# Bluefish manual preface
Author: Jim Batis

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# Preface: A little bit about Bluefish

## About Bluefish

The Bluefish project was started by Chris Mazuc and Olivier Sessink. Both authors where programming a HTML editor and decided to merge both projects to improve the development. First the project was named ProSite, later THTML-editor. At this time Neil Millar joined the development and added the color chooser and the weblint integration. The first public releases were about to start and a logo was needed. The name discussion started again and this time Neil came up with a cute logo and name: Bluefish. This is still the current name and logo.

More developers joined and Bluefish started to get more attention from the open source community. Bluefish was multiple times chosen as best editor, or app of the week, got 5 golden penguins on Tucows/Linuxberg, was top rated at Linuxapps and more developers joined.

## Distribution and availability

Bluefish is distributed via the world wide web. The current website is http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/ but new release can be found on many mirrors as well, notably Tucows/Linuxberg worldwide. Developers releases are announced on the development mailinglist. Send an email containing "subscribe bluefish-dev" in the body to listar@lists.ems.ru to join development, translations or testing. Usually development releases can be found in the download directory of the main website as well.

New releases of this manual should be accessible on this main website as well.

## Requirements

Bluefish mainly uses the GTK and posix C libraries. Most unix systems will run Bluefish without any problems. Bluefish is developed on i386-Linux but we hope it will run on any other posix machine. Platforms known to work are Solaris (Ultrasparc), Linux (Alpha, i386, Ultrasparc), True64 (Alpha), and HP/UX.

For extended functionality install imlib (including libjpeg, libgif and libpng), weblint, netscape, tidy and any filters you might want to use.

## Installation

There are two ways to install Bluefish. The first is to get an already-compiled binary package and the second way is to compile it yourself.

If you choose a binary package, refer to your systems manual on how to install (man apt-get, man rpm, man dpkg).

If you choose to compile it yourself, we have made the procedure very easy and all you have to do is to follow the following four steps.

### First step: Unpacking

After you have grabbed a copy of Bluefish in compressed/packed format, the first thing you must do is to unpack it. This procedure varies according to the compression format. Here we will explain how to unpack the GZipped/tarred and bz2 format.

#### Gzipped/tarred format

Let's say that the file is bluefish-x.x.x.tar.gz (in reality, x.x.x will be the version number). Go to your home directory (or any temporary directory you might want to use) and type:
`blashyrkh:~# tar xzvf bluefish-x.x.x.tar.gz`

This will unpack all contents and build the nessecary directory tree structure. The source code of Bluefish is now found at directory `bluefish-x.x.x`.

#### Bzipped format

### Second step: Configuring

Now you must enter the bluefish directory (for reasons of simplicity, let's say that Bluefish code is at `/home/blashyrkh/bluefish-x.x.x`. As you will notice, in that directory there is an executable file called configure, which helps you configure the code to suite your operating system and machine, as well as your preferences on the features you want to use. It also makes sure that all the required libraries and files exist before trying to compile the program. Usually, all you have to do is type: `blashyrkh:~# cd bluefish-x.x.x blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# ./configure`

This will work correctly on most machines and will configure Bluefish with the default options. If a program (e.g. ispell) is not found, then any Bluefish functions relevant to that progam won't be compiled. The above will install Bluefish at `/usr/local/bin`.

configure also allows you to customize Bluefish before it is compiled. It can accept a series of options as a parameter, all of which can be listed (and explained) if you type:
`blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# ./configure --help`

Since there are a lot of options, we'll only explain a few basics here, for complete listing refer to the command described above. First of all, as we've said, Bluefish will be installed in `/usr/local/bin`. The best way to change all installation paths (the lib path, exec-bin path, etc.) is to add --prefix=DIR at the command prompt and all other paths will automaticly adjust. For example, if you want to install Bluefish at `/usr/X11R6/bin`, then type: `blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# ./configure --prefix=/usr/X11R6`

### Third step: Compiling

After configuring the compilation options, all you have to do is type: `blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# make`

Normally, no warnings or errors should appear and the compilation will create the nessecary executable files.

### Fourth step: Installing

The last step is to place bluefish and its data to their correspodant directories. This can be done automaticly using make.

What you need to notice is that you need to be root or use su to be able to use make for installation, as the `bin` directories in `/usr` can be writeable only from root. After you have gained access, you can type:
`blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# make install`

You're now ready to run Bluefish

## Using National Language Support

## Authors and contact

For general comments please contact bluefish@bluefish.openoffice.nl. For more specific questions join the development mailinglist of contact the author of the code (found in AUTHORS). The authors and translators are (alphabetically listed):

- Doug Alcorn
- Erik Alvarez
- Jim JMK Batis
- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho
- Kai Lahmann
- Marc LeMaire
- Chris Mazuc
- Neil Millar
- Pablo De Napoli
- Hylke van der Schaaf
- Martin Samesch
- Olivier Sessink
- Roland Steinbach
- Gero Takke
- Karel Tejnora
- Rasmus Toftdahl Olesen
- Aleksey I Zavilohin

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