Getting started

Installing XNEdit

There are no prebuilt macOS binaries, so XNEdit is built from source. Its makefile has a macos build configuration and the dependencies are in Homebrew:

brew install --cask xquartz
brew install openmotif
git clone https://github.com/unixwork/xnedit.git
cd xnedit
make macos

macOS is the only platform nedkit targets.

Installing the macros

Macro menu commands live in ~/.xnedit/nedit.rc, under the nedit.macroCommands X resource. Getting one there means pasting it through Preferences > Default Settings > Customize Menus > Macro Menu and then Preferences > Save Defaults. Installing macros walks through the dialog with screenshots.

Each command's page in the command reference carries the values the dialog asks for and the macro body itself, folded away under a toggle so you can copy it straight off this site.

Subroutine libraries work differently. They are appended to ~/.xnedit/autoload.nm, which XNEdit runs at startup, and they add nothing to any menu:

cat macros/lib/text.nm >> "${XNEDIT_HOME:-$HOME/.xnedit}/autoload.nm"

Restart XNEdit afterwards. autoload.nm is not created for you.

XNEDIT_HOME overrides the configuration directory. XNEdit renamed this from NEDIT_HOME and ignores the old name, which is a common source of confusion when copying instructions written for NEdit.

Checking that it worked

Open a file, then look under Macro in the menu bar. The commands appear in a NED submenu. If the submenu is missing, the usual cause is that the macro went into autoload.nm instead of the macro menu, or that Save Defaults was never run.

Before you run one on something you care about

A macro writes straight to the buffer with no confirmation step, so a pattern that matches more than you meant takes the file with it. Try each one on a copy first. Undo works, and every command here leaves the buffer alone when it finds nothing to do, but a copy costs nothing.