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ne
has a number of flags that specify alternative
behaviors, the most prototypical example being the insert flag,
which specifies whether the text you type is inserted into the existing text
or overwrites it. You can toggle this flag with the 'Insert' menu
item of the 'Prefs' menu, or with the <Insert> key of your
keyboard. (Toggle means to change the value of a flag from true to
false, or from false to true; see Insert.)
Another important flag is the free form flag, which specifies
whether the cursor can be moved beyond the right end of each line of
text or only to existing text (a la vi
). Programmers usually
prefer non free form editing; text writers seem to prefer free form. See
FreeForm for some elaboration. The free form flag can be set with
the 'Free Form' menu item of the 'Prefs' menu.
At this point, we suggest you explore by trial and error the other
flags of the 'Prefs' menu, or try the Flags
command (see Flags),
which explains all the flags and the commands that operate on
them. We prefer spending a few words discussing automatic
preferences or autoprefs.
Having many flags ensures a high degree of flexibility, but it can turn
editing into a nightmare if you have to turn on and off dozens of flags
for each different kind of file you edit. ne
's solution is to
automatically set a document's flags when a file is loaded based on your
stated preferences for each file type. A file's type is determined
by the extension of its file name, that is, the last group of letters
after the last dot. For instance, the extension of ne.texinfo is
'texinfo', the extension of source.c is 'c', and the
extension of my.txt is 'txt'.
Whenever you select the 'Save AutoPrefs' menu item, ne
saves
the flags of your current document to be used when
you load other files with the same extension as your current document.
These autoprefs are saved in a file in your ~/.ne
directory. This file has the same name as the extension of the current
document with '#ap' appended to it. It contains all the commands
necessary to recreate your current document's flag settings. Whenever
you open a file with this file name extension, ne
will
automagically recreate your preferred flag settings for that file type.
(There is a flag that inhibits the process; see AutoPrefs.)
Finally, when you select the 'Save Def Prefs' menu item, a special
preferences file named .default#ap is saved. These preferences
are loaded whenever ne
is run before loading any file. This is
how you set up the preferences you always want to be set.
Note also that a preferences file is just a macro (as described in the following section). Thus, it can be edited manually if necessary.