Selecting and Using Text Editors

Unless you have previously set your EDITOR environment variable to GNU Emacs or XEmacs, Sun WorkShop uses the vi editor (For information on how to set your EDITOR environment variable, see the man page for your command shell). To use the integrated GNU Emacs or XEmacs editors, you must use the Text Editor Options dialog box shown in Figure 2-3.

Figure 2-3 Text Editor Options Dialog Box

The editor you choose will remain the default editor for subsequent sessions of Sun WorkShop. To change editors, choose Options > Text Editor Options from the Sun WorkShop main window and select a new default editor in the Text Editor Options dialog box.

The Sun WorkShop implementation of vi includes a Re-usable button. If the button is enabled, subsequently opened files are displayed in the original Vi window. If the button is disabled and you open a new vi file, the new file is displayed in a new Vi window. The Re-usable button in the lower-right corner of the window toggles between enabling and disabling the reuse feature.

Vi and XEmacs include tool bars specific to Sun WorkShop. GNU Emacs and XEmacs include minibuffer commands specfic to Sun WorkShop that help you to browse and debug source code. In addition, you can open Sun WorkShop from an existing Emacs session by typing M-x workshop-start in the minibuffer. To use GNU Emacs with Sun WorkShop, you need to set the load path in your .emacs file. See the online help section "Starting WorkShop From Emacs" for instructions.