This chapter describes how to set key preferences that control the look and behavior of SlickEdit Core. For a complete description of all preferences screens, see Options Dialog.
SlickEdit Core is one of the most configurable editors available. User preferences, also called options, can be set to change the appearance and control the behavior of most editing features.
User preferences are set using the SlickEdit Preferences dialog, which can be displayed from the main menu by clicking Window → SlickEdit Preferences. For more information including a detailed breakdown of options, see Options Dialog.
SlickEdit Core contains two kinds of preferences:
Global Options - affect all languages.
Language Specific Options - affect only the specified language.
If you are using SlickEdit Core in a multiple user environment, each user must define a VSECLIPSECONFIG environment variable that refers to a local directory. This allows each user to have their own configuration. If making modifications to vslick.ini, make a local copy of this file and place it in the VSECLIPSECONFIG directory file.
See Vim Tutorial for more information.
Global options affect all languages and include the following:
Emulation modes (see Emulations)
Fonts (see Fonts)
Colors (see Colors, Color Coding, and Symbol Colors)
Other global preferences, such as default search options and selection styles are also available for setting through the SlickEdit Preferences dialog (Window → SlickEdit Preferences). These options are described in the documentation on a contextual basis. For a listing of preferences categories, see Option Categories.
The behavior of the editor can be customized for files based on specific languages. indent, word wrap, comment, auto-complete, Context Tagging®, and other code-style settings are all language-specific. These settings are located on the SlickEdit Preferences dialog (Window → SlickEdit Preferences → Languages → [Language Category] → [Language]). The options are described in the documentation on a contextual basis. For a flat listing of the language-specific options, see Language Options.
A shortcut method to access language options for the current buffer is to use the Format → [Language] Options menu item (or the setupext command). This will open the SlickEdit Preferences dialog to the General language-specific option screen for that language.
For more information about working with languages and language extensions, see Introduction to Language-Specific Editing.
SlickEdit Core records all state information and option settings in your config directory. Some items are saved in the state file, and others are stored in specific files. For more information, see Configuration Directories and Files.
Periodically, you should make a backup of your config directory. Some errors in SlickEdit Core may cause your configuration to be corrupted. Having a backup of this directory allows you to fall back to a known, good configuration, rather than having to start over with a clean, default configuration.
SlickEdit Core also provides the capability to Export and Import your options settings. You can create an export package of all or part of your SlickEdit Core options. You can use this to:
Backup and restore your option settings.
Share selected options with other team members.
Transfer your options from one machine to another.
Moving options to a machine with a different operating system is not supported. Also, options should not be exported from one version of SlickEdit Core and then imported into another. While these operations may work for some options, we cannot predict when this will cause a problem.
For more information see Export/Import Options.