Guides/Qt IDE/Menus
Menus
The session manager includes a Menu bar which for the most part, contains standard Windows menus:
The File menu is used for file access: new, open, print. It also includes a list of the most recently accessed files. You can also exit the session by selecting: File > Quit. When editing a file, this menu would also support: save, close, delete.
The Edit menu provides standard edit capabilities, Cut, Copy and Paste, Find (and Find in Files) and session configuration. When editing a file this menu also supports undo/redo, Edit > Configure > ... opens a session configuration file.
The View menu would give you your command history, brings the editor window up, can clear your session window, and lets you toggle box drawing characters between the default (which looks nice) and the ascii standard (which is more suitable for the J forums.
The Run menu allows you to run a script window or highlighted text -- when editing a file it also allows you to run the current line, or a script file, either silently or with output displayed in an execution window.
The Tools menu contains Directory Match, the Addons Package Manager, and submenus for system defined and user defined function keys.
The Project window gives you access to the Project Manager, which is useful for managing complexity in larger projects.
The Window menu supports having a second file editor window, and lets you move tabs between the two (currently, drag&drop of tabs only works within a window). This menu also supports some project manager mechanisms.
The Help menu provides help facilities, including access to this wiki, and the Studio menu which lets you run the Labs and Demos.
Edit > Find in Files
Ctrl+Shift+F or menu item Edit|Find in Files starts the Find in Files utility
You can search for simple text, or more complicated patterns with a Regular expression. The Regex button selects the regular expression search; this is automatically enabled when you use the Insert button to insert components that match certain characters, strings, or J-related strings. You can also search in specific contexts, such as assignment or use of names.
If you have projects created by the Project Manager, Find in Files loads with the current Project files in the search path. You can select other projects to search.
If Find in Files is open and you change the current Project in Project Manager, the change is not reflected immediately in Find in Files. To change to the new Project, select menu Options|Refresh Project.
Otherwise, you can search through folders. In this case, you can specify the file types to search, and the folders to search. Customize these by pressing the buttons next to the selection boxes.
Run a search by pressing Enter or Find.
Open a file by putting the caret on a line and pressing Open.
Tools > Directory Match
Directories
Enter the source and target directories, either:
- directly
- from menu item: Favorites|Select from favorites...
Swap the two directories using menu item: Tools > Swap source and target directories.
Type
Type selects the file extensions of files to be compared. You can configure these.
Match configuration
Select:
- Include subdirectories
Match
Matches the directories and displays a list of different files.
This enables some or all of the following buttons:
- Compare - compare source and target files (most useful when differences are few)
- Compare Select - compare one different file
- Compare All - compare all source and target files
- External Diff - compare using external differencing program (see below).
- Open - open in J development session (if available)
- View - view file
- Copy - copy from source directory to target directory (if appropriate)
- Ignore - remove file from display
- Clip - copy matched files display to clipboard
- Swap source and target directories
- Copy source files not in target - copies the files from source to target directories
- Copy source files later than target - copies files with later timestamps from source to target directories
- Copy all source files - copies all files from source to target directories
External Diff
An external differencing program may be used if previously configured in menu Edit > Configure > Base, under the appropriate section for your operating system.
Note that this program must bring up a window to display those differences.