The new Source Editor (based in scintilla)  includes properties files for 'other' programming language aside from dBASE. These Global .properties files are found in the same directory as the plus.exe. They include Global .properties files for Java, HTML, C++, PHP, SQL, XML... just to name a few.

There is a also a dBASE User .properties file that you will find under the ?_app.currentUserPath directory. Though most settings can be set using the Source Editor Properties dialog. So, you will not need to edit this directly.

The functionality of the .properties files are based on the same rules and structure as the Scite .properties files.

You can go here for more information on .properties files: http://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDoc.html

This documentation is based on Scite's implementation of .properties files so some information may be different. However, most of the actual .properties syntax and the list of Defined Variables below are the same.

The files are in approximately the same format as Java properties files which have a simple text format. Lines that start with '#' or that are completely blank are comments. Other lines are of the form

variable=value

 

Defined Variables in Properties files ..

position.left

Set the initial window size and position. If these are omitted then the environment's defaults are used. If the width or height are -1 or the position.maximize property is set then the window is maximised.

position.top

position.width

position.height

position.maximize

position.tile

If there is another copy of SciTE open, set the initial window position to be with the left side at position.left + position.width so that most of the time you can see both copies at once without overlap. Works nicely if position.left set to 0 and position.width set to half of the screen width.

buffers

Set to a number between 1 and 100 to configure that many buffers. Values outside this range are clamped to be within the range. The default is 1 which turns off UI features concerned with buffers.

This value is read only once, early in the startup process and only from the global and user properties files. So after changing it, restart SciTE to see the effect.

buffers.zorder.switching

This setting chooses the ordering of buffer switching when Ctrl+Tab pressed. Set to 1, the buffers are selected in the order of their previous selection otherwise they are chosen based on the buffer number.

are.you.sure

The classic GUI question. Normally, when SciTE is about to close a file which has unsaved edits it asks this annoying question. To turn off the question, set are.you.sure to 0 and files will be automatically saved without bothering the user. To abandon edits to a file use the New command. New always asks "Are you sure?" giving an opportunity to not save the file.

are.you.sure.for.build

When running or building a file, its most likely that you want the file to be saved first. To enable a confirmation dialog for performing Compile, Build or Go commands, set are.you.sure.for.build=1.

save.all.for.build

SciTE normally saves the current buffer when performing a Compile, Build, or Go command. To save all buffers set save.all.for.build=1

view.whitespace

Setting view.whitespace to 1 makes SciTE start up with whitespace visible.

view.indentation.whitespace

Setting view.indentation.whitespace to 0 hides visible whitespace inside indentation.

whitespace.fore

Sets the colours used for displaying all visible whitespace, overriding any styling applied by the lexer.

whitespace.back

view.indentation.guides

Setting view.indentation.guides to 1 displays dotted vertical lines within indentation white space every indent.size columns.

view.indentation.examine

Setting view.indentation.examine to 1 to display guides within real indentation whitespace only, 2 according to the next non-empty line (good for Python) or 3 according to both the next and previous non-empty lines (good for most languages).

view.indentation.examine.filepattern

Setting highlight.indentation.guides to 1 highlights the indentation guide associated with a brace when that brace is highlighted.

highlight.indentation.guides

 

view.eol

Setting this to 1 makes SciTE display the characters that make up line ends. This looks similar to (CR), (LF), or (CR)(LF). This is useful when using files created on another operating system with software that is picky about line ends.

eol.mode

The default EOL mode (characters that make up line ends) depends on your platform. You can overwrite this behaviour by setting the property to

LF for UNIX and OS X format

CR for Macintosh format prior to OS X

CRLF for DOS/Windows format

eol.auto

This setting overrides the eol.mode value and chooses the end of line character sequence based on the current contents of the file when it is opened. The line ending used the most in the file is chosen.

blank.margin.left

There is a blank margin on both sides of the text. It is drawn in the background colour of default text. This defaults to one pixel for both left and right sides but may be altered with these settings.

blank.margin.right

margin.width

Setting this to a number makes SciTE display a selection margin to the left of the text. The value is the number of pixels wide the selection margin should be. Line markers are displayed in the selection margin area.

full.screen.hides.menu

Setting this to 1 hides the menu bar when the Full Screen command is used on Windows. On GTK+ the menu is always visible.

minimize.to.tray

Setting this to 1 minimizes SciTE to the system tray rather than to the task bar.

line.margin.visible

SciTE is able to display a column of line numbers to the left of the selection margin. Setting line.margin.visible to 1 makes this column visible at startup. The line.margin.width property controls how much space is reserved for the line numbers, in terms of the number of digits that can be displayed. To specify that the margin should expand if needed to accommodate larger line numbers, add a '+' after the number of digits, e.g.line.margin.width=3+.

line.margin.width

tabbar.visible

Setting tabbar.visible to 1 makes the tab bar visible at start up. The buffers property must be set to a value greater than 1 for this option to work.

tabbar.hide.one

Setting tabbar.hide.one to 1 hides the tab bar until there is more than one tab.

tabbar.multiline

Setting tabbar.multiline uses multiple lines for the tab bar

toolbar.visible

Setting this to 1 makes the tool bar visible at start up.

toolbar.large

Setting this to 1 makes the tool bar larger and use larger icons.

toolbar.usestockicons

SciTE has a built-in icon set for the toolbar, setting this to 1 makes SciTE more integrated in the GNOME desktop by using the icons provided by the current theme used in GNOME.

pathbar.visible

The path bar is a line of text under the tab bar showing the full path of the currently selected tab. Setting pathbar.visible to 1 makes the path bar visible on GTK+.

undo.redo.lazy

Setting this to 1 changes the technique used to determine when to enable or disable tool bar buttons to be less accurate. This may improve performance on slow machines.

statusbar.visible

Setting this to 1 makes the status bar visible at start up.

statusbar.number

The statusbar.text.1 option defines the information displayed in the status bar by default on all platforms. Property values may be used in this text using the $() syntax. Commonly used properties are: ReadOnly, EOLMode, BufferLength, NbOfLines (in buffer), SelLength (chars), SelHeight (lines). Extra properties defined for the status bar are LineNumber, ColumnNumber, and OverType which is either "OVR" or "INS" depending on the overtype status. You can also use file properties, which, unlike those above, are not updated on each keystroke: FileName or FileNameExt, FileDate and FileTime and FileAttr. Plus CurrentDate and CurrentTime.

statusbar.text.number

On Windows only, further texts may be set as statusbar.text.2 .. and these may be cycled between by clicking the status bar.

 

The statusbar.number option defines how many texts are to be cycled through.

buffered.draw

Setting this to 0 rather than the default 1 makes SciTE draw output directly to the screen rather than into a buffer bitmap first and then to the screen. Buffered drawing flickers less but is slower.

two.phase.draw

Two phase drawing is a better but slower way of drawing text. In single phase drawing each run of characters in one style is drawn along with its background. If a character overhangs the end of a run, such as in "V_" where the "V" is in a different style from the "_", then this can cause the right hand side of the "V" to be overdrawn by the background of the "_" which cuts it off. Two phase drawing fixes this by drawing all the backgrounds first and then drawing the text in transparent mode. Two phase drawing may flicker more than single phase unless buffered drawing is on. The default is for drawing to be two phase.

technology

On Windows Vista or newer, this can be set to 1 to use the Direct2D and DirectWrite APIs for higher quality antialiased drawing. The default is 0.

load.on.activate

The load.on.activate property causes SciTE to check whether the current file has been updated by another process whenever it is activated. This is useful when another editor such as a WYSIWYG HTML editor, is being used in conjunction with SciTE.

save.on.deactivate

The save.on.deactivate property causes SciTE to save the file whenever the SciTE application loses focus. This is useful when developing web pages and you want to often check the appearance of the page in a browser.

are.you.sure.on.reload

When both this and load.on.activate are set to 1, SciTE will ask if you really want to reload the modified file, giving you the chance to keep the file as it is. By default this property is disabled, causing SciTE to reload the file without bothering you.

save.on.timer

The save.on.timer property causes SciTE to save modified files whenever there have been no modifications for the number of seconds specified by the property. When set to 0, the default, this feature is disabled and files are not automatically saved.

reload.preserves.undo

When set to 1, reloading a file does not delete all the undo history. This is useful when load.on.activate is used in conjunction with filter commands.

check.if.already.open

This option allows opening files in an existing instance of SciTE rather than always opening a new instance. When this option is set and SciTE is started, it checks to see if there are any other instances of SciTE open. If there is, another instance is asked to open the file and become active and the new instance exits. On Windows, the instance with the Options | Open Files Here menu item checked opens the file. On GTK+, an arbitrary instance opens the file.

read.only

When this option is set then opened documents are initially read only. New files are not affected by this setting.

background.open.size

This setting controls whether files are opened and saved without blocking the user interface while they are being read or written. Files larger than the given size in bytes will be read or written in the background while smaller files will be read or written directly and SciTE will not respond until the file access is completed. The default value is -1 allows background processing for all files. For saving, the size used is the in-memory size in bytes which will differ from the on-disk size when the UTF-16 encoding is used.

background.save.size

temp.files.sync.load

Files dropped on SciTE on Windows are normally opened asynchronously as there may be a long list. However, files dragged from some applications such as 7-Zip may only exist for a moment in the temporary directory and be deleted once the drop has occurred.

Setting this to 1 makes SciTE open dropped files in the temporary directory immediately.

quit.on.close.last

If this option is set, SciTE will close when its last buffer has been closed, e.g. with File/Close. (By default, if this option is not set, SciTE will remain open and will create a new blank document when its last buffer is closed.)

highlight.current.word

When set to 1, all occurrences of the selected word are highlighted with the colour defined by highlight.current.word.colour. By default, this option is disabled. (See indicators.alpha and indicators.under)

highlight.current.word.indicator

If set, defines the appearance of the current word highlight. This is a structured property with multiple attributes similar to:

highlight.current.word.indicator=style:roundbox,colour:#0080FF,under,outlinealpha:140,fillalpha:80

highlight.current.word.colour

The option highlight.current.word.colour defines the colour of highlight. The default value is #A0A000.

Overridden by highlight.current.word.indicator.

highlight.current.word.by.style

If the option highlight.current.word.by.style is set, then only words with the same style are highlighted (e.g. if you select this word in a comment, then only occurrences of words in comments are selected).

spell.ignore.filepattern

Specifies a list of words that should not be treated as spelling mistakes for a particular filepattern. For example, in HTML, tag names that are not words are common so turn off the spelling highlight with:

spell.ignore.*.html=br ul toc valign blockquote kbd thead tr th tbody colspan

To turn spell checking completely off for a filepattern use the value *.

spell.mistake.indicator

If set, defines the appearance of spelling mistakes. This is a structured property with multiple attributes similar to:

spell.mistake.indicator=style:squigglepixmap,colour:#FF0000

rectangular.selection.modifier

On GTK+, the modifier key used to make rectangular selections can be set with this property. Valid options are 2 (Ctrl), 4 (Alt) or 8 (Super). Super is often assigned to the Windows/Start key on Windows keyboards or the Command key on Mac keyboards. 

Since the Alt key is often used by window managers to move windows, this will need to be configured off to use the combination in SciTE. This can be done for Metacity using gconf-editor to modify the /apps/metacity/general/mouse_button_modifier. A valid value here is <Super>.

selection.fore

Sets the colours used for displaying selected text. If one of these is not set then that attribute is not changed for the selection. The default is to show the selection by changing the background to light grey and leaving the foreground the same as when it was not selected. The translucency of the selection is set with selection.alpha with an alpha of 256 turning translucency off.

selection.back

selection.alpha

caret.fore

Sets the colour used for the caret.

selection.additional.fore

Similar to selection.fore, selection.back, selection.alpha. Sets the colours used for displaying additional selections when multiple selections are enabled or a rectangular selection is made.

selection.additional.back

selection.additional.alpha

caret.additional.blinks

Set whether all carets blink. 0 means only the main caret blinks. Default is 1.

caret.line.back

Sets the background colour and translucency used for line containing the caret. Translucency ranges from 0 for completely transparent to 255 for opaque with 256 being opaque and not using translucent drawing code which may be slower.

caret.line.back.alpha

caret.period

Sets the rate at which the caret blinks. The value is the time in milliseconds that the caret is visible before it is switched to invisible. It then stays invisible for the same period before appearing again. A value of 0 stops the caret from blinking.

caret.width

Sets the width of the caret in pixels. Only values of 1, 2, or 3 work.

selection.rectangular.switch.mouse

Sets whether switching to rectangular selection mode while making a selection with the mouse is allowed (1) or not (0). Default is 0.

selection.multiple

Set selection.multiple to make multiple selections with the mouse by holding down the Ctrl key.

selection.additional.typing

Set selection.additional.typing to 1. to allow typing, backspace and delete to affect all selections including each line of rectangular selections. When set to 0, typing only affects the main selection.

virtual.space

Determines whether the caret can be moved into virtual space, that is, beyond the last character on a line. Set to 1 to allow virtual space when making a rectangular selection, 2 to allow the arrow keys or a mouse click to move the caret into virtual space, and 3 to allow both.

caret.policy.xslop

If slop is set, we can define a slop value: width for xslop, lines for yslop.

caret.policy.width

This value defines an unwanted zone (UZ) where the caret is... unwanted.

caret.policy.xstrict

This zone is defined as a number of pixels near the vertical margins, and as a number of lines near the horizontal margins.

caret.policy.xeven

By keeping the caret away from the edges, it is seen within its context, so it is likely that the identifier that the caret is on can be completely seen, and that the current line is seen with some of the lines following it which are often dependent on that line.

caret.policy.xjumps

 

 

If strict is set, the policy is enforced... strictly.

caret.policy.yslop

The caret is centred on the display if slop is not set, and cannot go in the UZ if slop is set.

caret.policy.lines

 

caret.policy.ystrict

If jumps is set, the display is moved more energetically so the caret can move in the same direction longer before the policy is applied again.

caret.policy.yeven

'3UZ' notation is used to indicate three time the size of the UZ as a distance to the margin.

caret.policy.yjumps

 

 

If even is not set, instead of having symmetrical UZs, the left and bottom UZs are extended up to right and top UZs respectively.

 

This way, we favour the displaying of useful information: the beginning of lines, where most code reside, and the lines after the caret, e.g., the body of a function.

 

 

 

See the table below to see how these settings interact.

 

Default: xslop, yslop, xeven, yeven=1, width=50, all others = 0.

visible.policy.strict

Determines how the display area is determined after a Go to command or equivalent such as a Find or Next Message. Options are similar to caret.policy.*.

visible.policy.slop

visible.policy.lines

edge.mode

Indicates long lines. The default edge.mode, 0, does not indicate long lines. An edge.mode of 1 uses a vertical line to indicate the specified column and an edge.mode of 2 changes the background colour of characters beyond that column. For proportional fonts, an edge.mode of 2 is more useful than 1.

edge.column

edge.colour

control.char.symbol

Sets the character to use to indicate control characters. If not set, control characters are shown as mnemonics.

error.marker.fore

The colours used to indicate error and warning lines in both the edit and output panes are set with these two values. If there is a margin on a pane then a symbol is displayed in the margin to indicate the error message for the output pane or the line causing the error message for the edit pane. The error.marker.back is used as the fill colour of the symbol and the error.marker.fore as the outline colour. If there is no margin then the background to the line is set to the error.marker.back colour.

error.marker.back

error.inline

To see error messages interspersed with the source code, set error.inline=1.

style.error.0

Different visual styles are used for different severities: style.error.0 is the default; style.error.1 for warnings; style.error.2 for errors; and style.error.3 for fatal errors. The severity of a message is inferred from finding the text "warning", "error", or "fatal" in the message.

style.error.1

 

style.error.2

 

style.error.3

 

bookmark.fore

The colours used to display bookmarks in the margin. If bookmark.fore is empty then a blue sphere is used. When the margin is turned off, bookmarks are shown by a change in the background colour of the line with the translucency set with bookmark.alpha.

bookmark.back

bookmark.alpha

find.mark.indicator

If set, then the Mark All command in the Find dialog will draw indicators over each string found. This is a structured property with multiple attributes similar to:

find.mark.indicator=style:roundbox,colour:#0080FF,under,outlinealpha:140,fillalpha:80

find.mark

If set, then the Mark All command in the Find dialog will draw translucent boxes over each string found. (See indicators.alpha and indicators.under)

Overridden by find.mark.indicator.

indicators.alpha

This property defines the alpha level for indicators (default value is 30). The alpha value can range from 0 (completely transparent) to 255 (no transparency). A value out of this range is ignored and the default one is used.

Will be overridden by specific indicator definitions such as find.mark.indicator.

indicators.under

If set, the indicators are drawn under text or over (by default, it is over).

Will be overridden by specific indicator definitions such as find.mark.indicator.

error.select.line

When a command execution produces error messages, and you step with F4 key through the matching source lines, this option selects the line where the error occurs. Most useful if the error message contains the column of error too as the selection will start at the column of the error. The error message must contain the column and must be understood by SciTE (currently only supported for HTML Tidy). The tab size assumed by the external tool must match the tab size of your source file for correct column reporting.

openpath.filepattern

Defines a path for the Open Selected Filename command in the File menu. The path is searched if the selected filename doesn't contain an absolute path or the file is not found in the document directory. The directories in openpath are separated by ';' on Windows and ':' on OS X and GTK+.

An openpath setting may look like:

openpath.*.txt=c:\dos\;f:\;

openpath.$(file.patterns.cpp)=$(cpp_includes)

open.suffix.filepattern

Defines a suffix to add to the selected file name for the Open Selected Filename command in the File menu. This is used in languages where the suffix is not given when accessing a file. An example is python where "import xlib" will most often mean to import from a file called "xlib.py".

An open.suffix setting may look like:

open.suffix.*.py=.py

strip.trailing.spaces

Strips trailing white spaces from the file while saving.

strip.trailing.spaces.filepattern

The global strip.trailing.spaces property can be overridden for files that match a pattern by using the file pattern forms: 

 

strip.trailing.spaces.*.yaml=0

 

or 

 

strip.trailing.spaces.$(file.patterns.yaml)=0

ensure.final.line.end

Ensures file ends with a line end when saved.

ensure.consistent.line.ends

Ensures all lines end with the current Line End Characters setting when saved.

abbreviations.filepattern

Loads an abbreviations file for a particular language overriding the default abbreviations file. For example,

abbreviations.*.c=$(SciteUserHome)/c_abbrev.properties

api.filepattern

Loads a set of API files for a particular language. If there is more than one API file then the file names are separated by ';'. API files contain a sorted list of identifiers and function prototypes, one per line. If there are multiple files then each file should end with a line end or the next file's first line will merge with the previous file's last line. The "Complete Symbol" command looks at the characters before the caret and displayed the subset of the API file starting with that string. When an opening brace is typed, the file is searched for the text preceding the caret and if a function prototype is found then it is displayed as a calltip. For example, the setting

api.*.c=w.api

could be used with a w.api file containing

fclose(FILE* fileClose)

FILE

fopen(const char* szFileName, const char* szMode)

fpos_t

fread(void* buf, size_t size, size_t count, FILE* file)

fseek(FILE* file, long lnOffset, int nOrigin)

to provide autocompletion and calltips for some of the C file functions. It is best to use the full path to the API file as otherwise the current directory is used. See the Creating API files section for ways to create API files.

autocomplete.choose.single

When set to 1 and an autocompletion list is invoked and there is only one element in that list then that element is automatically chosen. This means that the matched element is inserted and the list is not displayed.

autocomplete.lexer.ignorecase

When set to 1 the API file is searched in a case insensitive way to find elements for autocompletion lists. Otherwise matches only occur if case also matches. The * form is used if there is no lexer specific setting.

autocomplete.*.ignorecase

autocomplete.lexer.start.characters

If this setting is not empty, typing any of the characters will cause autocompletion to start. For example, if autocomplete.python.start.characters=. and the API file for Python contains "string.rjust" and "string.replace" then typing "string." will cause the autocompletion to display both identifiers. The * form is used if there is no lexer specific setting.

autocomplete.*.start.characters

autocomplete.lexer.fillups

If this setting is not empty, typing any of the characters will cause autocompletion to complete. For example, if autocomplete.python.fillups=( and the API file for Python contains "string.replace" then typing "string.r(" will cause "string.replace(" to be inserted. The * form is used if there is no lexer specific setting.

autocomplete.*.fillups

autocompleteword.automatic

If this setting is 1 then when typing a word, if only one word in the document starts with that string then an autocompletion list is displayed with that word so it can be chosen by pressing Tab.

calltip.lexer.ignorecase

When set to 1 the API file is searched in a case insensitive way to find the function which will have its signature displayed as a calltip. The * form is used if there is no lexer specific setting.

calltip.*.ignorecase

calltip.lexer.use.escapes

When set to 1 the API file may contain C style backslash escapes which are listed in the command line arguments section. The * form is used if there is no lexer specific setting.

calltip.*.use.escapes

calltip.lexer.word.characters

To determine the identifier to look up for calltips, a search is performed allowing the characters in this set to be included in the identifier. While the same setting can be used as for word.characters, sometimes additional characters may be allowed. For example, in Python, '.' is not normally considered part of a word when selecting text, but it is good to allow "string.replace" to show a calltip so calltip.python.word.characters=._$(chars.alpha) would be a reasonable setting. The * form is used if there is no lexer specific setting.

calltip.*.word.characters

calltip.lexer.parameters.start

Allows you to specify characters which start, end and separate parameters. For most common languages, it's usually left brace for start, right brace for end and comma or semicolon for separator. E.g. CSS has colon for start, space for separator and nothing for end. You can specify more characters for each property. The * form is used if there is no lexer specific setting.

calltip.lexer.parameters.end

calltip.lexer.parameters.separators

calltip.*.parameters.start

calltip.*.parameters.end

calltip.*.parameters.separators

calltip.lexer.end.definition

API files may contain explanatory text after each function definition. To display the explanation on a second line, set this property to the character used at the end of the definition part. For most languages, this is ')'. The * form is used if there is no lexer specific setting.

calltip.*.end.definition

xml.auto.close.tags

For XML and HTML, setting this property to 1 will automatically insert the corresponding end tag when '>' is typed to end a start tag. Type "<td>" and the result will be "<td></td>" with the caret placed between the tags.

asp.default.language

Script in ASP code is initially assumed to be in JavaScript. To change this to VBScript set asp.default.language to 2. Python is 3.

fold.asm.comment.explicit

This option enables folding explicit fold points when using the Asm lexer. Explicit fold points allows adding extra folding by placing a ;{ comment at the start and a ;} at the end of a section that should fold.

fold.asm.comment.multiline

Set this property to 1 to enable folding multi-line comments.

fold.asm.explicit.anywhere

Set this property to 1 to enable explicit fold points anywhere, not just in line comments.

fold.asm.explicit.end

The string to use for explicit fold end points, replacing the standard ;}.

fold.asm.explicit.start

The string to use for explicit fold start points, replacing the standard ;{.

fold.asm.syntax.based

Set this property to 0 to disable syntax based folding.

fold.at.else

This option enables C++ folding on a "} else {" line of an if statement.

fold.basic.comment.explicit

This option enables folding explicit fold points when using the Basic lexer. Explicit fold points allows adding extra folding by placing a ;{ (BB/PB) or '{ (FB) comment at the start and a ;} (BB/PB) or '} (FB) at the end of a section that should be folded.

fold.basic.explicit.anywhere

Set this property to 1 to enable explicit fold points anywhere, not just in line comments.

fold.basic.explicit.end

The string to use for explicit fold end points, replacing the standard ;} (BB/PB) or '} (FB).

fold.basic.explicit.start

The string to use for explicit fold start points, replacing the standard ;{ (BB/PB) or '{ (FB).

fold.basic.syntax.based

Set this property to 0 to disable syntax based folding.

fold.comment

This option enables folding multi-line comments and explicit fold points when using the C++ lexer. Explicit fold points allows adding extra folding by placing a //{ comment at the start and a //} at the end of a section that should fold.

fold.cpp.comment.explicit

Set this property to 0 to disable folding explicit fold points when fold.comment=1.

fold.cpp.comment.multiline

Set this property to 0 to disable folding multi-line comments when fold.comment=1.

fold.cpp.explicit.anywhere

Set this property to 1 to enable explicit fold points anywhere, not just in line comments.

fold.cpp.explicit.end

The string to use for explicit fold end points, replacing the standard //}.

fold.cpp.explicit.start

The string to use for explicit fold start points, replacing the standard //{.

fold.cpp.syntax.based

Set this property to 0 to disable syntax based folding.

fold.d.comment.explicit

Set this property to 0 to disable folding explicit fold points when fold.comment=1.

fold.d.comment.multiline

Set this property to 0 to disable folding multi-line comments when fold.comment=1.

fold.d.explicit.anywhere

Set this property to 1 to enable explicit fold points anywhere, not just in line comments.

fold.d.explicit.end

The string to use for explicit fold end points, replacing the standard //}.

fold.d.explicit.start

The string to use for explicit fold start points, replacing the standard //{.

fold.d.syntax.based

Set this property to 0 to disable syntax based folding.

fold.haskell.imports

Set to 1 to enable folding of import declarations

fold.html

Folding is turned on or off for HTML and XML files with this option. The fold option must also be on for folding to occur.

fold.html.preprocessor

Folding is turned on or off for scripts embedded in HTML files with this option. The default is on.

fold.hypertext.comment

Allow folding for comments in scripts embedded in HTML. The default is off.

fold.hypertext.heredoc

Allow folding for heredocs in scripts embedded in HTML. The default is off.

fold.perl.at.else

This option enables Perl folding on a "} else {" line of an if statement.

fold.perl.comment.explicit

Set to 0 to disable explicit folding.

fold.perl.package

Set to 0 to disable folding packages when using the Perl lexer.

fold.perl.pod

Set to 0 to disable folding Pod blocks when using the Perl lexer.

fold.preprocessor

This option enables folding preprocessor directives when using the C++ lexer. Includes C#'s explicit #region and #endregion folding directives.

fold.quotes.python

This option enables folding multi-line quoted strings when using the Python lexer.

fold.rust.comment.explicit

Set this property to 0 to disable folding explicit fold points when fold.comment=1.

fold.rust.comment.multiline

Set this property to 0 to disable folding multi-line comments when fold.comment=1.

fold.rust.explicit.anywhere

Set this property to 1 to enable explicit fold points anywhere, not just in line comments.

fold.rust.explicit.end

The string to use for explicit fold end points, replacing the standard //}.

fold.rust.explicit.start

The string to use for explicit fold start points, replacing the standard //{.

fold.rust.syntax.based

Set this property to 0 to disable syntax based folding.

fold.sql.at.else

This option enables SQL folding on a "ELSE" and "ELSIF" line of an IF statement.

html.tags.case.sensitive

For XML and HTML, setting this property to 1 will make tags match in a case sensitive way which is the expected behaviour for XML and XHTML.

lexer.asm.comment.delimiter

Character used for COMMENT directive's delimiter, replacing the standard "~".

lexer.cpp.allow.dollars

Set to 0 to disallow the '$' character in identifiers with the cpp lexer.

lexer.cpp.backquoted.strings

Set to 1 to enable highlighting of back-quoted raw strings .

lexer.cpp.escape.sequence

Set to 1 to enable highlighting of escape sequences in strings

lexer.cpp.hashquoted.strings

Set to 1 to enable highlighting of hash-quoted strings.

lexer.cpp.track.preprocessor

Set to 1 to interpret #if/#else/#endif to grey out code that is not active.

lexer.cpp.triplequoted.strings

Set to 1 to enable highlighting of triple-quoted strings.

lexer.cpp.update.preprocessor

Set to 1 to update preprocessor definitions when #define found.

lexer.css.hss.language

Set to 1 for HSS (.hss)

lexer.css.less.language

Set to 1 for Less CSS (.less)

lexer.css.scss.language

Set to 1 for Sassy CSS (.scss)

lexer.d.fold.at.else

This option enables D folding on a "} else {" line of an if statement.

lexer.errorlist.value.separate

For lines in the output pane that are matches from Find in Files or GCC-style diagnostics, style the path and line number separately from the rest of the line with style 21 used for the rest of the line. This allows matched text to be more easily distinguished from its location.

lexer.flagship.styling.within.preprocessor

For Harbour code, determines whether all preprocessor code is styled in the preprocessor style (0) or only from the initial # to the end of the command word(1, the default). It also determines how to present text, dump, and disabled code.

lexer.haskell.allow.hash

Set to 0 to disallow the '#' character at the end of identifiers and literals with the haskell lexer (GHC -XMagicHash extension)

lexer.haskell.allow.questionmark

Set to 1 to allow the '?' character at the start of identifiers with the haskell lexer (GHC & Hugs -XImplicitParams extension)

lexer.haskell.allow.quotes

Set to 0 to disable highlighting of Template Haskell name quotations and promoted constructors (GHC -XTemplateHaskell and -XDataKinds extensions)

lexer.haskell.cpp

Set to 0 to disable C-preprocessor highlighting (-XCPP extension)

lexer.haskell.import.safe

Set to 0 to disallow "safe" keyword in imports (GHC -XSafe, -XTrustworthy, -XUnsafe extensions)

lexer.html.django

Set to 1 to enable the django template language.

lexer.html.mako

Set to 1 to enable the mako template language.

lexer.props.allow.initial.spaces

For properties files, set to 0 to style all lines that start with whitespace in the default style. This is not suitable for SciTE .properties files which use indentation for flow control but can be used for RFC2822 text where indentation is used for continuation lines.

lexer.python.keywords2.no.sub.identifiers

When enabled, it will not style keywords2 items that are used as a sub-identifier. Example: when set, will not highlight "foo.open" when "open" is a keywords2 item.

lexer.python.literals.binary

Set to 0 to not recognise Python 3 binary and octal literals: 0b1011 0o712.

lexer.python.strings.b

Set to 0 to not recognise Python 3 bytes literals b"x".

lexer.python.strings.over.newline

Set to 1 to allow strings to span newline characters.

lexer.python.strings.u

Set to 0 to not recognise Python Unicode literals u"x" as used before Python 3.

lexer.rust.fold.at.else

This option enables Rust folding on a "} else {" line of an if statement.

lexer.sql.allow.dotted.word

Set to 1 to colourise recognized words with dots (recommended for Oracle PL/SQL objects).

lexer.sql.numbersign.comment

If "lexer.sql.numbersign.comment" property is set to 0 a line beginning with '#' will not be a comment.

lexer.xml.allow.scripts

Set to 0 to disable scripts in XML.

sql.backslash.escapes

Enables backslash as an escape character in SQL.

styling.within.preprocessor

For C++ code, determines whether all preprocessor code is styled in the preprocessor style (0, the default) or only from the initial # to the end of the command word(1).

tab.timmy.whinge.level

For Python code, checks whether indenting is consistent. The default, 0 turns off indentation checking, 1 checks whether each line is potentially inconsistent with the previous line, 2 checks whether any space characters occur before a tab character in the indentation, 3 checks whether any spaces are in the indentation, and 4 checks for any tab characters in the indentation. 1 is a good level to use.

user.shortcuts

Define keys that perform commands. This is a '|' delimited list of keys and the commands they produce. The commands are either string or numeric IDs. Numeric IDs above 2000 are Scintilla commands and are sent to the focussed pane. Named IDs and numeric IDs below 2000 are SciTE menu commands. The modifiers are Ctrl, Shift, and Alt and the named keys are Left, Right, Up, Down, Insert, End, Home, Enter, Space, Tab, KeypadPlus, KeypadMinus, KeypadMultiply, KeypadDivide, Escape, Delete, PageUp, PageDown, Slash, Question, Equal, Win. 

On OS X the command key uses the modifier Ctrl+ as this eases using one setting between platforms and the control key uses the modifier Control+. 

user.shortcuts=\

Ctrl+Shift+I|IDM_OPEN|\

Ctrl+Shift+Left|IDM_CLOSE|

This property is only read at start up. 

user.context.menu

Define additional commands for the context menu. This is a '|' delimited list of menu items and the commands they produce with commands defined as in user.shortcuts. An empty item produces a separator. 

user.context.menu=\

||\

Next File|IDM_NEXTFILE|\

Prev File|IDM_PREVFILE|

magnification

Sets the initial magnification factor of the edit and output panes. This is useful when you want to change the size of text globally, such as after changing the screen resolution without having to touch every style setting. 0 is default, negative values makes the size smaller and positive values make it larger.

output.magnification

split.vertical

If split.vertical is set to 1 then the output pane is to the right of the editing pane, if set to 0 then the output pane is below the editing pane. The output.*.size settings determine the initial size of the output pane. If output.initial.hide is 1, then the output pane is hidden when SciTE first starts up even when output.*.size is set; otherwise the output pane is shown at startup.

output.horizontal.size

output.vertical.size

output.initial.hide

clear.before.execute

If set to 1 then the output pane is cleared before any tool commands are run.

horizontal.scrollbar

If horizontal.scrollbar set to 0 then the edit pane's horizontal scrollbar is not displayed.

horizontal.scroll.width

horizontal.scroll.width is the document width assumed for scrolling.

horizontal.scroll.width.tracking

Similarly, output.horizontal.scrollbar and output.horizontal.scroll.width controls the horizontal scroll bar of the output pane.

output.horizontal.scrollbar

The horizontal scroll bar widths can automatically grow as needed to ensure all displayed lines can be fully scrolled with horizontal.scroll.width.tracking and output.horizontal.scroll.width.tracking.

output.horizontal.scroll.width

To stop the output pane from automatically scrolling, set output.scroll to 0. To have the output pane scroll and return back to the line of the executed command, set output.scroll to 1. If you want the output pane to scroll and remain at the bottom after execution, set output.scroll to 2.

output.horizontal.scroll.width.tracking

The vertical scroll range is normally set so that maximum scroll position has the last line at the bottom of the view. Set end.at.last.line to 0 to allow scrolling one page below the last line.

output.scroll

 

end.at.last.line

 

wrap

If wrap set to 1 then the edit pane is dynamically line wrapped. If output.wrap set to 1 then the output pane is dynamically line wrapped. These options have a high performance cost which is proportional to the amount of text so should be turned off for large documents on slow machines.

output.wrap

wrap.style

Chooses between word wrapping (1, the default) and character wrapping (2). Character wrapping is a better choice for Asian languages with no spaces between words.

wrap.visual.flags

Flags to display markers at end and begin of wrapped lines for visual identify them. Set to 0 to not display markers (default). Set to 1 to display markers at end of wrapped lines, to 2 to display markers at begin of wrapped lines and to 3 to display markers at begin and end.

wrap.visual.flags.location

Flags to set the location of the display markers (if enabled) near to text or near to border. Set to 0 to have begin and end markers near to border (default). Set to 1 to have end markers near text, to 2 to have begin markers near text and to 3 to have all markers near text.

wrap.indent.mode

Wrapped sublines can be indented in various ways relative to the initial subline. Default mode 0 indents sublines to the left of window plus wrap.visual.startindent. Mode 1 aligns sublines to the first subline. Mode 2 aligns sublines to the first subline plus one more level of indentation.

wrap.visual.startindent

Sets the indention of continued wrapped lines to better visually identify the wrapping. Default is 0 (no indention). Note if wrap.visual.flags is 2 or 3 (begin marker displayed) the line is indented at least 1, even if wrap.visual.startindent is still 0.

wrap.aware.home.end.keys

This property changes the behaviour of the home and end keys when dynamic line wrapping is turned on. When set to 0 (the default), the Home and End keys will move the caret to the very beginning / end of the 'logical' line, whether or not the line is wrapped over multiple lines in the display. When this property is set to 1, the caret moves to the end of the current 'display' line if you press End once, or to the very end of the 'logical' line if you press End again. Likewise, the Home key moves first to the beginning of the 'display' line, then on to the very beginning of the line. In a pane where dynamic line-wrapping is not enabled, this setting has no effect.

cache.layout

A large proportion of the time spent in the editor is used to lay out text prior to drawing it. This information often stays static between repaints so can be cached with these settings. There are four levels of caching. 0 is no caching, 1 caches the line that the caret is on, 2 caches the visible page as well as the caret, and 3 caches the whole document. The more that is cached, the greater the amount of memory used, with 3 using large amounts of memory, 7 times the size of the text in the document. However, level 3 dramatically speeds up dynamic wrapping by around 25 times on large source files so is a very good option to use when wrapping is turned on and memory is plentiful.

output.cache.layout

open.filter

This is a complex expression used for determining the file types that will be available in the open file dialog. For each type of file, there is some explanatory text, a '|' character, some file patterns, and another '|' character. In the distributed SciTEGlobal.properties file, the line continuation character '\', is used to spread these items out, one per line. These file types appear in the "Files of type:" pull down. The first item is the default, so you may wish to change the first item to include the file types you commonly open.

save.filter

This is a complex expression used for determining the file types that will be available in the save file dialog. The structure of the property is the same as open.filter.

Does not work on GTK+.

max.file.size

To avoid accidentally loading huge files on slow media, or just to ensure SciTE is used only to edit human readable code, the user can set the max.file.size property to specify a limit to file loading. If unset or set to 0, there is no limit. If set to a given size in bytes and if a file to load exceeds this limit, the user is asked if the file should be loaded. If accepted, the file is read as usual. If rejected then no action is taken (no file loaded, no buffer created).

save.deletes.first

Causes files to be deleted before being opened for saving. Can be used to ensure saving under a different capitalisation changes the files capitalisation rather than silently using the old capitalisation.

save.check.modified.time

With save.check.modified.time=1, when saving and the file has been modified by another process, check if it should be overwritten by the current contents.

save.session

If you set save.session, the list of currently opened buffers will be saved on exit in a session file. When you start SciTE next time (without specifying a file name on the command line) the last session will be restored automatically.

save.recent

For GTK+, the file is called ".SciTE.session" and is located in the directory given by the SciTE_HOME environment variable and if that is not set, the value of the HOME environment variable and if that is not set, the top level directory. For Windows, the file is called "SciTE.session" and is located in the directory given by the SciTE_HOME environment variable and if that is not set, the value of the USERPROFILE environment variable and if that is not set, the directory of the SciTE executable.

save.position

Setting save.recent causes the most recently used files list to be saved on exit in the session file and read at start up.

save.find

Setting save.position causes the SciTE window position on the desktop to be saved on exit in the session file and restored at start up.

 

Setting save.find cause the "Find what" and "Replace with" to be saved in the session file.

session.bookmarks

Setting session.bookmarks causes bookmarks to be saved in session files. If you set session.folds then the folding state will be saved in session files. When loading a session file bookmarks and/or folds are restored. Folding states are not restored if fold.on.open is set.

session.folds

open.dialog.in.file.directory

Setting open.dialog.in.file.directory causes the open dialog to initially display the same directory as the current file. If it is not set then the system default is used.

find.close.on.find

Set to 0 to prevent the Find dialog from closing when "Find" pressed.

find.replace.matchcase

These properties define the initial conditions for find and replace commands. The find.replace.matchcase property turns of the "Match case" option, find.replace.regexp the "Regular expression" option, find.replace.wrap the "Wrap around" option and find.replace.escapes the "Transform backslash expressions" option.

find.replace.regexp

find.replace.wrap

find.replace.escapes

find.replacewith.focus

If the find.replacewith.focus property is set, the Replace With input box is focused in the Replace dialog if Find What is non-empty.

find.replace.regexp.posix

Change behaviour of Regular expression search. If set to 0 (the default), characters '(' and ')' must be escaped by '\' to behave as regexp meta characters. If set to 1, these characters are meta characters itself.

find.use.strip

Use in-window strips rather than dialogs for performing Find or Replace commands.

replace.use.strip

find.strip.incremental

Perform incremental search when typing in the find and replace strips. Set to 1 to enable incremental searching and 2 to enable both incremental searching and highlighting all matches. Highlighting all matches (2) can be slow on large files so should only be enabled when performance is reasonable.

replace.strip.incremental

find.indicator.incremental

Sets the indicator to use for find.strip.incremental=2 or replace.strip.incremental=2. This is a structured property with multiple attributes similar to:

find.indicator.incremental=style:compositionthick,colour:#FFB700,under

strip.button.height

Buttons on GTK+ often contain extra spacing that makes strips take too much room. This setting tries to limit the height of buttons. A value of 23 or 24 may work well.

find.replace.advanced

Enables Replace in Buffers command and Search only in this style checkbox. If enabled, searches can be restricted to a particular style (e.g. strings).

find.indicator

Controls the animated golden match indicator on OS X. The default value, 1, shows and animates the find indicator then fades it away so surrounding text can be seen clearly. Use the value 0 to disable the find indicator and the value 2 to keep the find indicator displayed. This setting is not available on OS X 10.6.

find.command

The Find in Files command works in a similar way to the building commands executing a command line tool with output redirected to the output pane. If the command produces output understood by one of the error output passes, as does grep, then the F4 and Shift+F4 keys can be used to move through all the matches. The $(find.what), $(find.files), and $(find.directory) variables can be used for the values from the Find in Files dialog.

find.input

There are some scripts that implement this feature in Perl better than grep does itself here and here. This command line works with Cygwin on Windows, with modifications to suit the Cygwin installation directory:

 

find.command=cmd /c c:\cygwin\bin\find "$(find.directory)" -name "$(find.files)" -print0 | c:\cygwin\bin\xargs -0 fgrep -G -n "$(find.what)"

 

On Windows, the find string can be given to the find command through its standard input stream to avoid problems with quote interpretation. To do this, specify find.input to be the search string, $(find.what). 

 

If find.command is empty then SciTE's own search code is used. This only does a simple search without regular expressions and is faster than running an external program.

find.files

This is the default set of files to search through using the Find in Files command. The find.files property can contain a list of sets of files separated by '|' like "*.cxx *.h|*.py *.pyw|*.html" which adds three entries to the history and uses the first as the default value.

The evaluation of this setting is a little unusual in that each entry in the value from the property files is appended to the end of the history if that entry is not already present. This means that opening files from different directories will result in any local setting of find.files being added to the list.

find.in.dot

If find.in.dot is 1 then Find in Files searches in directories that start with '.'. The default behaviour is to prevent SciTE finding matches in the unmodified versions of files kept by Subversion in .svn subdirectories.

find.in.binary

If find.in.binary is 1 then Find in Files displays matches in binary files. For Find in Files, a binary file is a file that contains a NUL byte in the first 64K block read from the file.

find.in.directory

If set then Find in Files directory will be prefilled by this value. If not set then Find in Files directory will be prefilled by directory of current file.

find.in.files.close.on.find

Set to 0 to prevent the Find in Files dialog from closing when "Find" pressed.

code.page

To support a DBCS language such as Japanese, a code page can be set here. This ensures that double byte characters are always treated as a unit so the caret is never located between the two bytes of a double byte character.

output.code.page

 

 

Code page

Value

 

Default (single byte character set)

0

 

UTF-8

65001

 

Japanese Shift-JIS

932

 

Simplified Chinese GBK

936

 

Korean Wansung

949

 

Traditional Chinese Big5

950

 

Korean Johab

1361

 

Setting code.page to 65001 starts Unicode mode and the document is treated as a sequence of characters expressed as UTF-8. Display is performed by converting to the platform's normal Unicode encoding first so characters from any language will be displayed. Correct glyphs may only be displayed if fonts are chosen that contain the appropriate glyphs. The Tahoma font contains a wide range of glyphs so may be a good choice. 

 

This property can not set a single byte character set.

 

If output.code.page is set then it is used for the output pane which otherwise matches the edit pane.

character.set

This setting allows changing the character set that is asked for when setting up fonts. Not all of the values will work on all platforms.

 

Character set

Value

Default

0

Japanese

128

Chinese GB2312

134

Chinese BIG5

136

Korean

129

Greek

161

Eastern European

238

Baltic

186

Turkish

162

Hebrew

177

Arabic

178

Thai

222

Vietnamese

163

Cyrillic (CP1251 on Windows, KOI8-R on GTK+)

204

Cyrillic (CP1251 on GTK+)

1251

European with Euro (ISO 8859-15)

1000

All of these values except for 1251 and 1000 should work on OS X or Windows. On GTK+ Baltic, Turkish, Thai and Vietnamese will probably not work.

imports.include

These settings control which files are imported by import statements.

imports.exclude

The imports.include property defines the names of the properties files that may be imported. Say you are only interested in using fortran and lisp, then in user properties, you could set

 

imports.include=fortran lisp

 

The imports.exclude property is examined only if imports.include is empty or missing. This property stops the named files from being imported.

command.discover.properties

This property can be used to run a program to determine file encoding and other properties when a file is loaded.

The program should print a list of property=value lines for each property it wants to set. This is the same format as properties files.

command.discover.properties=python /home/user/FileDetect.py "$(FilePath)"

A simple Python script that recognises a particular tag that indicates the file is in the Korean code page 949:

import sys

if "Language:Korean" in open(sys.argv[1]).read():

        print('code.page=949')

        print('character.set=129')

comment.block.lexer

These settings are for the comment commands in the Edit menu and are defined separately for each lexer. Not all languages support both stream and block comments.

comment.block.at.line.start.lexer

Block comments are comments that start with a particular string and continue until the end of line. The comment.block property sets the string to be inserted or deleted at the start of the selected lines when the Block Comment or Uncomment command is performed. To make this command perform sensibly over a range of text that already contains comments and other code, the string can be defined to contain a character such as '~' that is not used in real comments.

comment.stream.start.lexer

Set comment.block.at.line.start to "1" to place block comment symbols at the start of the lines, instead of just before the first non-blank character of the lines.

comment.stream.end.lexer

Stream comments start with a particular string and end with another particular string and may continue over line ends. These are defined with comment.stream.start and comment.stream.end. 

comment.box.start.lexer

Box comments are a form of stream comment that takes several lines and uses different strings for the start, end and other lines in the range. These are defined with comment.box.start, comment.box.middle and comment.box.end.

comment.box.middle.lexer

 

comment.box.end.lexer

 

preprocessor.symbol.filepattern

These settings make the preprocessor conditional movement and selection commands work. The character that defines preprocessor lines is defined by preprocessor.symbol. The preprocessor keywords that make up the start (if), middle (else), and end (endif) of preprocessor conditionals are defined by the other three properties. There may be multiple values for each of these, as, for example, C uses "if", "ifdef", and "ifndef" to begin preprocessor conditionals.

preprocessor.start.filepattern

preprocessor.middle.filepattern

preprocessor.end.filepattern

lexer.filepattern

A lexer splits a file up into syntactic pieces. SciTE can then display these pieces in different visual styles. Many lexers are included in SciTE for popular programming languages such as Python, Java, C/C++, JavaScript and VB. Often several file extensions (.cpp, .cc, .h) can map to one language (C++) and hence one lexer. These settings associate a file name with a lexer.

The lexers included in SciTE are written in C++ and compiled into the SciTE executable. Lexers can also be written as a Lua script or as a Lua LPeg lexer using scintillua.

shbang.command

On Unix, command files often have no extension and instead specify the interpreter to use for the file in an initial line that starts with "#!". When the lexer can not be otherwise determined and the file starts with "#!", the initial line is split up into words and each word is prepended with "shbang.". If a property with this name exists then it is treated as the extension of the file. For example, shbang.python=py will be triggered by an initial line #!/usr/bin/env python so the file will be treated as Python.

lexerpath.filepattern

Specifies the path to an external lexer module that will be loaded into Scintilla.

keywords.filepattern

Most of the lexers differentiate between names and keywords and use the keywords variables to do so. To avoid repeating the keyword list for each file extension, where several file extensions are used for one language, a keywordclass variable is defined in the distributed properties file although this is just a convention. Some lexers define a second set of keywords which will be displayed in a different style to the first set of keywords. This is used in the HTML lexer to display JavaScript keywords in a different style to HTML tags and attributes.

keywords2.filepattern

Keywords can be prefix based so ^GTK_ will treat all words that start with GTK_ as keywords.

keywords3.filepattern

 

keywords4.filepattern

 

keywords5.filepattern

 

keywords6.filepattern

 

keywords7.filepattern

 

keywords8.filepattern

 

keywords9.filepattern

 

keywordclass.lexer

 

default.file.ext

Defines the language mode used before the file has a name. For example, if default.file.ext=.py, then when the New command is used to create a new file then Python syntax styling is used.

word.characters.filepattern

Defines which characters can be parts of words. The default value here is all the alphabetic and numeric characters and the underscore which is a reasonable value for languages such as C++.

whitespace.characters.filepattern

Defines which characters are considered whitespace. The default value is that initially set up by Scintilla, which is space and all chars less than 0x20. Setting this property allows you to force Scintilla to consider other characters as whitespace (e.g. punctuation) during such activities as cursor navigation (ctrl+left/right).

style.*.stylenumber

The lexers determine a style number for each lexical type, such as keyword, comment or number. These settings determine the visual style to be used for each style number of each lexer.

style.lexer.stylenumber

The value of each setting is a set of ',' separated fields, some of which have a subvalue after a ':'. The fields are font, size, fore, back, italics, notitalics, bold, notbold, weight, eolfilled, noteolfilled, underlined, notunderlined, and case. The font field has a subvalue which is the name of the font, the fore and back have colour subvalues, the size field has a (fractional) numeric size subvalue, the weight field has a numeric size subvalue (1.. 999: 100=light, 400=normal, 700=bold), the case field has a subvalue of 'm', 'u', or 'l' for mixed, upper or lower case, and the bold, italics and eolfilled fields have no subvalue. The value "fore:#FF0000,font:Courier,size:14" represents 14 point, red Courier text.

 

A global style can be set up using style.*.stylenumber. Any style options set in the global style will be inherited by each lexer style unless overridden.

style.lexer.32

As well as the styles generated by the lexer, there are other numbered styles used.

style.lexer.33

Style 32 is the default style and its features will be inherited by all other styles unless overridden.

style.lexer.34

Style 33 is used to display line numbers in the margin.

style.lexer.35

Styles 34 and 35 are used to display matching and non-matching braces respectively.

style.lexer.36

Style 36 is used for displaying control characters. This is not a full style as the foreground and background colours for control characters are determined by their lexical state rather than this style.

style.lexer.37

Style 37 is used for displaying indentation guides. Only the fore and back are used.

style.lexer.38

Style 38 is used for displaying calltips. Only the font, size, fore and back are used.

 

A * can be used instead of a lexer to indicate a global style setting.

font.quality

This setting allows choosing different ways of drawing text on Windows and OS X. The appearance will depend on platform settings and, on Windows, the technology setting. This setting does not currently have any effect on GTK+.

Value

Meaning

0

Default

1

Non-antialiased

2

Antialiased

3

LCD Optimized

braces.check

Brace highlighting is a feature that shows the range of a brace when the caret is positioned immediately after it. It is especially useful when complex nested braces are used. The characters '(', ')', '[', ']', '{', and '}' are considered braces. The feature defaults to off (because it slows cursor movement) unless braces.check is set to 1. If braces.sloppy is set to 1 then if there is no brace before the caret then the character after the caret is checked. The highlighting is performed by displaying the braces in style number 34 or in style number 35 if there is no matching brace. While this is a full style, to avoid partial display of the braces, it is best to make this style differ from the standard style of braces only in foreground and background colour. Only braces with style set to braces.lexer.style (which defaults to 0) are candidates for brace match highlighting.

braces.sloppy

style.lexer.34

style.lexer.35

braces.lexer.style

font.monospace

Defines, with the same syntax as the style properties, the font name and size to be used when the Use Monospaced Font command is performed.

command.compile.filepattern

These settings choose which commands to execute when the Compile, Build or Go menu items are selected. The subsystem options are explained in the subsystem section.

command.compile.subsystem.filepattern

When source files are in a different directory to that they should be built in, the command.build.directory property can be set to change to a particular directory before performing the build.

command.build.filepattern

 

command.build.subsystem.filepattern

 

command.build.directory.filepattern

 

command.go.filepattern

 

command.go.subsystem.filepattern

 

command.go.needs.filepattern

Sometimes a file must be compiled or built before it can be run. If this is the case, this setting indicates what command needs to be run to perform the compile or build step before running the file. When a file is compiled, this is noted and future runs will not perform a compile or build. To make a 'compile and go' Go command for .c files:

command.go.needs.subsystem.filepattern

command.go.*.c=$(FileName)

 

command.go.needs.*.c=g++ $(FileNameExt) -o $(FileName)

command.name.number.filepattern

Extra commands can be added to the Tools menu. For example to include the 'astyle' indenter, the properties file could contain

command.number.filepattern

command.name.0.*.cc=Indent

command.is.filter.number.filepattern

command.0.*.cc=astyle -taO $(FileNameExt)

command.subsystem.number.filepattern

command.is.filter.0.*.cc=1

command.save.before.number.filepattern

The first line defines the string that will appear in the Tools menu (immediately below 'Go'). The second line is the command string, similar to those of the compile, build, and go commands. The optional command.is.filter property states that the command modifies the current file so it may need to be read in after performing the command if load.on.activate is set.

command.input.number.filepattern

If command.save.before is set to 1, SciTE automatically saves the file before execution. If it is set to 2, SciTE will not save the file, otherwise SciTE asks you. On Windows, the optional command.input property specifies text that will be piped to the command. This may reference other properties; for example, command.input.0.*.cc=$(CurrentSelection) would pipe the current selection to the command processes. The command.input property is only supported for subsystem 0 (command line programs).

command.replace.selection.number.filepattern

 

command.quiet.number.filepattern

The optional command.replace.selection can be used to specify that the command output should replace the current selection (or be inserted at the cursor location, if there is no selection). This property has three available settings: 0, the default, means do not replace the selection. 1 means replace the selection when the command finishes. 2 means replace the selection only if the command finishes with an exit code of 0. If the user cancels the command via "Tools / Stop Executing", the selection will not be replaced even in mode 1. Note, commands run asynchronously, so you are not prevented from modifying the document or even switching buffers while a command is running. However, please bear in mind that command.replace.selection will send the output to whatever window is active when the command completes.

command.mode.number.filepattern

A final command property that is currently supported only on windows is command.quiet. A value of 1 indicates that the command I/O should not be echoed to the output pane. This may be useful in combination with command.input and command.replace.selection.

command.shortcut.number.filepattern

 

 

The command.mode property is a comma-separated list of flags / settings. Each mode setting can have an argument, separated from the setting name by a colon. For most of these, the argument portion is optional; if the setting name appears without an argument, this works the same as "setting:yes". If a setting is included in the command.mode but also appears as a separate command property, the mode property will be overridden. Similarly, if a single setting appears more than once with different arguments, the last valid argument takes priority. The supported command.mode settings are:

 

filter - accepts keyword arguments yes and no

 

quiet - accepts keyword arguments yes and no

 

replaceselection - accepts yes, no, and auto

 

savebefore - accepts yes, no, and prompt

 

subsystem - console, windows, shellexec, lua, director, winhelp, htmlhelp, immediate

 

groupundo - yes or no

 

Currently, all of these except groupundo are based on individual properties with similar names, and so are not described separately here. The groupundo setting works with subsystem 3 (lua / director), and indicates that SciTE should treat any changes made by the command as a single undo action. A command that uses the groupundo setting should not change which buffer is active in the editor.

 

The command.shortcut property allows you to specify a keyboard shortcut for the command. By default, commands 0 to 9 have keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+0 to Ctrl+9 respectively, but this can be overridden. For commands numbered higher than 9, there is no default keyboard shortcut. The notation used to specify keyboard shortcuts is the same as for the user.shortcuts property, described elsewhere in this document.

 

 

 

If the text of a command starts with '*' then the Parameters dialog is displayed to prompt for parameters before executing the command. The initial '*' is not included in the command that is executed.

 

 

 

The command number can be in the range of 0 to 49. Command numbers 0 to 9 are assigned Ctrl+Number shortcuts. Internally these commands use IDs starting from 1100 (IDM_TOOLS) which can be used in user.shortcuts and user.context.menu as:

 

user.context.menu=Indent|1100|

 

If command.name is empty then no item is added to the Tools menu. This can be used for commands that are only in the context menu or user shortcuts.

command.help.filepattern

Defines a command to be executed when the help command is invoked or F1 pressed. On Windows, this often uses subsystem 4 as described above. On OS X or Linux, running man or a browser are common ways of displaying help. The word at the cursor is copied to $(CurrentWord) and this is often a good argument to the help application. The subsystem property works in the same way as for other commands.

command.help.subsystem.filepattern

command.scite.help

Defines a command to be executed for help on the SciTE program itself which normally means displaying this file in a browser.

command.scite.help.subsystem

command.print.filepattern

Defines a command to be executed when print is invoked on GTK+ 2.x. On Windows and GTK+ 3.x, printing is performed directly by SciTE.

command.print.subsystem.filepattern

time.commands

When a command is completed, print the time it took in seconds.

print.magnification

Printing is normally done with the same settings as screen display. To make the printing larger or smaller, the print.magnification setting is added to the size of every font when printed. To get a good miniaturisation of text, set print.magnification to -4.

print.colour.mode

Some people prefer light coloured text on a black background on screen but dark text on white on paper. If print.colour.mode is set to 1 then each colour is inverted for printing. If set to 2 then printing produces black text on white background. 3 forces the background to white and 4 forces the default background to white.

print.margins

Specify the default margins on the printer on Windows in left right top bottom order. Units depends on your locale, either hundredths of millimetres or thousandths of inches. You can see which units by the units used in the page setup dialog. This property is only read at start up.

print.header.format

These settings determine what will be printed if anything as headers and footers. Property settings can be substituted into the values using the $(property) syntax. There are some extra properties set up while printing: CurrentPage, FileTime, FileDate, CurrentDate, and CurrentTime (at start of printing). Common properties to use in headers and footers are FileNameExt and FilePath.

print.footer.format

A header setting may look like:

 

print.header.format=$(FileNameExt) - Printed on $(CurrentDate),$(CurrentTime) - Page $(CurrentPage)

print.header.style

These settings determine the style of the header and footer using the same format as other styles in SciTE. Only the fore, back, font, size, bold, italics, and underlined attributes are supported.

print.footer.style

export.keep.ext

This property determines how the file name (for example, LineMarker.cxx) is transformed when exporting to include the appropriate export format extension - .html for HTML and .rtf for RTF. If export.keep.ext is the default, 0, then the current extension is replaced (LineMarker.html). If it is 1, then the export format extension is added (LineMarker.cxx.html). If it is 2 then the final '.' is replaced by '_' and the export format extension added (LineMarker_cxx.html).

export.html.wysiwyg

When export.html.wysiwyg is set to 0 then exporting to a HTML file produces a smaller file but which is less completely specified so may look more different to the on screen display. When export.html.tabs is set to 1 and export.html.wysiwyg is set to 0 then tab characters in the file are exported as tab characters rather than a sequence of space characters.

export.html.tabs

The exported file can be made to fold in browsers that support CSS well (Mozilla and Internet Explorer) by setting export.html.folding to 1. Only export styles actually used when export.html.styleused set to 1. The full path name of the file is put in the title, instead of just the file name when export.html.title.fullpath set to 1.

export.html.folding

 

export.html.styleused

 

export.html.title.fullpath

 

export.rtf.wysiwyg

When export.rtf.wysiwyg is set to 0 then exporting to a RTF file produces a smaller file but which is less completely specified so may look more different to the on screen display. When export.rtf.tabs is set to 1 and export.rtf.wysiwyg is set to 0 then tab characters in the file are exported as tab characters rather than a sequence of space characters. 

export.rtf.tabs

export.rtf.font.face and export.rtf.font.size can be used to select a particular font and size for the exported RTF file. export.rtf.tabsize can be set to use a different tab size than that defined by the tabsize setting.

export.rtf.font.face

 

export.rtf.font.size

 

export.rtf.tabsize

 

export.pdf.magnification

export.pdf.magnification is a value that is added to the font size of the default screen style in use. A positive value increases the PDF document's font size, and vice versa.

export.pdf.font

export.pdf.font accepts a one-word parameter that selects one of the default PDF fonts: Courier, Helvetica or Times. Helvetica is the default. Helvetica and Times do not line wrap, Courier line wraps.

export.pdf.pagesize

export.pdf.pagesize is used to set the document's page size, using points (1/72th of an inch) as the unit. E.g. Letter paper (8.5 inch x 11 inch) is specified using the values 612,792.

export.pdf.margins

export.pdf.margins sets the widths of the page margins. Margins defaults to 72 points, or 1 inch.

 

The PDF exporter is necessarily feature-limited because PDF is a document archival format. Supporting a full set of features will bloat SciTE. Wrapping Helvetica or Times adequately isn't possible without the complexities of font metrics and kerning. The PDF produced uses WinAnsiEncoding, so pre-encoding has to be done before exporting to PDF, if you want to use extended characters.

export.tex.title.fullpath

The full path name of the file is put in the title, instead of just the file name when export.tex.title.fullpath set to 1.

export.xml.collapse.spaces

export.xml.collapse.spaces and export.xml.collapse.lines are flags that control how empty lines and runs of space characters are converted into XML. The flags are enabled if set to 1. Tab characters are always converted by the XML exporter into spaces according to the tabsize property.

export.xml.collapse.lines

fold

Folding is turned on by setting fold=1.

fold.symbols

The fold.symbols setting chooses between four ways of showing folding. Set to 0 (the default) for MacOS style arrows to indicate contracted (facing right) and expanded (facing down); 1 to display contracted folds with "+" and expanded with "-"; 2 for a flattened tree control with round headers and rounded joins; 3 for a flattened tree control with square headers.

fold.margin.width

Sets the width of the fold margin.

fold.margin.colour

These two properties defined the fold margin colour and fold margin highlight colour. If they are not defined (left commented out) the colours for the fold margin will default to a reasonable pair of colours. On Windows, the system colours are used to make the fold margin appear like the background of scroll bars. As an example, with fold.margin.colour=#FF0000 and fold.margin.highlight.colour=#0000FF, the fold margin is a mixture of red and blue.

fold.margin.highlight.colour

fold.on.open

To automatically fold files as much as possible when loaded, set fold.on.open to 1.

fold.flags

Not really documented ;) bit flags which may go away. 2, 4, 8, and 16 control drawing lines above and below folding lines if expanded or not expanded. Set to 64 to help debug folding by showing hexadecimal fold levels in margin.

fold.compact

For HTML, XML, Lua and C++ and similar files, turning this option on leads to blank lines following the end of an element folding with that element. Defaults to on.

fold.highlight

Set to 1 to enable highlight for current folding block (smallest one that contains the caret). By default, it's disable. Note : The highlight is enabled only when fold.symbols equals to 2 (round headers) or 3 (square headers).

fold.highlight.colour

Define the colour of highlight. The colour by default is red (#FF0000).

title.full.path

Chooses how the file name is displayed in the title bar. When 0 (default) the file name is displayed. When 1 the full path is displayed. When 2 the window title displays "filename in directory".

title.show.buffers

When set to 1 shows the current buffer number in the title bar.

tabsize

Sets the size of a tab as a multiple of the size of a space character in the style of the default style definition. The indent size is the size to use when performing automatic indentation and may be different from the tab size. Many people use a tab size of 8 but 4 character indentation. When creating indentation, use.tabs determines whether the indentation is made up purely from space characters or from a mix of tabs and spaces using as many tabs as possible. 

tab.size.filepattern

The global tabsize, indent.size, and use.tabs properties can be overridden for files that match a pattern by using the file pattern forms: 

indent.size

indent.size.*.pas=3

indent.size.filepattern

If indent.auto is set then indent.size and use.tabs are set according to the contents of the opened document.

use.tabs

The properties file settings apply to newly opened files but remain constant once the file is open unless changed using the Change Indentation Settings dialog.

use.tabs.filepattern

If tab.indents is set then pressing tab within indentation whitespace indents by indent.size rather than inserting a tab character. If backspace.unindents then pressing backspace within indentation whitespace unindents by indent.size rather than deleting the character before the caret.

indent.auto

 

tab.indents

 

backspace.unindents

 

indent.automatic

Determines the look of automatic indentation. Automatic indentation is turned on with indent.automatic=1. To indent a brace line after a compound statement start set indent.opening=1, likewise for the terminating brace. So with both set to 0:

indent.opening

if (c)

indent.closing

{

indent.maintain.filepattern

    s;

 

}

 

And with both set to 1:

 

if (c)

 

    {

 

    s;

 

    }

 

Automatic indentation may be changed to simply repeat the indentation of the previous line for some files with indent.maintain.filepattern=1 which overrides the other language specific settings.

statement.indent.filepattern

Each of these settings starts with a style number and then a set of words or characters that define how to recognise that feature. If there is a second space in the setting then it is a set of words, otherwise a set of characters. The set of keywords used to indicate the start of a compound statement is defined in statement.indent. For example:

statement.end.filepattern

statement.indent.$(file.patterns.cpp)=5 if else while

statement.lookback.filepattern

says that for C++ the words "if", "else", and "while" in keyword style, 5, start compound statements which leads to the next line being indented if no other factors affect it. However, if a statement end is found on the same line then the next line is not indented. For C++ the statement end is the semicolon in the operator style, so this is defined:

block.start.filepattern

statement.end.$(file.patterns.cpp)=10 ;

block.end.filepattern

The number of lines looked at to determine indentation can be set with statement.lookback. This can be used either to bound the amount of time spent on this task or to specify that only the last line be examined for indentation.

 

The block.start and block.end properties define the language elements used to bracket groups of statements. In C++ these are '{' and '}'.

indent.python.colon

For Python, automatically indent by one level if the previous line ended in a ':' ignoring comments and whitespace. Otherwise use the same indentation as the previous line. This property overrides other indentation settings.

os.x.home.end.keys

Chooses the standard OS X behaviour for the Home and End keys which is to scroll the file to the start or end. This setting takes precedence over vc.home.key.

vc.home.key

Chooses the behaviour of the Home and Shift+Home keys. 1, the default is like Visual C++ moving the caret to the end of the line indentation unless already there, in which case it moves to the start of the line. 0 moves to the start of the line.

warning.findwrapped

Allows for sounds to be played and the window to be flashed on Windows when particular events occur. The values consist of three items separated by ',': flash duration, sound and sound duration. If sound is a number then it is treated as a pitch and played for the duration in milliseconds. Otherwise it is treated as a path to a sound file that is played. If you do not want a flash, specify 0 for flash duration. For example,

warning.notfound

warning.wrongfile=0,C:\Windows\Media\SFX\Glass.wav

warning.wrongfile

will play the glass sound if open selected is given a bad file name. The findwrapped warning occurs when a find operation wraps past either end of the file, notfound when the find or preprocessor conditional move commands fail to find a match, executeok when a command such as build executes successfully, executeko when a command fails, and nootherbookmark when there is no bookmark to find.

warning.executeok

 

warning.executeko

 

warning.nootherbookmark

 

fileselector.width

For the GTK+ version determines the initial size of the file selector dialog invoked by the Open and Save commands. Setting has no effect on Windows.

fileselector.height

fileselector.show.hidden

On OS X setting this to 0 makes the file selector dialog invoked by the Open command not show hidden files.

locale.properties

Set the name of the localisation file. For a multi-user installation this allows each user to set a preferred user interface language.

On OS X, localisation files for some languages are installed in the translations subdirectory of the user home directory which allows setting the user interface to, for example, German with

locale.properties=$(SciteUserHome)/translations/locale.de.properties

translation.missing

When using a localised version, if a term is not found in the locale.properties translation file then use the value of translation.missing instead. By setting this to a marker such as "***" it is easier to check where terms have not been provided with translations.

menu.language

Defines the entries in the Language menu and the file extensions they map to. Each menu item is defined by 3 elements, language name, extension and an optional keyboard equivalent. Each element is terminated by '|'. For example:

H&ypertext|html|F12|

Menu items may be commented out by prefixing the name with '#'.

menukey.*

The menukey.* settings allow the user to redefine accelerator keys for menus without having to resort to modifying the SciTE source code. The syntax for the setting is:

menukey.menu_title.menu_name=<modifier>key

For example, the File | Exit command accelerator could be specified as follows:

menukey.file.exit=<control>Q

Note that spaces in menu titles and names must be converted to underscores, and trailing ellipses removed. For example, "File | Save As...." is referenced as "menukey.file.save_as". 

 

Multiple modifiers may be specified, though each must be surrounded by angle brackets. The recognised modifiers are the same as for the user.shortcuts setting described above. The recognised named keys are also the same as for user.shortcuts, with the addition of "none" to indicate that no accelerator key should be defined for a particular menu.

source.default.extensions

If the name specified on the command line cannot be found as a directory or file - including a wild-card search, the contents of the property are treated as default extensions to be used to locate the file name.

An example is: .cxx|.cpp|.c|.hxx|.hpp|.h|.bat|.txt|.lua

Attempting to open win32\SciTEWin would open win32\SciTEWin.cxx since it matches before win32\SciTEWin.h 

If the property contains an entry such as Bar.cxx|.cxx and you attempt to open win32\SciTEWin, it will open ScTEWinBar.cxx since that is the first match.

ext.lua.startup.script

The ext.lua properties are specific to the SciTE Lua Scripting Extension. The extension.filepattern property is part of the generic SciTE Extension Interface but is currently only used by the Lua Scripting Extension. 

ext.lua.auto.reload

The ext.lua.startup.script property defines the filename of a Lua script that will be loaded when SciTE starts to set up the global state for Lua. The default value is $(SciteUserHome)/SciTEStartup.lua. You should use an absolute path for this property, but can reference the $(SciteDefaultHome) or $(SciteUserHome) properties. Global event handlers, command functions, as well as other functions and objects can be defined here. 

ext.lua.reset

The ext.lua.auto.reload property determines what happens if you save the startup script, or the active extension script, from within SciTE. If it is set to 0, the startup script only applied at startup time or when you switch buffers (depending on ext.lua.reset), and changes to the extension script are only applied when you switch buffers. If ext.lua.auto.reload is set to 1 (the default), SciTE will re-initialize the global scope immediately when either script is saved from within SciTE. Even when ext.lua.auto.reload is enabled, SciTE will not notice if the files are changed from outside the current SciTE instance. For that, see ext.lua.reset below. 

extension.filepattern

The ext.lua.reset property is primarily for debugging. If ext.lua.reset is 0 (the default), the startup script property is checked only once - when SciTE starts. If ext.lua.reset is changed to 1, SciTE will check the startup script property, and reload the new startup script, each time you switch buffers. As such, it has a different (larger) set of side effects than ext.lua.auto.reload. In some situations it will make sense for both auto.reload and reset to be enabled, but usually ext.lua.auto.reload alone will suffice. 

 

Aside from ext.lua.startup.script, the extension.filepattern property provides a way to load additional functions and event handlers that may be specific to a given file type. If the extension property value ends in .lua and names a file that exists, the Lua extension evaluates the script so that event handlers and commands defined in the script are available while that buffer is active. Functions and objects defined through ext.lua.startup.script are still accessible, unless they are overridden. 

 

The extension property can also define behaviour that is specific to a given directory. If a bare filename (no path) is specified in the extension property, SciTE looks for the file in the standard property file locations, starting with the local directory. This can be very useful in combination with a local SciTE.properties file.

caret.sticky

Controls when the last position of the caret on the line is modified. When set to 1, the position is not modified when you type a character, a tab, paste the clipboard content or press backspace. The default is 0 which turns off this feature.

properties.directory.enable

Enables or disables the evaluation of the directory properties file. The default is 0 which disables the evaluation. Any other value enables this properties file.