1. There must always be a blank line between sections
2. Do not use comments within a section. Comments starting with # can be used outside of a section are fine.
3. In history.ini it is okay to delete a line containing a file or directory path. That will remove it from the corresponding menu.
4. To completely delete a directory entry in history.ini, first remove the entry from the [RECENTDIRS] section. Then, delete the entire section corresponding to that directory entry. Remember to leave a blank line between remaining sections.
5. If after editing an .ini file, you start to get lock-ups, try removing the suspect section in the .ini file. If that still does not work try copying over from a known good .ini file. You could also delete the .ini file altogether and let the editor re-create it, but you will lose your particular settings.

Run Command

• Run via Cmd.exe – will process the command through cmd.exe, allowing environment variable lookup and translation - particularly the PATH. Run Specific File will call up that program directly.
• Replaceable parameters – are 2 character entities that are translated by the editor before passing to the operating system.
  Examples:
  
  • dir #p — Gives a listing of the Current Working Directory of the editor
  • #Z -r myFile.c — will open a new edit window on the right-side of the screen with myFile.c loaded. The full path to zion.exe is specified with a #Z.

Install Help

Since ZionEdit starts up with half screen width, it is perfect for opening up two ZionEdit windows side-by-side. Here's how to set that up.

Drag a shortcut of zion.exe to the Quick lauch bar, twice.
Right-Click on the leftmost icon and select "Properties".
In the "Target" field append " -L" . (There is a space before the -L).
Example:
D:\Apps\Zion\zion.exe -L
Click OK.
Do the same for the rightmost icon, but this time append " -R".

Hot Keys

Home – On the first press, the Home key will take you to the first non-whitespace char. on the line. On the second press, it will take you to the beginning of the line.

Indentation can be increased or reduced by pressing [TAB] or [SHIFT-TAB] respectively. To affect multiple lines, select those lines first.

Ctrl+D quickly duplicates the current line if there is no selection. If there are a number of lines selected, then that block will be duplicated – very convenient!

Vertical Selection – Pressing the ALT key BEFORE the start of a drag (left mouse button) will activate vertical selection mode. To vertically select purely with the keyboard do ALT+SHIFT+Arrow Keys.

F11, F12 – Zooms In and Zooms Out respectively.
Ctrl+ (Numpad) + , - also zooms in and out respectively.
If you get carried away with zooming and forget where "normal" is then press Ctrl+ Numpad /
. A default startup Zoom Level can be set in the Global Options tab of the Settings Dialog.
With Auto Zoom on, "normal" will be the startup Zoom level. For right now Auto Zoom will be enabled only when Wrap Lines if OFF.

Finding and Replacing

For convenience, all strings that are searched for are saved in that window.
Each time a new string is saved that "Find String" is propagated to other open windows. The entire history is not sent, so as to reduce clutter. Ditto for replace.

The find history is available from all Find Dialogs.
For all find functions, if a string was previously selected, that string will become the new find string.
The button labeled F<=>R in the Find/Replace Dialog (Ctrl+R), is a synchronize button. It synchronizes find and replace histories within the local window.

With a string selected, pressing F2, F3 and F4 will give a Super Quick Find. That is, the input dialog will be bypassed.

F2 – Find all occurences in the current file. The search can be "tweaked" from the Find All Results dialog by changing the text in the text field at the top and pressing Enter in the text field, or by clicking on a "Find Flag"
FindAll also has a handy replace mode available. Double click an occurence in the upper listbox to replace it with a string entered in the replacement field. If you have made other changes to the file since the appearance of the FindAll Results dialog, you should first refresh the list by pressing enter in the upper text entry field (ie. the "find" field).
Also, it is a good idea to single-click to verify the highlighted string is what you want, before the double click to replace.

F3 – Find the next occurence in the current file ( Will wrap ).
F4 – Find the previous occurence in the current file (Will not wrap).

F6 – Find in All Files is perhaps the most powerful feature of ZionEdit.
Find In All Files will search for a string in all files of known extension starting from a specified directory and recursing downwards through the directory tree.You can preselect a string to preload the dialog. The list of known extensions is specified in Options | Settings | Ext. Map (Tab).

A powerful Global replace feature is available from the Find in All Files results dialog. Options should be self-explanatory, but noteable: Tweak on flags will give you the option of making fine adjustments on the search before the replace. From the global replace feature, we can replace ALL matching occurrences in a particular file.
If you desire finer control to pick and choose which occurences to replace [safer!], click on a file in the Find in All Files dialog which will open up a FindAll Results dialog. Remember that changes in a global replace cannot be undo'd and so may not be easy to reverse because the file is saved and closed immediately after changes are made.

If all these options seem confusing, remember that you will learn them as you use them. They will be there when you are ready to do some powerful editing.

What is Preserve Replaced Case anyway?
Preserve Replaced Case tries to maintain the case of the string about to be replaced – that is, it temporarily changes the case of the replacement string to match what is being replaced.
The alogrithm makes a decision on case based only on a few conditions. In the string to be replaced,

1. If the first char is lower case, the replacement is set to all lower case. unless there is an upper case char in the rest of the string, then the replacement is used unchanged. (Mixed case is assumed as in: myString )
2. If the first char is uppercase, the first char of the replacement is set to uppercase.
   If the second char is uppercase, the rest of the replacement is set to uppercase.

Settings Tips

Changing Fonts and Colors - Styles

1. A "style" is pretty much Scintilla's (the core edit module's) way of rendering a programming language element. That is, fonts, colors and other text attributes.
2. Styles can be changed quickly by right-clicking on the element and selecting "Change Style". From the dialog you can change other styles and settings. This is actually the Master Settings Dialog. You can also get this by going to Options | Settings
3. Styles can also be changed, if you are a glutton for torture in zion.ini . Colors are represented in the hex. form: RRGGBB just like html, but without the #.
   Style elements must be separated only by a comma. No spaces are allowed between elements. Descriptions may have spaces between words though (Descriptions are not read back to the editor, they are only output for the user's benefit).
   After making changes to zion.ini, select Options | Reload from zion.ini to incorporate your changes.

Auto Complete

By default Autocomplete is turned on. It will automatically try to complete a word from the internal list of language keywords plus any user keywords/functions.
Autocomplete settings can be changed under Settings | Global Options.
If Autocomplete is turned off you can still manually complete a word by pressing Ctrl-J.

Startup Options

HTML Tips

To place a pair of tags around a string or block just select it first then choose a tag from the HTML menu. The majority should work like that including anchors.

You can turn off "Tag Auto Complete" from the HTML menu (when in HTML mode) by unchecking the menu item. This change will be made persistent, so the HTML window must have a Style Lock. (See the IPC section).

You can bypass Tag Autocomplete for the tag you are about to close by pressing Ctrl+Shift+> before pressing the final Shift+>.

Ctrl+K will skip the current position to just past the next >
Ctrl+Shift+K will skip to the left, in front of the next <

Ctrl+Enter will give a <BR>, but if you are typing a lot of formatted sentences, you may want to turn on "Auto <BR>". You don't want to leave it on for too long as it could get annoying.

Inter Process Communication (IPC)

One window (usually the first one you start up) acts as a server and all other windows are clients. Clients must contact the server before making most permanent changes. The server coordinates requests to write to zion.ini, so that there are no multiple unexpected updates and that all other client windows know about updates when they do happen.

If your server tells you that "Another window has the lock for style changes" then look for the window with the process id given and save settings in that window. If that still doesn't work, click Help | IPC Status and see if there are any windows showing to have "Style Lock". Close them and try again. If all else fails, close all windows and reopen as needed.

The number in the title-bar is the process id of the current window and is used as an identifier in IPC.

Just f.y.i., if the server window is closed, a reconvergence takes place and another window is selected to be server. If you'd like to know which one became server check Help | IPC Status in any window.

Whenever a window is switched out of Read Only to Writeable, the file is automatically reloaded so that the editor buffer is current. This is very helpful when you are editing between windows of the same file. Care is still needed when editing a single file through multiple windows.

Known Issues

Currently there are no major outstanding bugs that I know of. If you do find a bug or even a minor issue, please do send me a quick Bug Report from Help | Bug Report/ Comment. It is with the help of a community of users that software can become very robust.

Brace highlighting also counts braces in comments. Hope to find a fix for that soon. 'Til then just make sure you don't leave a hanging brace or parenthesis in your comments.

There is an internal issue with the wxSTC class as used in this program: When "line wrapping" is on and styles are reloaded, scintilla may cause an assertion, then lock-up. ZionEdit addresses this problem by setting up a fresh edit buffer with the chosen lexer set, then reloads the file into that buffer. This is not necessary ( and isn't done ) when line wrapping is off. The fix has been working for many months with HTML line wrapped, but was never applied to any other mode. That has been fixed, and you should not have any lock-ups under any condition.
It is good practice though, in any editor, to do a "save" before scrolling away from an edited position. Right-Click, then select "save" at the bottom of the menu.

A Little History

It's true. ZionEdit was started after working through the David Beech Tutorial in September 2005.

I was planning on learning Python, then thought I needed a good GUI Toolkit for that, so I started to investigate wxPython.
The examples I saw seemed a bit cumbersome with the DOS window and all – and then the thought of the GUI being interpreted! Uhhh! So I thought, how hard would it be to learn wxWidgets straight up.

I had toyed a little with the Fox Toolkit under Linux and was hoping one day to really get into it deep. It just didn't happen. When I started to check out David's tutorial, I was in for a BIG SURPRISE! WxWidgets was easier to learn than the Fox Toolkit and the documentation, oh yes, the documentation is WORLD CLASS!!! WxWidgets superior documentation was one big reason I was able to progress this fast and this deep into wxWidgets. Also after a year and half of working with wxWidgets I found only one minor bug (in a listbox refresh, ver. 2.6.1) that was fixed in version 2.6.3.

Reality Check: Indeed there is a LOT of hype out there concerning scripting languages and other esoteric tools, but C++ is one powerful, beautiful and simple language that will be around for a long, long, time! Take it from a guy who never really did anything more than a paragraph of C++ code before Sept. 2005!

Why the Name Zion? Okay, I am not a Jew, just a Christian. The name Zion was chosen for it's biblical roots:
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." — Psalms 137:1
Zion is a place of refreshing, a place we long to get back to, a place where God is.

Created with ZionEdit