shift, type some hex digits representing the code point for the
character you want, then let go of Ctrl-Shift and hit a key such as
the right arrow.

For this to work in Geany, you'll need to first unbind Ctrl-Shift-u
in the `keybinding tab in preferences dialog`_, then restart Geany.
Note that it works slightly differently from other GTK applications,
in that you'll need to continue to hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys
while typing the code point hex digits.

For GTK < 2.10, it is also possible, but typing the first Ctrl-Shift-u
is not necessary. One problem is that you may find the alphabetic
keys conflict with other Geany keybindings.



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 the section called `Keybindings`_).


Find
^^^^

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

.. image:: ./images/find_dialog.png


Matching options
````````````````

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

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 recognized symbols are: \\\\, \\n, \\r, \\uXXXX
(Unicode characters).


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 highlight all matches in the current document with a
colored box. These markers can be removed by selecting the
Remove Markers command from the Document menu.


Change font in search dialog text fields
````````````````````````````````````````

All search related dialogs use a Monospace for the text input fields to
increase the readability of input text. This is useful when you are
typing e.g. regular expressions with spaces, periods and commas which
might it hard to read with a proportional font.

If you want to change the font for some reason, you can do this easily
by inserting the following style into 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)::

    style "search_style"
    {
        font_name="Monospace 8"
    }
    widget "GeanyDialogSearch.*.GtkEntry" style:highest "search_style"

Please note the addition ":highest" in the last line which sets the priority
of this style to the highest available. Otherwise, the style is ignored
for the search dialogs.


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.

.. image:: ./images/find_in_files_dialog.png


The Encoding combo box can be used to define the encoding of the files
to be searched. The chosen encoding is used to convert the entered search
text into and to convert the search results back to UTF-8.
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 --exclude argument only matches the file name part, not the path. If
you have GNU Grep >= 2.5.2 you can use the ``--exclude-dir`` argument to
filter out CVS and hidden directories like ``.svn``.

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


Replace
^^^^^^^

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

.. image:: ./images/replace_dialog.png

The Replace dialog has the same options for matching text as the Find
dialog. See the section called `Matching options`_.

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 `Regular expressions`_.


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 in the table below.

.. note::
    (1) Searching backwards with regular expressions is not supported.
    (2) \\r and \\n are never matched because regular expression
        searches are made line per line (stripped of end-of-line chars).
    (3) The POSIX '?' regular expression character for optional
        matching is not supported.

**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.

\\c     A backslash followed by d, D, s, S, w or W, becomes a
        character class (both inside and outside sets []).

        * d: decimal digits
        * D: any char except decimal digits
        * s: whitespace (space, \\t \\n \\r \\f \\v)
        * S: any char except whitespace (see above)
        * w: alphanumeric & underscore (changed by user setting)
        * W: any char except alphanumeric & underscore (see above)

\\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.

\\xHH   A backslash followed by x and two hexa digits, becomes the
        character whose Ascii code is equal to these digits. If not
        followed by two digits, it is 'x' char itself.

[...]   Matches one of the characters in the set. If the first
        character in the set is ^, it matches the characters NOT in
        the set, i.e. complements the set. A shorthand S-E (start
        dash end) is used to specify a set of characters S up to E,
        inclusive. The special characters ] and - have no special
        meaning if they appear as the first chars in the set. To
        include both, put - first: [-]A-Z] (or just backslash them).

        Examples::

        [-]|]    matches these 3 chars
        []-|]    matches from ] to | chars
        [a-z]    any lowercase alpha
        [^-]]    any char except - and ]
        [^A-Z]   any char except uppercase alpha
        [a-zA-Z] any alpha

^       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.
======  ============================================================

.. note::
    This table is adapted from Scintilla and SciTE documentation,
    distributed under the `License for Scintilla and SciTE`_.



Tags
----

Geany has built-in functionality for generating tag information (aka
"workspace tags") for supported filetypes when you open a file.  You
can also have Geany automatically load external tag files (aka "global
tags files") from its ``~/.config/geany/tags`` directory upon startup, or
manually using *Tools --> Load Tags*.

Geany uses its own tag file format, similar to what ``ctags`` uses
(but is incompatible with ctags). You use Geany to generate global
tags files, as described below.


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 auto completion of symbols and calltips for all documents
open in the current session that have the same filetype.

The *Go to Tag* commands can be used with all workspace tags. See
`Go to tag definition`_.


Global tags
^^^^^^^^^^^

Global tags are used to provide auto completion of symbols 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 Tools menu.
* By creating a directory ``~/.config/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::

    name.lang_ext.tags

*lang_ext* is one of the extensions set for the filetype associated
with the tags. See the section called `Filetype extensions`_ 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
* Python


Global tags file format
```````````````````````

Global tags files can have two different formats:

* Tagmanager format
* Pipe-separated format

The first line of global tags files should be a comment, introduced
by ``#`` followed by a space and a string like ``format=pipe``
respectively ``format=tagmanager`` (case-sensitive).
This helps Geany to read the file properly. If this line
is missing, Geany tries to auto-detect the used format but this
might fail.


The Tagmanager format is a bit more complex and is used for files
created by the ``geany -g`` command. There is one tag per line.
Different tag attributes like the return value or the argument list
are separated with different characters indicating the type of the
following argument.

The Pipe-separated format is easier to read and write.
There is one tag per line and different tag attributes are separated
by the pipe character (``|``). A line looks like::

    basename|string|(string path [, string suffix])|

| The first field is the tag name (usually a function name).
| The second field is the type of the return value.
| The third field is the argument list for this tag.
| The fourth field is the description for this tag but
  currently unused and should be left empty.

Except for the first field (tag name), all other field can be left
empty but the pipe separator must appear for them.

You can easily write your own global tag files using this format.
Just save them in your tags directory, as described earlier in the
section `Global tags`_.


Generating a global tags file
`````````````````````````````

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

    geany -g [-P] <Tag File> <File list>

* Tag File filename should be in the format described earlier --
  see the section called `Global tags`_.
* 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).
* ``-P`` or ``--no-preprocessing`` disables using the C pre-processor
  to process ``#include`` directives for C/C++ source files. Use this
  option if you want to specify each source file on the command-line
  instead of using a 'master' header file. Also can be useful if you
  don't want to specify the CFLAGS environment variable.

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 c99.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 c99.tags. You should keep a
copy of the generated tags file because it will get overwritten when
upgrading Geany.


Ignore tags
^^^^^^^^^^^

You can also ignore certain tags if they would lead to wrong parsing of
the code. Simply create a file called "ignore.tags" in your Geany
configuration directory (usually ``~/.config/geany/``). Then list all tags
you want to ignore in this file, separated by spaces and/or newlines.

More detailed information about the usage from the Exuberant Ctags
manual page::

    Specifies a list of identifiers which are to be specially handled
    while  parsing C and C++ source files. This option is specifically
    provided to handle special cases arising through the use of
    pre-processor macros. When the identifiers listed are simple identifiers,
    these identifiers will be ignored during parsing of the source files.
    If an identifier is suffixed with a '+' character, ctags will also
    ignore any parenthesis-enclosed argument list which may immediately
    follow the identifier in the source files.
    If two identifiers are separated with the '=' character, the first
    identifiers is replaced by the second identifiers for parsing purposes.

For even more detailed information please read the manual page of
Exuberant Ctags.


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.

There are also some rarer `Hidden preferences`_.

.. note::
    In the paragraphs that follow, the text describing a dialog tab
    comes after the screenshot of that tab.


General tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_gen.png

Startup
```````

Load files from the last session
    On startup, load the same files you had open the last time you
    used Geany.

Load virtual terminal support
    Load the library for running a terminal in the message window area.

Enable plugin support
    Allow plugins to be used in Geany.

Shutdown
````````
Save window position and geometry
    Save the current position and size of the main window so next time
    you open Geany it's in the same location.

Confirm Exit
    Have a dialog pop up to confirm that you really want to quit Geany.

Projects
````````

Use project-based session files
    Save your current session when closing projects. You will be able to
    resume different project sessions, automatically opening the files
    you had open previously.

Store project file inside the project base directory
    When creating new projects, the default path for the project file contains
    the project base path. Without this option enabled, the default project file
    path is one level above the project base path.
    In any case, you can easily set the final project file path in the
    *New Project* dialog. This option is just for your convenience to get
    a proper default path.

Miscellaneous
`````````````

Beep on errors when compilation has finished
    Have the computer make a beeping sound when compilation of your program
    has completed or any errors occurred.

.. Switch status message list at new message

.. Suppress status message in the status bar

.. Autofocus widgets (focus follows mouse)

.. Always wrap search and hide the find dialog

Use current word under the cursor for Find dialogs
    Use the currently selected word as the search text when you open
    one of the Search dialogs.

Suppress status messages in the status bar
    Remove all messages from the status bar. The messages are still displayed
    in the status messages window.

Auto focus widgets (focus follows mouse)
    Give the focus automatically to widgets below the mouse cursor.
    This works for the main editor widget, the scribble, the toolbar search field
    goto line fields and the VTE.

Paths
`````

Startup path
    Path to start in when opening or saving files.
    It must be an absolute path.
    Leave it blank to use the current working directory.

Project files
    Path to start in when opening project files.


Interface tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_interface.png

Sidebar
```````

Show symbol list
    Show the list of functions, variables, and other information in the
    current document you are editing.

Show documents list
    Show all the documents you have open currently. This can be used to
    change between documents (see `Switching between documents`_) and
    to perform some common operations such as saving, closing and reloading.

Show full path name in documents list
    Show the full directory path of the files you are editing in the
    *Documents* list.

Fonts
`````

Editor
    Change the font used to display documents.

Symbol list
    Change the font used for the Symbols sidebar tab.

Message window
    Change the font used for the message window area.

Editor tabs
```````````

Show editor tabs
    Show a notebook tab for all documents so you can switch between them
    using the mouse (instead of using the Documents window).

Show close buttons
    Make each tab show a close button so you can easily close open
    documents.

Placement of new file tabs
    Whether to create a document with its notebook tab to the left or
    right of all existing tabs.

Double-clicking hides all additional widgets
    Whether to call the View->Toggle All Additional Widgets command
    when double-clicking on a notebook tab.

Tab positions
`````````````

Editor
    Set the positioning of the editor's notebook tabs to the right,
    left, top, or bottom of the editing window.

Sidebar
    Set the positioning of the sidebar's notebook tabs to the right,
    left, top, or bottom of the sidebar window.

Message window
    Set the positioning of the message window's notebook tabs to the
    right, left, top, or bottom of the message window.

Miscellaneous
`````````````

Show status bar
    Show the status bar at the bottom of the main window. It gives information about
    the file you are editing like the line and column you are on, whether any
    modifications were done, the file encoding, the filetype and other information.


Toolbar tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Affects the main toolbar underneath the menu bar.

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_toolbar.png

Toolbar
```````

Show Toolbar
    Whether to show the toolbar.


Appearance
``````````

Icon Style
    Select the toolbar icon style to use - either icons and text, just
    icons or just text.

Icon size
    Select the size of the icons you see (large or small).


Editor Features tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_edit_features.png

Features
````````

Line wrapping
    Show long lines wrapped around to new display lines.

Enable "smart" home key
    Whether to move the cursor to the first non-whitespace character
    on the line when you hit the home key on your keyboard. Pressing it
    again will go to the very start of the line.

Disable Drag and Drop
    Do not allow the dragging and dropping of selected text in documents.

Enable folding
    Allow groups of lines in a document to be collapsed for easier
    navigation/editing.

Fold/Unfold all children of a fold point
    Whether to fold/unfold all child fold points when a parent line
    is folded.

Use indicators to show compile errors
    Underline lines with compile errors using red squiggles to indicate
    them in the editor area.

Newline strip trailing spaces
    Remove any white space at the end of the line when you hit the
    Enter/Return key.

Line breaking column
    The editor column number to insert a newline at when Line Breaking
    is enabled for the current document.

Comment toggle marker
    A string which is added when toggling a line comment in a source file.
    It is used to mark the comment as toggled.


Editor Indentation tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_edit_indentation.png

Indentation group
`````````````````

See `Indentation`_ for more information.

Type
    When Geany inserts indentation, whether to use:

    * Just Tabs
    * Just Spaces
    * Tabs and Spaces, depending on how much indentation is on a line

    The *Tabs and Spaces* indent type is also known as *Soft tab
    support* in some other editors.

Width
    The width of a single indent size in spaces. By default the indent
    size is equivalent to 4 spaces.

Hard tab width
    When the *Tabs and Spaces* indent type is enabled, this is the
    display size of a tab. Otherwise this is ignored. Although
    configurable, this should usually be set to 8.

Detect from file
    Try to detect and set the indent type based on file content, when
    a file is opened.

Auto-indent mode
    The type of auto-indentation you wish to use after pressing Enter,
    if any.

    Basic
        Just add the indentation of the previous line.
    Current chars
        Add indentation based on the current filetype and any characters at
        the end of the line such as ``{``, ``}`` for C, ``:`` for Python.
    Match braces
        Like *Current chars* but for C-like languages, make a closing
        ``}`` brace line up with the matching opening brace.

Tab key indents
    If set, pressing tab will indent the current line or selection, and
    unindent when pressing Shift-tab. Otherwise, the tab key will
    insert a tab character into the document (which can be different
    from indentation, depending on the indent type).

    .. note::
        There are also separate configurable keybindings for indent &
        unindent, but this pref allows the tab key to have different
        meanings in different contexts - e.g. for snippet completion.

Editor Completions tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_edit_completions.png

Completions
```````````

Snippet Completion
    Whether to replace special keywords after typing Tab into a
    pre-defined text snippet.
    See `User-definable snippets`_.

XML tag autocompletion
    When you open an XML tag automatically generate its completion tag.

Automatic continuation multi-line comments
    Continue automatically multi-line comments in languages like C, C++
    and Java when a new line is entered inside such a comment.
    With this option enabled, Geany will insert a ``*`` on every new line
    inside a multi-line comment, for example when you press return in the
    following C code::

     /*
      * This is a C multi-line comment, press <Return>

    then Geany would insert::

      *

    on the next line with the correct indentation based on the previous line,
    as long as the multi-line is not closed by ``*/``.

Automatic symbol completion
    When you start to type a symbol name, look for the full string to
    allow it to be completed for you.

Characters to type for completion
    Number of characters of a word to type before auto completion is
    displayed.

Rows of symbol completion list
    The maximum number of symbols to show in the auto completion window.

Max. symbol name suggestions
    The maximum number of entries to display in the auto completion list.


Auto-close quotes and brackets
``````````````````````````````

Geany can automatically insert a closing bracket and quote characters when
you open them. For instance, you type a ``(`` and Geany will automatically
insert ``)``. With the following options, you can define for which
characters this should work.

Parenthesis ( )
    Auto-close parenthesis when typing an opening one

Curly brackets { }
    Auto-close parenthesis when typing an opening one

Square brackets [ ]
    Auto-close parenthesis when typing an opening one

Single quotes ' '
    Auto-close parenthesis when typing an opening one

Double quotes " "
    Auto-close parenthesis when typing an opening one


Editor Display tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is for visual elements displayed in the editor window.

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_edit_display.png

Display
```````

Invert syntax highlighting colors
    Use white text on a black background and invert all colors.
    If the ``invert_all`` setting in ``filetypes.common`` is set, this
    option is always enabled. See `Special file filetypes.common`_
    for details.

    This option requires a restart of Geany. The value of this option

Show indendation guides
    Show vertical lines to help show how much leading indentation there
    is on each line.

Show whitespaces
    Mark all tabs with an arrow "-->" symbol and spaces with dots to
    show which kinds of whitespace are used.

Show line endings
    Display a symbol everywhere that a carriage return or line feed
    is present.

Show line numbers
    Show or hide the Line Number margin.

Show markers margin
    Show or hide the small margin right of the line numbers, which is used
    to mark lines.

Stop scrolling at last line
    When enabled Geany stops scrolling when at the last line of the document.
    Otherwise you can scroll one more page even if there are no real lines.


Long line marker
````````````````

The long line marker helps to indicate overly-long lines, or as a hint
to the user for when to break the line.

Type
    Line
        Show a thin vertical line in the editor window at the given column
        position.
    Background
        Change the background color of characters after the given column
        position to the color set below. (This is recommended over the
        *Line* setting if you use proportional fonts).
    Disabled
        Don't mark long lines at all.

Long line marker
    Set this value to a value greater than zero to specify the column
    where it should appear.

Long line marker color
    Set the color of the long line marker.


Files tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_files.png

New files
`````````

Open new documents from the command-line
    Whether to create new documents when passing filenames that don't
    exist from the command-line.

Default encoding (new files)
    The type of file encoding you wish to use when creating files.

Used fixed encoding when opening files
    Assume all files you are opening are using the type of encoding specified below.

Default encoding (existing files)
    Opens all files with the specified encoding instead of auto-detecting it.
    Use this option when it's not possible for Geany to detect the exact encoding.

Default end of line characters
    The end of line characters to which should be used for new files.
    On Windows systems, you generally want to use CR/LF which are the common
    characters to mark line breaks.
    On Unix-like systems, LF is default and CR is used on MAC systems.

Saving files
````````````
Perform special formatting operations when a document is saved. These
can each be undone with the Undo command as usual.

Ensure newline at file end
    Add a newline at the end of the document if one is missing.

Strip trailing spaces
    Remove the trailing spaces on each line of the document.

Replace tabs by space
    Replace all tabs in the document with the equivalent number of spaces.

    .. note::
        It is better to use spaces to indent than use this preference - see
        `Indentation`_.

Miscellaneous
`````````````

Recent files list length
    The number of files to remember in the recently used files list.

Disk check timeout
    The number of seconds to periodically check the current document's
    file on disk in case it has changed.


Search tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_search.png


Always wrap search and hide the Find dialog
    Always wrap search around the document and hide the Find dialog after clicking
    Find Next/Previous.

Use the current word under the cursor for Find dialogs
    Use current word under the cursor when opening the Find, Find in Files or Replace dialog and
    there is no selection. When this option is disabled, the search term of the last use of the
    appropriate Find dialog is used.

Use the current file's directory for Find in Files
    When opening the Find in Files dialog, set the directory to search to the directory of the current
    active file. When this option is disabled, the directory of the last use of the Find in Files
    dialog is used.


Tools tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_tools.png

Tool paths
``````````

Make
    The location of the make executable.

Terminal
    The location of your terminal executable.

Browser
    The location of your web browser executable.

Grep
    The location of the grep executable.

.. note::
    For Windows users: at the time of writing it is recommended to use
    the grep.exe from the UnxUtils project
    (http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils). The grep.exe from the
    Mingw project for instance might not work with Geany at the moment.

Commands
````````

Context action
    Set this to a command to execute on the current word.
    You can use the "%s" wildcard to pass the current word below the cursor
    to the specified command.


Template tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This data is used as meta data for various template text to insert into
a document, such as the file header. You only need to set fields that
you want to use in your template files.

.. note:: For changes made here to take effect a restart of geany is required.

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_templ.png

Template data
`````````````

Developer
    The name of the developer who will be creating files.

Initials
    The initials of the developer.

Mail address
    The email address of the developer.

    .. note::
        You may wish to add anti-spam markup, e.g. ``name<at>site<dot>ext``.

Company
    The company the developer is working for.

Initial version
    The initial version of files you will be creating.

Year
    Specify a format for the the {year} wildcard. You can use any conversion specifiers
    which can be used with the ANSI C strftime function.  For details please see
    http://man.cx/strftime.

Date
    Specify a format for the the {date} wildcard. You can use any conversion specifiers
    which can be used with the ANSI C strftime function.  For details please see
    http://man.cx/strftime.

Date & Time
    Specify a format for the the {datetime} wildcard. You can use any conversion specifiers
    which can be used with the ANSI C strftime function.  For details please see
    http://man.cx/strftime.


Keybinding tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_keys.png

There are some handy commands in here that are not, by default,
bound to a key combination, and may not be available as a menu item.

.. note::
    For more information see the section called `Keybindings`_.


Printing tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_printing.png

Use external command for printing
    Use a system command to print your file out.

Use native GTK printing
    Let the GTK GUI toolkit handle your print request.

Print line numbers
    Print the line numbers on the left of your paper.

Print page number
    Print the page number on the bottom right of your paper.

Print page header
    Print a header on every page that is sent to the printer.

Use base name of the printed file
    Don't use the entire path for the header, only the filename.

Date format
    How the date should be printed. You can use the same format
    specifiers as in the ANSI C function strftime(). For details please
    see http://man.cx/strftime.


Terminal (VTE) tab in preferences dialog
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

See also: `Virtual terminal emulator widget (VTE)`_.

.. image:: ./images/pref_dialog_vte.png

Terminal widget
```````````````

Terminal font
    Select the font that will be used in the terminal emulation control.

Foreground color
    Select the font color.

Background color
    Select the background color of the terminal.

Scrollback lines
    The number of lines buffered so that you can scroll though the history.

Shell
    The location of the shell on your system.

Scroll on keystroke
    Scroll the terminal to the prompt line when pressing a key.

Scroll on output
    Scroll the output down.

Cursor blinks
    Let the terminal cursor blink.

Override Geany keybindings
    Allow the VTE to receive keyboard shortcuts (apart from focus commands).

Disable menu shortcut key (F10 by default)
    Disable the menu shortcut when you are in the virtual terminal.

Follow path of the current file
    Make the path of the terminal change according to the path of the
    current file.

Execute programs in VTE
    Execute programs in the virtual terminal instead of using the external
    terminal tool.

Don't use run script
    Don't use the simple run script which is usually used to display
    the exit status of the executed program.
    This can be useful if you already have a program running in the VTE
    like a Python console (e.g. ipython). Use this with care.


Project Management
------------------

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

* Storing and opening session files on a project basis.
* Running *Make* from the project's base directory.
* Setting a custom *Run* command specific to the project.

A list of session files can be stored and opened with the project
when the *Use project-based session files* preference is enabled,
in the *Project* group of the `Preferences`_ dialog.

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.

Below are the commands used to create, modify, open and close projects.


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 and Make
custom commands in. It is also used as working directory for the project
specific *Run command*.
The specified path can be an absolute path or relative to the project's
file name.


Make in base path
`````````````````

This setting makes the *Build->Make* command use the project's base
path. Uncheck this if you want to use the current file's directory
instead.


Run command
```````````

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.

The following variables can be used:

* %f -- complete filename without path
* %e -- filename without path and without extension

See `[build_settings] Section`_ for details.


Open Project
^^^^^^^^^^^^

The Open command displays a standard file chooser, starting in
``~/projects``. Choose a project file named with the ``.geany``
extension.

When project session support is enabled, Geany will close the currently
open files and open the session files associated with the project.


Close Project
^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Project file settings are saved when the project is closed.

When project session support is enabled, Geany will close the project
session files and open any previously closed default session files.


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. If there are
any warnings or errors with line numbers shown in red in the Compiler
output tab, you can click on them and Geany will switch to the relevant
source file (or open it) and mark the line number so the problem can be
corrected. Geany will also set indicators for warnings or errors with
line numbers.

.. tip::
    If Geany's default error message parsing does not parse errors for
    the tool you're using, you can set a custom regex. See `Filetype
    definition files`_ and the `[build_settings] Section`_.

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.

.. note::
    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.


Terminal emulators
``````````````````

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.

.. note::
    If you need complex settings for your build system, or several
    different settings, then writing a Makefile and using the Make
    commands is recommended; this will also make it easier for users to
    build your software.

These settings are saved automatically when Geany is shut down.

The following variables can be used:

* %f -- complete filename without path
* %e -- filename without path and without extension

See `[build_settings] Section`_ for details.



One step compilation
````````````````````

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.


Indicators
^^^^^^^^^^

Indicators are red squiggly underlines which are used to highlight
errors which occurred 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.



Printing support
----------------

Since Geany 0.13 there is full printing support using GTK's printing API.
The printed page(s) will look nearly the same as on your screen in Geany.
Additionally, there are some options to modify the printed page(s). You
can define whether to print line numbers, page numbers at the bottom of
each page and whether to print a page header on each page. This header
contains the filename of the printed document, the current page number and
the date and time of printing. By default, the file name of the document
is added with full path information to the header. If you prefer to add
only the basename of the file(without any path information) you can set it
in the preferences dialog. You can also adjust the format of the date and
time added to the page header. The available conversion specifiers are the
same as the ones which can be used with the ANSI C strftime function.
All of these settings can also be changed in the print dialog just before
actual printing is done.
On Unix-like systems the provided print dialog offers a print preview. The
preview file is opened with a PDF viewer and by default GTK uses ``evince``
for print preview. If you don't have installed evince or just want to use
another PDF viewer, you can change the program to use in the file
``.gtkrc-2.0`` (usually found in your home directory). Simply add a line
like::

    gtk-print-preview-command = "epdfview %f"

at the end of the file. Of course, you can also use xpdf, kpdf or whatever
as the print preview command.

Unfortunately, native GTK printing support is only available if Geany was
built against GTK 2.10 (or above) **and** is running with GTK 2.10 (or above).
If not, Geany provides 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.



Plugins
-------

Plugins are loaded at startup, if the *Enable plugin support*
general preference is set. There is also a command-line option,
``-p``, which prevents plugins being loaded. Plugins are scanned in
the following directories:

*   ``$prefix/lib/geany`` (``$prefix`` is usually ``/usr/local`` or
    ``/usr``)
*   ``~/.config/geany/plugins``

Most plugins add menu items to the *Tools* menu when they are loaded.

Since Geany 0.13, there is a Plugin Manager to let you choose which plugins
should be loaded at startup. You can also load and unload plugins on the
fly using this dialog. Once you click the checkbox for a specific plugin
in the dialog, it is loaded or unloaded according to its previous state.
By default, no plugins are loaded at startup until you select some.
You can also configure some plugin specific options when the plugin
provides some.

See also `Plugin documentation`_ for information about single plugins
which are included in Geany.


Keybindings
-----------

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


Switching documents
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There are a few non-configurable bindings to switch between documents,
listed below. These can also be overridden by custom keybindings.

=============== ==================================
Key             Action
=============== ==================================
Alt-[1-9]       Select left-most tab, from 1 to 9.
Alt-0           Select right-most tab.
Ctrl-Shift-PgUp Select left-most tab.
Ctrl-Shift-PgDn Select right-most tab.
=============== ==================================


Configurable keybindings
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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.

=============================== ========================= =========================================
Action                          Default shortcut          Description
=============================== ========================= =========================================
**File**

New                             Ctrl-N                    Creates a new file.

Open                            Ctrl-O                    Opens a file.

Save                            Ctrl-S                    Saves the current file.

Save As                                                   Saves the current file under a new name.

Save all                        Ctrl-Shift-S              Saves all open files.

Close all                       Ctrl-Shift-W              Closes all open files.

Close                           Ctrl-W                    Closes the current file.

Reload file                     Ctrl-R                    Reloads the current file. All unsaved changes
                                                          will be lost.

Print                           Ctrl-P                    Prints the current file.

**Editor**

Undo                            Ctrl-Z                    Un-does the last action.

Redo                            Ctrl-Y                    Re-does the last action.

Delete current line(s)          Ctrl-K                    Deletes the current line (and any lines with a
                                                          selection).
Duplicate line or selection     Ctrl-D                    Duplicates the current line or selection.

Transpose current line          Ctrl-T                    Transposes the current line with the previous one.

Scroll to current line          Ctrl-Shift-L              Scrolls the current line into the centre of the
                                                          view. The cursor position and or an existing
                                                          selection will not be changed.

Scroll up by one line           Alt-Up                    Scrolls the view.

Scroll down by one line         Alt-Down                  Scrolls the view.

Complete word                   Ctrl-Space                Shows auto completion list.

Show calltip                    Alt-Space (Unix)          Shows call tips for the current function or
                                Alt-Shift-Space (Windows) method.

Show macro list                 Ctrl-Return               Shows a list of available macros and variables in
                                                          the workspace.

Complete snippet                Tab                       If you type a construct like if or for and press
                                                          this key, it will be completed with a matching
                                                          template.

Suppress snippet 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.

Context Action                                            Executes a command and passes the current word
                                                          (near the cursor position) or selection as an
                                                          argument. See the section called `Context
                                                          actions`_.

Move cursor in snippet                                    Jumps to the next defined cursor positions in a
                                                          completed snippets if multiple cursor positions
                                                          where defined.

**Clipboard**

Cut                             Ctrl-X                    Cut the current selection to the clipboard.

Copy                            Ctrl-C                    Copy the current selection to the clipboard.

Paste                           Ctrl-V                    Paste the clipboard text into the current document.

Cut current line(s)             Ctrl-Shift-X              Cuts the current line (and any lines with a
                                                          selection) to the clipboard.

Copy current line(s)            Ctrl-Shift-C              Copies the current line (and any lines with a
                                                          selection) to the clipboard.

**Select**

Select all                      Ctrl-A                    Makes a selection of all text in the current
                                                          document.

Select current word             Alt-Shift-W               Selects the current word under the cursor.

Select current paragraph        Alt-Shift-P               Selects the current paragraph under the cursor
                                                          which is defined by two empty lines around it.

Select current line(s)          Alt-Shift-L               Selects the current line under the cursor (and any
                                                          partially selected lines).

**Insert**

Insert date                     Shift-Alt-D               Inserts a customisable date.

Insert alternative whitespace                             Inserts a tab character when spaces should
                                                          be used for indentation and inserts space
                                                          characters of the amount of a tab width when
                                                          tabs should be used for indentation.

**Format**

Toggle case of selection        Ctrl-Alt-U                Changes the case of the selection. A lowercase
                                                          selection will be changed into uppercase and vice
                                                          versa. If the selection contains lower- and
                                                          uppercase characters, all will be converted to
                                                          lowercase.

Comment line                                              Comments current line or selection.

Uncomment line                                            Uncomments current line or selection.

Toggle line commentation        Ctrl-E                    Comments a line if it is not commented or removes
                                                          a comment if the line is commented.

Increase indent                 Ctrl-I                    Indents the current line or selection by one tab
                                                          or by spaces in the amount of the tab width
                                                          setting.

Decrease indent                 Ctrl-U                    Removes one tab or the amount of spaces of
                                                          the tab width setting from the indentation of the
                                                          current line or selection.

Increase indent by one space                              Indents the current line or selection by one
                                                          space.

Decrease indent by one space                              Deindents the current line or selection by one
                                                          space.

Smart line indent                                         Indents the current line or all selected lines
                                                          with the same indentation as the previous line.

**Settings**

Preferences                     Ctrl-Alt-P                Opens preferences dialog.

**Search**

Find                            Ctrl-F                    Opens the Find dialog.

Find Next                       Ctrl-G                    Finds next result.

Find Previous                   Ctrl-Shift-G              Finds previous result.

Replace                         Ctrl-H                    Opens the Replace dialog.

Find in files                   Ctrl-Shift-F              Opens the Find in files dialog.

Next message                                              Jumps to the line with the next message in
                                                          the Messages window.

Previous message                                          Jumps to the line with the previous message
                                                          in the Messages window.

Find Usage                                                Finds all occurrences of the current word (near
                                                          the keyboard cursor) or selection in all open
                                                          documents and displays them in the messages
                                                          window.

Find Document Usage                                       Finds all occurrences of the current word (near
                                                          the keyboard cursor) or selection in the current
                                                          document and displays them in the messages
                                                          window.

**Go to**

Navigate forward a location                               Switches to the next location in the navigation
                                                          history. See the section called `Code Navigation
                                                          History`_.

Navigate back a location                                  Switches to the previous location in the
                                                          navigation history. See the section called
                                                          `Code Navigation History`_.

Go to line                      Ctrl-L                    Opens the Go to line dialog.

Goto matching brace             Ctrl-B                    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                   Ctrl-M                    Set a marker on the current line, or clear the
                                                          marker if there already is one.

Goto next marker                Ctrl-.                    Goto the next marker in the current document.

Goto previous marker            Ctrl-,                    Goto the previous marker in the current document.

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 the section called
                                                          `Go to tag definition`_.

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 the section called
                                                          `Go to tag declaration`_.

Go to Start of Line             Home                      Move the caret to the end of the line indentation
                                                          unless it is already there, in which case it moves
                                                          it to the start of the line.

Go to End of Line               End                       Move the caret to the end of the line.

Go to Previous Word Part        Ctrl-/                    Goto the previous part of the current word.

Go to Next Word Part            Ctrl-\                    Goto the next part of the current word.

**View**

Fullscreen                      F11                       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                         Ctrl-+                    Zooms in the text

Zoom Out                        Ctrl--                    Zooms out the text

**Focus**

Switch to Editor                F2                        Switches to editor widget.

Switch to Scribble              F6                        Switches to scribble widget.

Switch to VTE                   F4                        Switches to VTE widget.

Switch to Search Bar            F7                        Switches to the search bar in the toolbar (if
                                                          visible).

Switch to Sidebar                                         Focus the Sidebar.

Switch to Compiler                                        Focus the Compiler message window tab.

**Notebook tabs**

Switch to left document         Ctrl-PageUp               Switches to the previous open document.

Switch to right document        Ctrl-PageDown             Switches to the next open document.

Switch to last used document    Ctrl-Tab                  Switches to the previously selected open document.

Move document left              Alt-PageUp                Changes the current document with the left hand
                                                          one.

Move document right             Alt-PageDown              Changes the current document with the right hand
                                                          one.

Move document first                                       Moves the current document to the first position.

Move document last                                        Moves the current document to the last position.

**Document**

Replace tabs by space                                     Replaces all tabs with the right amount of spaces.

Replace spaces by tabs                                    Replaces all spaces with tab characters.

Toggle current fold                                       Toggles the folding state of the current code block.

Fold all                                                  Folds all contractible code blocks.

Unfold all                                                Unfolds all contracted code blocks.

Reload symbol list              Ctrl-Shift-R              Reloads the tag/symbol list.

Toggle Line wrapping                                      Enables or disables wrapping of long lines.

Toggle Line breaking                                      Enables or disables automatic breaking of long
                                                          lines at a configurable column.

**Build**

Compile                         F8                        Compiles the current file.

Build                           F9                        Builds (compiles if necessary and links) the
                                                          current file.

Make all                        Shift-F9                  Builds the current file with the Make tool.

Make custom target              Ctrl-Shift-F9             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.

Previous error                                            Jumps to the line with the previous error from
                                                          the last build process.

Run                             F5                        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.

**Tools**

Show Color Chooser                                        Opens the Color Chooser dialog.

**Help**

Help                            F1                        Opens the manual.
=============================== ========================= =========================================




Configuration files
===================


Global configuration file
-------------------------

You can use a global configuration file for Geany which will be used if
the user starts Geany for the first time and an user's configuration
file was not yet created or in case an user deleted the configuration
file to use default values.

The global configuration file is read from
``$prefix/share/geany/geany.conf`` (where ``$prefix`` is the path where
Geany is installed) when starting Geany and an user configuration
file does not exist. It can contain any settings which are found in
the usual configuration file created by Geany but does not have to
contain all settings.

.. note::
    This feature is mainly intended for package maintainers or system
    admins who want to set up Geany in a multi user environment and
    set some sane default values for this environment. Usual users won't
    need to do that.



Filetype definition files
-------------------------

All color definitions and other filetype specific settings are
stored in the filetype definition files. Those settings are colors
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
``~/.config/geany/``).

For example::

    % cp /usr/local/share/geany/filetypes.c /home/username/.config/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
``~/.config/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 colors for syntax highlighting are defined. The
format is always: key=foreground_color;background_color;bold;italic

Colors 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.

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


[settings] Section
``````````````````

extension
    This is the default file extension used when saving files, not
    including the period character (``.``). The extension used should
    match one of the patterns associated with that filetype (see
    `Filetype extensions`_).

    *Example:* ``extension=cxx``

wordchars
    These characters define word boundaries when making selections
    and searching using word matching options.

    *Example:* (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.

    *Example:* ``comment_open=/*``

comment_close
    If multiline comments are used, this is the character or string to
    close the comment.

    *Example:* ``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.

    Note: 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();


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

    *Example:* ``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"

    *Example:* ``context_action_cmd=devhelp -s "%s"``


[build_settings] Section
````````````````````````
error_regex
    This is a GNU-style extended regular expression to parse a filename
    and line number from build output. If undefined, Geany will fall
    back to its default error message parsing.

    Only the first two matches will be read by Geany. Geany will look for
    a match that is purely digits, and use this for the line number. The
    remaining match will be used as the filename.

    *Example:* ``error_regex=(.+):([0-9]+):[0-9]+``

    This will parse a message such as:
    ``test.py:7:24: E202 whitespace before ']'``

**Build commands**

The build commands are all configurable using the `Set Includes and
Arguments`_ dialog.

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

    *Example:* ``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).

    *Example:* ``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.

    *Example:* ``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.

default
    This is the default style. It is used for styling files without a
    filetype set.

    *Example:* ``default=0x000000;0xffffff;false;false``

selection
    The style for coloring selected text. The format is:

    * Foreground color
    * Background color
    * Use foreground color
    * Use background color

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

    *Example:* ``selection=0xc0c0c0;0x00007F;true;true``

brace_good
    The style for brace highlighting when a matching brace was found.

    *Example:* ``brace_good=0xff0000;0xFFFFFF;true;false``

brace_bad
    The style for brace highlighting when no matching brace was found.

    *Example:* ``brace_bad=0x0000ff;0xFFFFFF;true;false``

caret
    The style for coloring the caret(the blinking cursor). Only first
    and third argument is interpreted.
    Set the third argument to true to change the caret into a block caret.

    *Example:* ``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.

    *Example:* ``caret=1;0;false;false``

current_line
    The style for coloring the background of the current line. Only
    the second and third arguments are interpreted. The second argument
    is the background color. Use the third argument to enable or
    disable background highlighting for the current line (has to be
    true/false).

    *Example:* ``current_line=0x0;0xe5e5e5;true;false``

indent_guide
    The style for coloring the indentation guides. Only the first and
    second arguments are interpreted.

    *Example:* ``indent_guide=0xc0c0c0;0xffffff;false;false``

white_space
    The style for coloring the white space if it is shown. The first
    both arguments define the foreground and background colors, the
    third argument sets whether to use the defined foreground color
    or to use the color defined by each filetype for the white space.
    The fourth argument defines whether to use the background color.

    *Example:* ``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

    *Example:* ``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

    *Example:* ``folding_horiz_line=0;0;false;false``

invert_all
    Whether to invert all defined colors. This is useful if you like a
    dark background color(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
    colors.

    *Example:* ``invert_all=0;0;false;false``

line_wrap_visuals
    First argument: drawing of visual flags to indicate a line is wrapped.
    This is a bitmask of the values:

    * 0 -- No visual flags
    * 1 -- Visual flag at end of subline of a wrapped line
    * 2 -- Visual flag at begin of subline of a wrapped line. Subline is
      indented by at least 1 to make room for the flag.

    Second argument: wether the visual flags to indicate a line is wrapped
    are drawn near the border or near the text. This is a bitmask of the values:

    * 0 -- Visual flags drawn near border
    * 1 -- Visual flag at end of subline drawn near text
    * 2 -- Visual flag at begin of subline drawn near text

    Only first and second argument is interpreted.

    *Example:* ``line_wrap_visuals=3;0;false;false``

line_wrap_indent
    Sets the size of indentation of sublines for wrapped lines in terms
    of the width of a space.

    Only first argument is interpreted.

    *Example:* ``line_wrap_indent=0;0;false;false``

translucency
    Translucency for the current line (first argument) and the selection
    (second argument). Values between 0 and 256 are accepted.

    Note for Windows 95, 98 and ME users:
    keep this value at 256 to disable translucency otherwise Geany might crash.

    Only the first and second argument is interpreted.

    *Example:* ``translucency=256;256;false;false``

marker_line
    The style for a highlighted line (e.g when using Goto line or goto tag).
    The foreground color (first argument) is only used when the Markers margin
    is enabled (see View menu).

    Only the first and second argument is interpreted.

    *Example:* ``marker_line=0x000000;0xffff00;false;false``

marker_search
    The style for a highlighted search result (e.g when using "Mark" in
    Search dialogs). The foreground color (first argument) is only used
    when the Markers margin is enabled (see View menu).

    Only the first and second argument is interpreted.

    *Example:* ``marker_search=0x000000;0xB8F4B8;false;false``

marker_translucency
    Translucency for the line marker (first argument) and the search marker
    (second argument). Values between 0 and 256 are accepted.

    Note for Windows 95, 98 and ME users:
    keep this value at 256 to disable translucency otherwise Geany might crash.

    Only the first and second argument is interpreted.

    *Example:* ``marker_translucency=256;256;false;false``

whitespace_chars
    Characters to treat as whitespace. These characters are ignored
    when moving, selecting and deleting across word boundaries
    (see `Scintilla keyboard commands`_).

    This should include space (\\s) and tab (\\t).

    *Example:* ``whitespace_chars=\s\t!\"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\]^`{|}~``



Filetype extensions
-------------------

To change the default filetype extension used when saving a new file,
see `Filetype definition files`_.

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

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

For example::

    % cp /usr/local/share/geany/filetype_extensions.conf /home/username/.config/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/.config/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, the inserted
function description won't contain the correct function name but "unknown"
instead.


Template meta data
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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

In the configuration dialog you can find a tab "Templates" (see
`Template tab in preferences dialog`_). 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.


File templates
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

File 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. Custom file
templates can be added by creating the appropriate template file and
restarting Geany. You can also edit the default filetype templates.

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.

Custom file templates
`````````````````````

These are read from the ``~/.config/geany/templates/files`` directory
(created the first time Geany is started). The filetype to use is
detected from the template file's extension, if any. For example, creating
a file ``main.c`` would add a menu item which created a new document with
the filetype set to 'C'.

The template file is read from disk when the corresponding menu item is
clicked, so you don't need to restart Geany after editing a custom file
template.

Filetype templates
``````````````````

Filetype template files are read from the ``~/.config/geany/templates``
directory, and are named "filetype." followed by the filetype
name, e.g. "filetype.python", "filetype.sh", etc. 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.".

There is also a template file ``filetype.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 ``~/.config/geany/templates/`` directory (see the section called
`Command line options`_ 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}.

============== ============================================= =======================================
Wildcard       Description                                   Available in
============== ============================================= =======================================
developer      The name of the developer.                    filetype templates, file header,
                                                             function description, ChangeLog entry,
                                                             bsd, gpl, snippets

initial        The developer's initials, e.g. "ET" for       filetype templates, file header,
               Enrico Tröger or "JFD" for John Foobar Doe.   function description, ChangeLog entry,
                                                             bsd, gpl, snippets

mail           The email address of the developer.           filetype templates, file header,
                                                             function description, ChangeLog entry,
                                                             bsd, gpl, snippets

company        The company the developer is working for.     filetype templates, file header,
                                                             function description, ChangeLog entry,
                                                             bsd, gpl, snippets

year [1]_      The current year. Default format is: YYYY     filetype templates, file header,
                                                             function description, ChangeLog entry,
                                                             bsd, gpl, snippets

version        The initial version of a new file.            filetype templates, file header,
                                                             function description, ChangeLog entry,
                                                             bsd, gpl, snippets

date [1]_      The current date. Default format: YYYY-MM-DD. filetype templates, file header,
                                                             function description, ChangeLog entry,
                                                             bsd, gpl, snippets

untitled       The string "untitled" (this will be           filetype templates, file header,
               translated to your locale), used in           function description, ChangeLog entry,
               filetype templates.                           bsd, gpl, snippets

geanyversion   The actual Geany version, e.g.                filetype templates, file header,
               "Geany |(version)|".                          function description, ChangeLog entry,
                                                             bsd, gpl, snippets

datetime [1]_  The current date and time. Default format:    filetype templates, file header,
               DD.MM.YYYY HH:mm:ss ZZZZ.                     function description, ChangeLog entry,
                                                             bsd, gpl, snippets

filename       The filename of the current file.             file header, snippets

gpl            This wildcard inserts a short GPL notice.     file header

bsd            This wildcard inserts a BSD licence notice.   file header

functionname   The function name of the function at the      function description
               cursor position. This wildcard will only be
               replaced in the function description
               template.

fileheader     The file header template. This wildcard       file header, snippets, custom filetype
               will only be replaced in filetype             templates
               templates.
============== ============================================= =======================================


.. [1] The format for the ``year``, ``date`` and ``datetime`` wildcards can be changed
       in the preferences dialog, see `Template tab in preferences dialog`_. You can
       use any conversion specifiers which can be used with the ANSI C strftime function.
       For details please see http://man.cx/strftime.


Customizing the toolbar
-----------------------

You can add, remove and reorder the elements in the toolbar by editing
the file ``ui_toolbar.xml``.

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

For example::

    % cp /usr/local/share/geany/ui_toolbar.xml /home/username/.config/geany/

Then edit it and add any of the available elements listed in the file or remove
any of the existing elements. Of course, you can also reorder the elements as
you wish and add or remove additional separators.
This file must be valid XML unless it can't be loaded and the global toolbar
UI definition is used.

.. note::
    (1) You cannot add new actions which are not listed below.
    (2) Everything you add or change must be inside the /ui/toolbar/ path.
    (3) After you finish editing the file, you need to restart Geany
        for changes to take effect.


Available toolbar elements
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

================== ==============================================================================
Element name       Description
================== ==============================================================================
New                Create a new file
Open               Open an existing file
Save               Save the current file
SaveAll            Save all open files
Reload             Reload the current file from disk
Close              Close the current file
CloseAll           Close all open files
Cut                Cut the current selection
Copy               Copy the current selection
Paste              Paste the contents of the clipboard
Delete             Delete the current selection
Undo               Undo the last modification
Redo               Redo the last modification
NavBack            Navigate back a location
NavFor             Navigate forward a location
Compile            Compile the current file
Build              Build the current file, includes also a submenu for Make commands. Geany
                   remembers the last chosen action from the submenu and uses this as default
                   action when the button itself is clicked.
Run                Run or view the current file
Color              Open a color chooser dialog, to interactively pick colors from a palette
ZoomIn             Zoom in the text
ZoomOut            Zoom out the text
UnIndent           Decrease indentation
Indent             Increase indentation
SearchEntry        The search field belonging to the 'Search' element (can be used alone)
Search             Find the entered text in the current file (only useful if you also
                   use 'SearchEntry')
GotoEntry          The goto field belonging to the 'Goto' element (can be used alone)
Goto               Jump to the entered line number (only useful if you also use 'SearchEntry')
Preferences        Show the preferences dialog
Quit               Quit Geany
================== ==============================================================================



Plugin documentation
====================


Instant Save
------------
This plugin sets on every new file (File->New or File-> New (with template))
a randomly chosen filename and set its filetype appropriate to the used template
or when no template was used, to a configurable default filetype.
This enables you to quickly compile, build and/or run the new file without the
need to give it an explicit filename using the Save As dialog. This might be
useful when you often create new files just for testing some code or something
similar.


Backup Copy
-----------

This plugin creates a backup copy of the current file in Geany when it is
saved. You can specify the directory where the backup copy is saved and
you can configure the automatically added extension in the configure dialog
in Geany's plugin manager.

After the plugin was loaded in Geany's plugin manager, every file is
copied into the configured backup directory when the file is saved in Geany.



Contributing to this document
=============================

This document (``geany.txt``) is written in `reStructuredText`__
(or "reST"). The source file for it is located in Geany's ``doc``
subdirectory.  If you intend on making changes, you should grab the
source right from SVN to make sure you've got the newest version. After
editing the file, to build the HTML document to see how your changes
look, run "``make doc``" in the subdirectory ``doc`` of Geany's source
directory. This regenerates the ``geany.html`` file. To generate a PDF
file, use the command "``make pdf``" which should generate a file called
geany-|(version)|.pdf.

__ http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html

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

    % svn diff geany.txt > foo.patch

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

Note, you will need the Python docutils software package installed
to build the docs. The package is named ``python-docutils`` on Debian
and Fedora systems.




Scintilla keyboard commands
===========================

Copyright © 1998, 2006 Neil Hodgson <neilh(at)scintilla(dot)org>

This appendix is distributed under the terms of the License for
Scintilla and SciTE. A copy of this license can be found in the file
``scintilla/License.txt`` included with the source code of this
program and in the appendix of this document. See `License for
Scintilla and SciTE`_.

20 June 2006



Keyboard commands
-----------------

Keyboard commands for Scintilla mostly follow common Windows and GTK+
conventions. All move keys (arrows, page up/down, home and end)
allows to extend or reduce the stream selection when holding the
Shift key, and the rectangular selection when holding the Shift and
Ctrl keys. Some keys may not be available with some national keyboards
or because they are taken by the system such as by a window manager
or GTK. Keyboard equivalents of menu commands are listed in the
menus. Some less common commands with no menu equivalent are:

=============================================   ======================
Action                                          Shortcut key
=============================================   ======================
Magnify text size.                              Ctrl+Keypad+
Reduce text size.                               Ctrl+Keypad-
Restore text size to normal.                    Ctrl+Keypad/
Indent block.                                   Tab
Dedent block.                                   Shift+Tab
Delete to start of word.                        Ctrl+BackSpace
Delete to end of word.                          Ctrl+Delete
Delete to start of line.                        Ctrl+Shift+BackSpace
Delete to end of line.                          Ctrl+Shift+Delete
Go to start of document.                        Ctrl+Home
Extend selection to start of document.          Ctrl+Shift+Home
Go to start of display line.                    Alt+Home
Extend selection to start of display line.      Alt+Shift+Home
Go to end of document.                          Ctrl+End
Extend selection to end of document.            Ctrl+Shift+End
Go to end of display line.                      Alt+End
Extend selection to end of display line.        Alt+Shift+End
Previous paragraph. Shift extends selection.    Ctrl+Up
Next paragraph. Shift extends selection.        Ctrl+Down
Previous word. Shift extends selection.         Ctrl+Left
Next word. Shift extends selection.             Ctrl+Right
=============================================   ======================




Tips and tricks
===============

Document notebook
-----------------

* Double-click on empty space in the notebook tab bar to open a
  new document.
* Double-click on a document's notebook tab to toggle all additional
  widgets (to show them again use the View menu or the keyboard
  shortcut). The interface pref must be enabled for this to work.
* Middle-click on a document's notebook tab to close the document.

Editor
------

* Alt-scroll wheel moves up/down a page.
* Ctrl-scroll wheel zooms in/out.
* Shift-scroll wheel scrolls 8 characters right/left.
* Ctrl-click on a word in a document to perform *Go to Tag Definition*.
* Ctrl-click on a bracket/brace to perform *Go to Matching Brace*.

Interface
---------

* Double-click on a symbol-list group to expand or compact it.

GTK-related
-----------

* Scrolling the mouse wheel over a notebook tab bar will switch
  notebook pages.

The following are derived from X-Windows features (but GTK still supports
them on Windows):

* Middle-click pastes the last selected text.
* Middle-click on a scrollbar moves the scrollbar to that
  position without having to drag it.


Hidden preferences
==================

There are some uncommon preferences that are not shown in the Preferences
dialog. These can be set by editing ``~/.config/geany/geany.conf``, then
restarting Geany. Search for the key name, then edit the value. Example:

    ``brace_match_ltgt=true``

The table below show the key names of hidden preferences in the
configuration file.

================================  ===========================================  ==================
Key                               Description                                  Default
================================  ===========================================  ==================
**Editor related**
brace_match_ltgt                  Whether to highlight <, > angle brackets.    false
show_editor_scrollbars            Whether to display scrollbars. If set to     true
                                  false, the horizontal and vertical
                                  scrollbars are hidden completely.
use_gtk_word_boundaries           Whether to look for the end of a word when   true
                                  using word-boundary related Scintilla
                                  commands (see `Scintilla keyboard
                                  commands`_).
complete_snippets_whilst_editing  Whether to allow completion of snippets      false
                                  when editing an existing line (i.e. there
                                  is some text after the current cursor
                                  position on the line). Only used when the
                                  keybinding ``Complete snippet`` is set to
                                  ``Space``.
**Interface related**
show_symbol_list_expanders        Whether to show or hide the small expander   true
                                  icons on the symbol list treeview (only
                                  available with GTK 2.12 or above).
allow_always_save                 Whether files can be saved always, even if   false
                                  they don't have any changes. By default,
                                  the Save buttons and menu items are
                                  disabled when a file is unchanged. When
                                  setting this option to true, the Save
                                  buttons and menu items are always active
                                  and files can be saved.
**VTE related**
emulation                         Terminal emulation mode. Only change this    xterm
                                  if you have VTE termcap files other than
                                  ``vte/termcap/xterm``.
================================  ===========================================  ==================


Compile-time options
====================

There are some options which can only be changed at compile time,
and some options which are used as the default for configurable
options. To change these options, edit the appropriate source file
in the ``src`` subdirectory. Look for a block of lines starting with
``#define GEANY_*``. Any definitions which are not listed here should
not be changed.

.. note::
    Most users should not need to change these options.

src/geany.h
-----------

==============================  ============================================  ==================
Option                          Description                                   Default
==============================  ============================================  ==================
GEANY_STRING_UNTITLED           A string used as the default name for new     untitled
                                files. Be aware that the string can be
                                translated, so change it only if you know
                                what you are doing.
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   900
                                first start.
GEANY_WINDOW_DEFAULT_HEIGHT     The default height of the main window at the  600
                                first start.
 **Windows specific**
GEANY_USE_WIN32_DIALOG          Set this to 1 if you want to use the default  0
                                Windows file open and save dialogs instead
                                GTK's file open and save dialogs. The
                                default Windows file dialogs are missing
                                some nice features like choosing a filetype
                                or an encoding. *Do not touch this setting
                                when building on a non-Win32 system.*
==============================  ============================================  ==================

project.h
---------

==============================  ============================================  ==================
Option                          Description                                   Default
==============================  ============================================  ==================
GEANY_PROJECT_EXT               The default filename extension for Geany      geany
                                project files. It is used when creating new
                                projects and as filter mask for the project
                                open dialog.
==============================  ============================================  ==================

editor.h
--------

==============================  ============================================  ==================
Option                          Description                                   Default
==============================  ============================================  ==================
GEANY_WORDCHARS                 These characters define word boundaries when  a string with:
                                making selections and searching using word    a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and
                                matching options.                             underscore.
==============================  ============================================  ==================

keyfile.c
---------

These are default settings that can be overridden in the `Preferences`_ dialog.

==============================  ============================================  ==================
Option                          Description                                   Default
==============================  ============================================  ==================
GEANY_MIN_SYMBOLLIST_CHARS      How many characters you need to type to       4
                                trigger the auto completion list.
GEANY_DISK_CHECK_TIMEOUT        Time in seconds between checking a file for   30
                                external changes.
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     "xterm"
                                command line option "-e". This can also
                                include a path.
GEANY_DEFAULT_TOOLS_BROWSER     A web browser. This can also include a path.  "firefox"
GEANY_DEFAULT_TOOLS_PRINTCMD    A printing tool. It should be able to accept  "lpr"
                                and process plain text files. This can also
                                include a path.
GEANY_DEFAULT_TOOLS_GREP        A grep tool. It should be compatible with     "grep"
                                GNU grep. This can also include a path.
GEANY_DEFAULT_MRU_LENGTH        The length of the "Recent files" list.        10
GEANY_DEFAULT_FONT_SYMBOL_LIST  The font used in sidebar to show symbols and  "Sans 9"
                                open files.
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"
GEANY_TOGGLE_MARK               A string which is used to mark a toggled      "~ "
                                comment.
GEANY_MAX_AUTOCOMPLETE_WORDS    How many auto completion suggestions should   30
                                Geany provide.
==============================  ============================================  ==================



GNU General Public License
==========================

::

                GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                   Version 2, June 1991

     Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
        51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
     Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
     of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

                    Preamble

      The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
    freedom to share and change it.  By contrast, the GNU General Public
    License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
    software--to make sure the software is free for all its users.  This
    General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
    Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to
    using it.  (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by
    the GNU Library General Public License instead.)  You can apply it to
    your programs, too.

      When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
    price.  Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
    have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
    this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
    if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
    in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

      To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
    anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.
    These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
    distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

      For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
    gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
    you have.  You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
    source code.  And you must show them these terms so they know their
    rights.

      We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
    (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
    distribute and/or modify the software.

      Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
    that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free
    software.  If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we
    want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so
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      Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
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    program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the
    program proprietary.  To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
    patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

      The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
    modification follow.

                GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
       TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

      0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains
    a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
    under the terms of this General Public License.  The "Program", below,
    refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
    means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
    that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
    either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
    language.  (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in
    the term "modification".)  Each licensee is addressed as "you".

    Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
    covered by this License; they are outside its scope.  The act of
    running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program
    is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the
    Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
    Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

      1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
    source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
    conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
    copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
    notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
    and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
    along with the Program.

    You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
    you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

      2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
    of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
    distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
    above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

        a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
        stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

        b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
        whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
        part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
        parties under the terms of this License.

        c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
        when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
        interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
        announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
        notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
        a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
        these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
        License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
        does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
        the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

    These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole.  If
    identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
    and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
    themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
    sections when you distribute them as separate works.  But when you
    distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
    on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
    this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
    entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

    Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
    your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to
    exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or
    collective works based on the Program.

    In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
    with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of
    a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under
    the scope of this License.

      3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
    under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
    Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

        a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
        source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
        1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

        b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
        years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
        cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
        machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
        distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
        customarily used for software interchange; or,

        c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
        to distribute corresponding source code.  (This alternative is
        allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
        received the program in object code or executable form with such
        an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

    The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
    making modifications to it.  For an executable work, complete source
    code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
    associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
    control compilation and installation of the executable.  However, as a
    special exception, the source code distributed need not include
    anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
    form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
    operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
    itself accompanies the executable.

    If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering
    access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent
    access to copy the source code from the same place counts as
    distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not
    compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

      4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
    except as expressly provided under this License.  Any attempt
    otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
    void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
    However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under
    this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such
    parties remain in full compliance.

      5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
    signed it.  However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
    distribute the Program or its derivative works.  These actions are
    prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.  Therefore, by
    modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
    Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
    all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
    the Program or works based on it.

      6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
    Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
    original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
    these terms and conditions.  You may not impose any further
    restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
    You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to
    this License.

      7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
    infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
    conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
    otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
    excuse you from the conditions of this License.  If you cannot
    distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
    License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you
    may not distribute the Program at all.  For example, if a patent
    license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
    all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
    the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
    refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

    If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under
    any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to
    apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other
    circumstances.

    It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any
    patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any
    such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the
    integrity of the free software distribution system, which is
    implemented by public license practices.  Many people have made
    generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed
    through that system in reliance on consistent application of that
    system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing
    to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot
    impose that choice.

    This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to
    be a consequence of the rest of this License.

      8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in
    certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the
    original copyright holder who places the Program under this License
    may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding
    those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among
    countries not thus excluded.  In such case, this License incorporates
    the limitation as if written in the body of this License.

      9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions
    of the General Public License from time to time.  Such new versions will
    be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
    address new problems or concerns.

    Each version is given a distinguishing version number.  If the Program
    specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
    later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions
    either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
    Software Foundation.  If the Program does not specify a version number of
    this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
    Foundation.

      10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
    programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author
    to ask for permission.  For software which is copyrighted by the Free
    Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes
    make exceptions for this.  Our decision will be guided by the two goals
    of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and
    of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.

                    NO WARRANTY

      11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY
    FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.  EXCEPT WHEN
    OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
    PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
    OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
    MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  THE ENTIRE RISK AS
    TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU.  SHOULD THE
    PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING,
    REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

      12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
    WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
    REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
    INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
    OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
    TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY
    YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER
    PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
    POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

                 END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

            How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

      If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
    possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
    free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

      To do so, attach the following notices to the program.  It is safest
    to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
    convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
    the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

        <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
        Copyright (C) <year>  <name of author>

        This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
        it 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.

        This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
        but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
        MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
        GNU General Public License for more details.

        You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
        along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
        Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301 USA


    Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

    If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
    when it starts in an interactive mode:

        Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year  name of author
        Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.
        This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
        under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

    The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate
    parts of the General Public License.  Of course, the commands you use may
    be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be
    mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.

    You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
    school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if
    necessary.  Here is a sample; alter the names:

      Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
      `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.

      <signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
      Ty Coon, President of Vice

    This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
    proprietary programs.  If your program is a subroutine library, you may
    consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the
    library.  If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General
    Public License instead of this License.




License for Scintilla and SciTE
===============================

Copyright 1998-2003 by Neil Hodgson <neilh(at)scintilla(dot)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.
