# Bluefish manual chapter 3: Reference
Author: Jim Batis

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# Chapter 3: Reference

What we've studied in the previous chapters should be enough to familiarize yourself with Bluefish and its features. At this point, you should be able to use Bluefish in order to build web sites easy, fast and you've learnt to take advantage of most features of Bluefish.

However, we've not covered every single feature of Bluefish, and this is where this chapter comes in. In this last part of the tutorial, we will have a quick look to all menus, toolbars and windows of Bluefish. As the chapter's title suggests, this is a reference to all functions of Bluefish. Purpose of this chapter isn't to explain every single thing in Bluefish, but to create a place you can glance at every time you want to find out what a function does, before you use it.

## The menu

We will start with the menus, since they contain all functions of the program. Functions are categorized and divided into 9 menus.

### File menu

As the name implies, the File menu deals with creating, opening and saving documents.

#### New

Creates a new, empty, untitled document.

TIP: Since the new document is empty, you might want to save time in building the basic template of the document by choosing Quickstart, either from the HTML toolbar or `Dialogs->General->Quickstart`.

#### Open, open from web

These functions are used for opening files, either from your computer or network, or from the Internet, should you have access. These two sub-menus have been explained in detail at Chapter 1, Opening a file.

#### Open recent

This is fore quick-opening the files you have worked with before. Just select one from the list and go on. This list is saved between sessions.

#### Insert

You can use this sub-menu in case you want to insert the whole text of another file in the currently processed document.

There are a few things you should note. First of all, the whole text of the file selected will be inserted and will be inserted at the current cursor position. Furthermore, contrary to the 'Open' dialog, here you can select only one file.

#### Save, Save as, Save all

These functions are used to save the current opened files. We have already explained these features in detail at Chapter 1, Saving files.

#### Move to

This is similar to the `mv` bash command. I.e. it transfers the file to a new position. In a way, it is similar to 'Save as', only that the old file no longer exists.

#### Close, Close all

Used for closing the currently viewed or all opened files. These functions were explained on Chapter 1, Closing a file.

#### Print

Used for printing the html-code.

#### Quit

Exits Bluefish, after asking you to save any changed files.

### Edit menu

This menu concerns the text editing area and provides useful functions, like copying and pasting, as well as searching for words or a specific line.

#### Cut, Copy, Paste

These work exactly like in any other application you've seen. A temporary area called Clipboard is used for storing (and sharing) data between GTK+ applications. Cutting text makes the selected text to be deleted and stored in the Clipboard. Copying does the same, only that the selected text is left untouched. Paste will insert the text of the Clipboard at the current cursor position.

#### Select all

As the name implies, it selects the whole text of the text editing area.

#### Go to line

A dialog appears in which you can give a number and it takes you to the correspodant line of the text.

TIP: If you're using Weblint, this can become a very useful function. As you will notice, when Weblint finds a syntax error in your document, it also displays the line in which the error was found. With Go to line you can easily go straight to the place of the error without much search.

There is an even more faster way to do so, which will be described later on.

#### Find, etc.

REMEMBER TO WRITE THIS SECTION LATER ON.

#### Undo, Undo All, Redo, Redo All

Bluefish keeps a record of the changes done to a document, e.g. the text inserted or deleted. In case you've done an error that you want to undo, press Undo. All undoed changes are stored in another place and can be restored back using Redo.

Undo all undos all changes, while Redo all will restore back the text of all the undoed changes.

### View menu

#### View in Netscape

This views the currently edited page in Netscape Navigator. If Netscape is not running, it is getting started.

#### Drag 'n Drop Window

Might get obsoleted

#### Next Document, Previous Document

These options switch through the active Documents without needing to klick on the notebook-tabs.

#### Higlight syntax

Turns Syntax-Highlighting off and on. This is done on a per-document-basis, not on the whole program. Note that before the highlighting works, you have to set the Regular Expressions for the Highlighting.

#### Refresh Highlighting

Re-calculates Syntax-Highlighting.

### Project menu

#### Open, Close, Save, Save As

This are the standard-functions to work with projects. Projects contain Filenames, paths, colors, fonts etc. This way you can easily work on a defined environment for a website.

#### Edit

The Project-editor:
This lets you set some values for the project. Basedir is the directory in which the project is located. References to subdirectories are made using this directory as a start. Also the file-opening functions (open html-page, insert image etc.) start in this directory.
Webdir WHAT IS THIS EXACTLY?
Template is a template-filename. This is loaded everytime when you create a new document in this project.
In this window you can organize your project-documents. Delete Documents, change the order in which they are opened, etc.
Here you can create, edit or delete the values for several Drop-Down lists (Colors, Fonts, URL's, Targets, Document Type Definitions, CSS Classes, META Tags).

#### Add current Document, Add all Open Documents

Adds the current or all open Documents to the projects documents-list.

### Tags menu

#### Headings, Formatting, Table, Lists

Using this menu-entries inserts the appropriate HTML-Tags. Make shortcut-Entries in the menue to customize bluefish to your needs!

#### Special

This is to insert the special HTML-entities.

#### Replace ISO8895-1 chars

With this Menuentry you can auto-convert the ISO8859-1 Chars to their corresponding HTML-Entities. E.g. if you have a ä in your text it is converted to &auml;.

#### Replace ascii-chars

Use this to replace all ASCII-Characters with their HTML-entities.

WARNING: This functions are not UNDO-able. Especially using Replace ascii Chars on your whole document will screw it up heavily.

#### Insert Generator META-tag

Inserts the line `<meta name="generator" value="Bluefish 0.6">` into the document.

### Dialogs menu

Here you find dialogs for almost all HTML-tags. They simplify various tasks (e.g. the image-dialog automatically inserts the width and height of the image) and add functionality to the editor.

### External menu

#### Weblint

Invokes the Syntax-checker Weblint. Its output is piped in a new window.

#### Filters, Commands

Here are the shortcuts to external filters and external commands that are user-configurable.

### Options menu

#### Preferences

See previous chapter for its options

#### View toolbars

Toggles the visibility of the Main, HTML and Custom toolbars.

#### Lists/External Filters, Lists/External commands

Here you define the calling-syntax for the external filters and programs. An external filter gets the content of the active document as input, and its output is inserted as the new current document. Programs to use as filters are e.g. Tidy from w3.org.
External programs simply do their job. Nothing is filtered or output in the document. This might be a script to copy your documents to a webserver or stuff like that.

#### Syntax Highlighting

In the appearing window you can set the colors and regular expressions for the syntax-highlighter. For more Infos on Regular expressions read `man 7 regex`.

#### Reset Syntax Highlighting

Resets the Syntax-highlighting Regular Expressions to their defaults.

#### Save Config

Saves the current configuration.

#### Save shortcut key settings

Saves your custom menu-shortcuts.

### Help menu

#### About

Displays a masterwork of craftmanship :-)

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