Installing macros

This repo holds two kinds of macro, and they install differently. Picking the wrong one is the usual reason a new macro never shows up.

Kind	Where it comes from	Where it ends up
Menu command	macros/commands/	The Macro menu
Subroutine library	macros/lib/	~/.xnedit/autoload.nm, callable from other macros, invisible in every menu

Menu commands are the common case. Start there.

Install a menu command

About five minutes, no Terminal needed. The example below installs macros/commands/trim-trailing-blanks.nm.

1. Copy the macro body

Open the .nm file in any editor. The header comment tells you what to type into each field of the dialog. Everything below the header is the macro body: select it and copy it.

2. Open the Macro Commands dialog

Preferences → Default Settings → Customize Menus → Macro Menu...

3. Fill in the form

New sits at the top of the list on the left and is already selected when the dialog opens, which is what you want for a new command. Fill in the right-hand side from the file's header comment, and paste the body into Macro Command to Execute.

The dialog once the command has been filled in. The list on the left only shows NED>Trim Trailing Blanks after you add it; before that, New is selected and the fields on the right are empty.

Field	What goes in it
Menu Entry	The menu path. NED>Trim Trailing Blanks puts the command in a NED submenu; each > adds a level.
Accelerator	Optional keyboard shortcut. Click the field and press the keys themselves, don't type their names.
Mnemonic	Optional single letter, which must appear in the item's name. Underlines that letter for keyboard navigation.
Requires Selection	Tick only if the header comment says a selection is required. The command is then greyed out when nothing is selected.
Macro Command to Execute	The body you copied.

Check compiles the macro and reports any syntax error without installing anything. Click it before you commit to the command. Then OK, which applies the command and closes the dialog.

4. Save the defaults

Preferences → Save Defaults, then OK.

The new command works immediately, but it lives only in the running program until you do this. Save Defaults is what writes it to ~/.xnedit/nedit.rc.

5. Check the menu

Test it on a copy of a real file before you trust it on anything you care about. Macros write straight to the buffer with no confirmation step.

Install a subroutine library

Files in macros/lib/ define subroutines that other macros call. They add nothing to any menu, and they install by being appended to autoload.nm, which XNEdit runs at startup:

cat macros/lib/text.nm >> ~/.xnedit/autoload.nm

XNEdit does not create autoload.nm for you, but >> will. Restart XNEdit afterwards, then check it loaded by running one of its subroutines from Macro → Execute Macro.

Appending the same file twice defines the same subroutines twice. When you reinstall after an edit, delete the old block first.

Install several commands at once

Pasting a dozen commands through the dialog does not scale past the first person. XNEdit can read them from a file instead:

xnedit -import ned-macros.rc

Then Preferences → Save Defaults in the window that opens. The imported commands are merged into whatever you already have, so this will not clobber your own macros.

The file holds a single nedit.macroCommands resource listing every command:

nedit.macroCommands: \
    NED>Trim Trailing Blanks:::: {\n\
        original = get_range(0, $text_length)\n\
        trimmed = replace_in_string(original, "[ \\t]+$", "", "regex", "copy")\n\
        if (trimmed != original) {\n\
            replace_range(0, $text_length, trimmed)\n\
        }\n\
    }\n

The format is unforgiving:

• Each entry starts with four colon-separated fields: menu path, accelerator, mnemonic, flags. R in the flags field means the command requires a selection. Empty fields still need their colons, hence ::::.
• Every line of the body ends with a literal \n\, an escaped newline followed by the resource-file line continuation.
• The last line of the resource ends with \n and no trailing backslash.
• Indentation is tabs, not spaces.
• Backslashes double. A macro that contains "[ \t]+$" is written "[ \\t]+$" here, and "\\w" becomes "\\\\w".

Because of that last rule especially, don't hand-write these. Install the command through the dialog, run Save Defaults, then copy the entry XNEdit generated out of ~/.xnedit/nedit.rc.

Where XNEdit keeps things

~/.xnedit/, created on first run:

File	Holds
nedit.rc	All preferences, including every Macro menu command, in X resource format
autoload.nm	Macro code run at startup. Not created for you
nedit.history	Recently opened files

Setting XNEDIT_HOME moves the whole directory:

echo "${XNEDIT_HOME:-$HOME/.xnedit}"

Note the leading X. Classic NEdit used NEDIT_HOME; XNEdit does not read it.

XNEdit runs locally on XQuartz on the team's Macs, so this is your own machine. Nothing here involves a remote host.

Coming from classic NEdit

XNEdit uses NEdit 5.7's preferences format and the same nedit X resource app-name, so existing settings transfer as they are:

cp -r ~/.nedit/. ~/.xnedit/

Fonts are the exception and will need setting again, since XNEdit renders antialiased text.

Troubleshooting

The command is not in the menu. It went into autoload.nm instead of the Macro menu. autoload.nm defines subroutines; it does not create menu entries.

It was there yesterday and now it's gone. Save Defaults was skipped.

It works for you and not for anyone else. It calls a subroutine from autoload.nm that only you have installed.

Nothing happens and there's no error. Start XNEdit from a terminal and add t_print() calls to the macro. That output goes to the terminal, not to any window.

The command is greyed out. Requires Selection is ticked and nothing is selected.