Since the Text Editor is fully integrated with the graphical toolset, changes you make to source code are immediately reflected in the graphical tools, and vice versa.
The Text Editor window includes:
- A menu bar, which provides access to all options available in the Text Editor.
- The editor window, which contains the open file, displaying color-coded text.
- The editor toolbar, which contains icons for frequently performed tasks, such as, saving and printing, cutting, copying, and pasting, undoing and redoing, finding text, toggling bookmarks, finding bookmarks, and clearing bookmarks, and accessing online help.
- When you are editing a procedure, the following additional icons appear: Report, Graph, Define, Join, Set, Allocation, Use, and SQL. These icons enable you to launch graphical tools from the Text Editor. For details, see Opening a Graphical Tool From the Text Editor.
- A status bar that shows a help message, line and column positions, and the status of four functions (insert, caps lock, num lock, and scroll lock).
When you open a Master File, procedure, or HTML file in the Editor window, syntax elements in the text appear color-coded for easy viewing and editing. For example, the commands in a procedure appear in red. You can change default colors or remove text coloring to suit your preferences. For details, see Changing Text Color and Case Size.
Depending on where you place the cursor in the Editor window, you can click the Open FOCUS tool button on the Text Editor toolbar or right-click and select Open tool whenever you want to edit code in a graphical tool. See Opening a Graphical Tool From the Text Editor for details.
You can access any text editor that is registered with your operating system based on the program that is set up to be the default program that opens the selected file type. For example, in Windows Explorer, select a .fex file, then right-click and select Properties from the context menu. Click Change and select Notepad as the default program to open this file type if it is not already associated with an application. The option to open procedures (.fex files) with Notepad is available through Developer Studio.
This option is valuable for developers who want to take advantage of the WebFOCUS language and use the editor of their choice.
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You can access any text editor by right-clicking a file within the Developer Studio Explorer. A context menu for the file appears with the following default options:
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Open in (Task Viewer/Text Editor/Registered Program) to edit the components of the procedure. Depending on this setting, the following options order will change.
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Open in (Task Viewer). Depending on the product settings, this option may show Open in (Text Editor) or Open in (Registered Program), for example, Notepad.
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Open in Text Editor to edit the procedure code using the Developer Studio Text Editor.
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Open in (Registered Program) to edit the procedure code using an external editor, such as Notepad.
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Open in auto detected tool to open the procedure in the tool used to create it (for example, Report Painter, HTML Composer, and so on). You must use this option if you need to open the file in the HTML Composer because it is the only way to open procedures created in the tool used to create them. You cannot open procedures created with those tools from the Task Viewer.
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Procedure: How to Set Up the Default Action for the Open Option
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In the Explorer window, select Options from the Window menu. The Developer Studio Options dialog box opens at the General tab.
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From the Default file editor drop-down list, select one of the following:
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Edit in DevStudio tool to edit a procedure in the Developer Studio Task Viewer.
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Edit in Text Editor to edit a procedure in the Developer Studio Text Editor.
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Edit in Windows registered tool to edit a procedure in Notepad, Wordpad, or another program as registered with the operating system.