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5. Configuration

In this chapter we shall see how the menus and the key bindings of ne can be completely configured. Note that the configuration is parsed at startup time, and cannot be changed during the execution of the program. This is a chosen limitation.


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5.1 Key Bindings

ne allows you to associate any keystroke with any command. To accomplish this task, you have to create a file named `.keys' in your home directory, or in `~/.ne'. You can change the default name (possibly specifying a complete path) using the --keys argument (see section Arguments).

The format of the file is very simple: each line starting with the `KEY' sequence of capital characters is considered the description of a key binding. All other lines are considered commments. The format of a key binding description is

 
KEY hexcode command

The hexcode value is the ASCII code of the keystroke. (For special keys such as Insert or function keys, you should take a look at the file `default.keys' that comes with ne's distribution: it contains a complete, commented definition of ne's standard bindings that you can modify with a trial-and-error approach.) You can write just the hexadecimal digits, nothing else is necessary (but a prefixing `0x' is tolerated). For instance,

 
KEY 1 MoveSOL

binds to Control-A the action of moving to the start of a line, while

 
KEY 101 LineUp

binds to the "cursor-up" key the action of moving the cursor one line up.

command can be any ne command, including Escape (which allows reconfiguring the menu activator) and Macro, which allows binding complex sequences of actions to a single keystroke. The binding of a macro is very fast because on the first call the macro is cached in memory. See section Macro.

Note that you cannot ever redefine Return and Escape. This is a basic issue--however brain damaged is the current configuration, you will always be able to exploit fully the menus and the command line.

Besides the "standard" combinations (e.g., Control-letter), it possible to program combinations based on the Meta key (a.k.a. Alt). The situation in this case is a bit more involved, because depending on the terminal emulator you are using, the effect of the Meta key can be widely different. For instance, xterm raises the eigth bit of a character, so, for instance,

 
KEY 81 MoveSOF

binds Control-Meta-a to the action of moving to the start of the document. However, gnome-terminal will emit the character of ASCII code 1 prefixed with ESC instead. To handle this case, ne provides codes from 180 on for simulated Meta sequences: for instance,

 
KEY 181 MoveSOF

binds the abovementioned sequence to the same action as before. In general, the code 180+x corresponds to the sequence ESC followed by the ASCII character of code x. Note that some of these sequences may be disabled, if they conflict with existing sequences of your terminal (for instance, ESC followed by `O' is always disabled because it prefixes several built-in keyboard sequences).

As a final note, we remark that typing Meta-a on gnome-terminal will produce an ESC followed by `a'. Since it is obviously easier to press just Meta rather than Meta and Control at the same time, it is a good idea to associated the same sequence also to this combination, using

 
KEY 1E1 MoveSOF

Moreover, this setting provides the user with a second choice: one can press Escape followed by a letter instead of using modififiers.

This is the approach used by default in ne: this way, Control with Meta plus a letter should always work, and Meta should work sometimes (of course, if you're sure to use always the same kind of emulator you can bind more features). Again, the best place to look at it's `default.keys'.

The key binding file is parsed at startup. If something does not work, ne exits displaying an error message. If you want ne to skip parsing the key binding file (for instance, to correct the broken file), just give ne the --no-config argument. See section Arguments.


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5.2 Changing Menus

ne allows you to change the contents of its menus. To accomplish this task, you have to create a file named `.menus' in your home directory, or in `~/.ne'. You can change the default name (possibly specifying a complete path) using the --menus argument (see section Arguments).

Each line of a menu configuration file not starting with the `MENU' or `ITEM' keywords is considered a comment. You should describe the menus as in the following example:

 
MENU "File"
ITEM "Open...     ^O" Open
ITEM "Close         " Close
ITEM "DoIt          " Macro DoIt

In other words: a line of this form

 
MENU "title"

will start the definition of a new menu, having the given title. Each line of the form

 
ITEM "text" command

will then define a menu item, and associate the given command to it.

Any number of menus can be accomodated, but you should consider that many terminals are 80 column wide. There is also a minor restriction on the items--their width has to be constant throughout each menu (but different menus can have different widths). Note that the text of an item, as the name of a menu, is between quotes. Whatever follows the last quote is considered the command associated to the menu.

Warning: the description of key bindings in menus (`^O' in the previous example) is very important for the beginner; there is no relation inside ne about what you say in the menu and how you configure the key bindings (see section Key Bindings). Please do not say things in the menus that are not true in the key binding file.

The menu configuration file is parsed at startup. If something does not work, ne exits displaying an error message. If you want ne to skip the menu configuration phase (for instance, to correct the broken file), just give ne the --no-config argument. See section Arguments.


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