> displays the file system browser. By default, the file system browser is shown in a floating window. This window can be docked using the commands in its top-left corner popup menu; see the section called “Window Docking Layouts”.
The FSB can be customized in the > dialog box; see the section called “The File System Browser Panes”.
The directory to browse is specified in the text field. Clicking the mouse in the text field automatically selects its contents allowing a new path to be quickly typed in. If a relative path is entered, it will be resolved relative to the current path. This text field remembers previously entered strings; see Appendix C, History Text Fields. The same list of previously browsed directories is also listed in the > menu; selecting one opens it in the file system browser.
To browse a listed directory, double-click it (or if you have a three-button mouse, you can click the middle mouse button as well). Alternatively, click the disclosure widget next to a directory to list its contents in place. To browse higher up in the directory hierarchy, double-click one of the parent directories in the parent directory list.
Files and directories in the file list are shown in different colors depending on what glob patterns their names match. The patterns and colors can be customized in the > pane of the > dialog box.
The Text Box can be used to
navigate to a specific directory. Environment variables are expanded
here, allowing for both $VARNAME or
%VARNAME% syntax.
A+Up is a keyboard shortcut that brings
you to the parent directory.
A+Left and A+Right navigate back and forward through the visited directory stacks, in a
Netscape/Konqueror/IE like fashion.
To see a specific set of files only (for example, those whose
names end with .java), enter a glob pattern in
the text field. This text fields
remembers previously entered strings. See Appendix D, Glob Patterns
for information about glob patterns.
Unopened files can be opened by double-clicking (or by
clicking the middle mouse button). Open files have their names
underlined, and can be selected by single-clicking. Holding down
Shift while opening a file will open it in a new
view.
Clicking a file or directory with the right mouse button displays a popup menu containing various commands.
The file list sorting algorithm used in jEdit handles
numbers in file names in an intelligent manner. For example, a
file named section10.xml will be placed
after a file named section5.xml. A
conventional letter-by-letter sort would have placed these two
files in the wrong order.
The file system browser has a tool bar containing a number of buttons. Each item in the menu (described below) except and has a corresponding tool bar button.
Clicking the button displays a menu containing the following items:
- moves up in the directory hierarchy. The Alt+Left arrow keyboard shortcut achieves the same thing.
- reloads the file list from disk. F5 does this also.
- on Unix,
goes to the root directory (/). On
Windows and MacOS X, lists all mounted drives and network
shares. The forward slash (/) achieves this too.
- displays your home directory. Keyboard shortcut: ~
- displays the directory containing the currently active buffer. Shortcut: -
(Ctrl+N) - opens new, empty, buffer in the current directory. The file will not actually be created on disk until the buffer is saved.
- creates a new directory after prompting for the desired name.
- displays the search and replace dialog box set to search all files in the current directory. If a file is selected when this command is invoked, its extension becomes the file name filter for the search; otherwise, the file name filter entered in the browser is used. See the section called “Search and Replace” for details.
- toggles if hidden files are to be shown in the file list.
- a menu for selecting the character encoding to use when opening files. See the section called “Character Encodings”.
Clicking the button displays a menu containing plugin commands. For information about plugins, see Chapter 9, Installing and Using Plugins.
Clicking the button displays a menu showing all files and directories in the favorites list. The item adds the currently selected file to the favorites list. If nothing is selected, the current directory is added. To remove a file from the favorites, invoke , which will show the favorites list in the file system view, then select from the right-click menu of the entry you want to remove.
Completion behaves differently in file dialogs than in the stand-alone file system browser window.
In the file dialog, keyboard input goes in the file name field
by default. Pressing Enter opens the file or
directory path that is either fully or partially entered in the file
name field. Typing the first few characters of a file's name selects
that file. If the file name field is empty and nothing is selected,
/ lists the root directory on Unix and the list of
drives on Windows. There are two handy abbreviations that may be
used in file paths: ~ expands to the home
directory, and - expands to the current buffer's
directory.
For example, to open a file
/home/slava/jEdit/doc/TODO.txt, you might enter
~/j/d/to.
In the stand-alone file system browser, keyboard input is
handled slightly differently. There is no file name field, instead
shortcuts are active when the file tree has keyboard focus.
Additionally, pressing /, ~ or
- always immediately goes to the root, home and
current buffer's directory, respectively.