Chapter 3. Using Bluefish
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Chapter 3. Using Bluefish

Table of Contents

1. Starting Bluefish
1.1. Command line options
1.2. The user interface
2. Working with files
2.1. Creating files
2.2. Opening files
2.3. Saving files
2.4. Renaming files
2.5. Editing
2.5.1. Undo and Redo
2.5.2. Cut, Copy, and Paste
2.6. File types
2.6.1. Syntax highlighting
2.7. More on files
2.7.1. Remote files
2.7.2. Character encoding
2.7.3. Open advanced
3. Navigation and Managing documents
3.1. Navigating through a document
3.2. Navigating through many documents
3.3. Projects
3.4. Bookmarks
3.5. Find and Replace
3.5.1. Find or replace with regular expressions
4. More than a Text Editor
4.1. Indenting
4.2. Auto tag closing
4.3. Spell checker
4.4. Function reference
4.5. HTML
4.5.1. Thumbnail generation
4.6. Customising the quick bar
4.7. Custom menu
4.8. External programs, filters
5. Customising Bluefish
5.1. Editor preferences
5.1.1. Modifying shortcut keys
5.2. Modifying file types
5.3. Modifying the highlighting patterns

In this chapter most of the functionalities of Bluefish are described. What you can do, how you do it, and how you can customise the default behaviour.

1. Starting Bluefish

In GNOME Bluefish is started from the Applications/Programming menu.

1.1. Command line options

There are several useful command line options.

  • -s skip root check

  • -v current version

  • -n open new window

  • -p filename open project

  • -h this help screen

  • --display

Many programs like browsers, email clients and file managers can be configured to open files in Bluefish. For example bluefish '%s' will open a file in the current window, bluefish -n '%s' will open a file in a new window, and bluefish -p '%s' will open a project file.

1.2. The user interface

The biggest part of the user interface is the editor area. Because Bluefish has a so called "Multiple Document Interface", there are actually many editor areas in Bluefish, accessible via the tabs. By default the tabs are on the bottom.

Figure 3.1. Bluefish Editor Array

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 editor array

The top of the Bluefish interface consists of a menu, a main tool bar, a HTML tool bar, and a Custom menu.

Figure 3.2. Bluefish Main Menu

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 main menu

The main toolbar gives you quick access to the basic functionalities of a text editor.

Figure 3.3. Bluefish Main Toolbar

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 main toolbar

The HTML toolbar deals with most used HTML functionalities.

Figure 3.4. Bluefish HTML Toolbar

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 HTML toolbar

The custom toolbar provides access to languages and replacement functions. It is fully customizable through the preferences panel.

Figure 3.5. Bluefish Custom Toolbar

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 custom toolbar

On the side, by default the left side, there is the side panel. The side panel consists of a file browser, a function reference browser and a bookmark browser.

This is where you may get quick access to files, switching directories in the upper part.

Figure 3.6. Bluefish File Browser

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 file browser

The function reference browser references CSS2, HTML, PHP, and Python functions with their syntax.

Figure 3.7. Bluefish Function Reference Browser

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 function reference browser

The bookmark browser allows you to access directly a marked position in a file.

Figure 3.8. Bluefish Bookmark Browser

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 bookmark browser

On the bottom of Bluefish is the status bar. Here messages are shown, the current line and column number are shown, the insert (INS) or overwrite (OVR) mode for the cursor, and the file type and character encoding.

Figure 3.9. Bluefish Status Bar

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 status bar

The visibility of these items can be toggled via the View menu.

Figure 3.10. Bluefish View Menu

A screen shot of the Bluefish 0.14 view menu

If you want to disable any of these items by default, you can set these options in the preferences under User interface.

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