CRiSP provides various facilities to enable automatic building (make utility), compiling and executing of programs, usually as part of a development environment. The Build/Execute dialog allows you to set up these options so that when the appropriate commands are invoked, CRiSP will know how to perform the desired action.

Compile Options:

The Keyboard & Mouse settings dialog box is used to configure personal preferences for CRiSP regarding the keyboard and mouse operation. These include whether the <Alt> keys pop up dialog boxes or prompts appear on the command line, and whether the mouse should operate in a Unix style or Windows style. The most likely candidate for changing is the function key mappings depending on whether you like dialog boxes or prefer faster keyboard control.

The keyboard settings dialog box enables you to configure various characteristics about the keyboard, including the autorepeat rate. This allows you to do such things as control how line-wrapping is performed when using the arrow keys to move beyond the beginning or end of a line, swap the <Backspace> and <Delete> keys around, or configure whether various function keys pop up a dialog box or prompt on the command line.

This dialog box is used for configuring how CRiSP uses memory. It should not normally need to be modified but under exceptional circumstances the user may need to configure the way CRiSP works, e.g. on systems with limited swap space or RAM, or to modify CRiSP's performance characteristics, when editing large files. The default settings are more than adequate for most editing environments. As machines get more and more powerful, and memory sizes in these machines increases, there should be less need to tune these parameters. In many cases it can be difficult to measure differences in speed of operation after changing these parameters.

Options
The options below explain the various features which allow you to tailor CRiSPs memory use behaviour. The modifiable input fields are discussed below.

Delayed file readin:  This option controls whether CRiSP will read in files in their entirety when edited, or whether CRiSP will delay read in, and read in only as necessary. The major advantage of this option is that delaying readin increases performance and startup of CRiSP, in that CRiSP does not need to read a file in its entirety before showing you the editing screen.The disadvantage of this, is that if the file is modified on disk whilst CRiSP is paging in from it, then the screen display will be erratic as CRiSP will lose synchronisation with the file. Turning off this option can improve file integrity - if two users both edit the same file, and one instance of CRiSP hasn't read in the entirety of a file, then the delayed read in will cause an error diagnostic to popup telling you that the file has changed on disk.

Source swapping    Source swapping is an option to improve memory utilisation which is useful when accessing very large files. If the other parameters in this menu cause CRiSP to use too much memory, CRiSP may discard unmodified parts of a file, and later on re-read those sections when needed (similar to Operating System paging). Source swapping enables CRiSP to re-read a section from the original source file (as opposed to writing out a section to the temporary undo file).
Source swapping not only increases memory performance but also avoids needing extra disk space to store files.
However, enabling this option can cause problems if a file is modified by another application whilst it is being edited. In this case CRiSP cannot swap back in a section of a file previously discarded. In this case CRiSP will detect the problem and pop up a dialog box telling you that the file can no longer be sensibly edited, and those sections of a file which can no longer be accessed will be displayed with question marks. Any changes you have made to the file will be available for saving since these chunks are not written out to the source file.
This option is provided for those times when you are editing huge files or files on read-only media (e.g. CD-ROM).

Tmp file swapping    This option controls whether CRiSP will maintain all parts of a file in memory, or whether to write out modified sections of a file to the temporary undo file. For large files and large editing sessions the temporary file may become very large (normally stored in /tmp but changeable by specifying a directory in the $CRTMP environment variable). If the temporary file becomes too large then you may run out of disk space in the temporary file partition.
For 99.9% of all editing operations it is safe to leave this option set either way. If you have very limited temporary storage or lots of free RAM then disable this feature.

Tuning Parameters
CRiSP stores fragments of buffers in chunks, or blocks. The Max blocks in memory attribute controls how many blocks will be kept in memory before paging will occur. Ideally this value should be set high to avoid paging. In reality, for most normal small scale editing, any value will do. If you are performing a lot of search & replace operations on large files then it can help to increase this value.

Max line length
CRiSP can handle files with lines of any length. However, extremely long lines can cause unacceptable slowdowns, e.g. when computing cursor position. If you are editing a binary file which you are not familiar with, then simply panning around the file can be a slow operation. You can use this field to specify a maximum line length and CRiSP will split lines longer than this into multiple lines on the display.

Warning: This line splitting will affect the file when you save the file. This option was added to get around problems when editing Unix files which have holes in them. This can happen for example with a log file, which appears to have been truncated, but subsequently a process continues to write to the file whilst it is still open. This can easily lead to a 200MB hole at the start of file, which CRiSP might normally treat as a single line of NULLs. By setting a line length limit, then the long lines will be split and performance should be more acceptable.

The default line length is set at 1024*1024 (1,045,876) bytes.

Lines per chunk
controls approximately how large each chunk of memory can grow to by limiting the number of lines in each chunk. A large value (say > 200) can impede performance when editing files which are colorized, as CRiSP will have more work to do. For non-colorized files, it does not make much difference to performance.
Block size    can be important as there is a fair amount of overhead needed to maintain each block. If blocks are too small then a lot of overhead will be used. If blocks are too large, then your memory usage may be too high.

Max bytes in memory
is a rough guide to how much memory will be used in all the blocks In use. The default value should be sufficient but if you have large file editing requirements and find CRiSP a little sluggish, then you could try increasing this value.
Max immediate readin size
is used to control whether a file should be read into memory or delayed until it is needed. It is primarily aimed at the Windows platform where maintaining an open file connection can cause other applications to be unable to write to the file. Any file less then this size is read into memory immediately.

The Search dialog box is used to find strings within the current buffer.

The options available are:

Block search
This attribute controls the effect searches will have when a highlighted region exists in a file. When enabled searches and string translations will be restricted to the highlighted region.

Case sensitive
This option controls whether alphabetic characters are to be compared literally or in a case insensitive fashion. When enabled, this means that the string "ABC" will not match the string "abc". If disabled then the match will occur. 

Column search
This option enables the Starting col and Ending col fields. With this option enabled, you can restrict a search so that it only falls within the designated columns. You can get the starting and ending column fields to be setup automatically by highlighting the column before invoking the search dialog box.

Regular expressions
This option enables or disables regular expression characters. This option is normally rarely disabled, but it can be useful when searching for strings which contain numerous regular expression characters. (Normally you can turn off the special meaning of regular expression characters by simply specifying a backslash before the character).

Show all matching text
If this option is enabled then when a search is performed, all occurrences of the matching text will be highlighted on screen. This can be useful when looking at text, such as source code or data files, where you want to see the occurrences of the matching text, e.g. variable names.

You can temporarily turn on and off this option by using the set [no]showall Command: prompt command.

Unix syntax mode
This option controls the style of regular expressions. The "Unix" option specifies a "vi" superset of regular expressions, including many of the features from the utilities: awk, egrep, grep, and sed. The CRiSP syntax is not widely used but may be useful to users coming from the MS-DOS world.

Whole word only
If this option is enabled then whenever you specify a word to be searched for, CRiSP will automatically add the start-word and end-word regular expression sequences to the pattern you have typed, thus only matching a full word.

Wrap search
This option is used to control the effect of failed searches. On a forwards search, if the search fails to find a matching string before reaching the end of the buffer, and this option is enabled, then CRiSP will try and continue the search by wrapping around to the start of the buffer and searching the text before the current cursor position. (This is identical to the default behaviour for the vi editor). Likewise, for backwards searches - if the search fails searching backwards, then CRiSP will attempt to continue the search from the end of the buffer back to the current cursor position.

You can temporarily turn on and off this option by using the set [no]wrapscan Command: prompt command.

Syntax mode
The syntax mode lets you choose the syntax for regular expressions. CRiSP supports three styles of regular expressions

BRIEF syntax mode
BRIEF mode selects BRIEF compatible regular expressions and uses {..} to group expressions and asterisk means zero or more characters (rather than repeat the last expression), and @ is used to indicate zero or more of the last expression.

Perl syntax mode
Perl syntax mode is similar to Unix syntax mode but includes the following differences:
grouping is performed without the need to backslash (..) groups.
In replacement strings, $1..$9 are used to refer to the matched group rather than \1..\9.

Unix syntax mode
The "Unix" option specifies a "vi" superset of regular expressions, including many of the features from the utilities: awk, egrep, grep, and sed. The CRiSP syntax is not widely used but may be useful to users coming from the MS-DOS world.

Syntax searching
You can also search for words which are a specific part of the language syntax, e.g. you might only want to search for symbols which are part of actual code, and not embedded in comments. You can define the elements which are to be considered in your search by using the Syntax button. This will pop up a dialog where you can select or deselect the elements.

These options are used to control the autosaving of files. Autosaving is used for automatically saving files you are editing on, e.g. if you walk away from your terminal and forget to save, or for automatically saving modified files after a number of keystrokes.

CRiSP provides an autosave and autowrite option. When an autosave is performed, CRiSP will write a temporary copy of any modified buffers to a temporary file (usually located in the backup directory). Autowrite means that the file will be automatically saved for you, as if you had performed a <Alt-W>command, i.e. the original file on disk will be saved.

This dialog box provides a quick summary of the settings for the currently viewed buffer and the corresponding file on disk.

This is a summary of various modes associated with the current buffer ex: Ansi mode, Autoindentation, Autotosave, Backups, Colorization, Hard tabs, Line numbers etc.

The keyword builder is a dialog which allows you to create and modify colorization definitions. A colorizer definition is needed to tell CRiSP how to perform colorization of keywords for files of a particular type. CRiSP comes with a variety of supported languages, but you can use this dialog to create your own or to modify a supplied definition. For example, you might be programming in C and want to add custom function libraries so that they are colored in a different color.

This language editing modes configuration is used to specify characteristics of files which are dependent on their type. Normally you deduce the type of a file from the file extension, although, sometimes even this is not sufficient. There are numerous settings which can be applied to the different file types. CRiSP comes with a selection of default settings, but you are free to extend or modify the list to suit your personal tastes. 

This dialog box allows you to configure which toolbars should be visible at the top of the CRiSP editing area, or as floating toolbars. You can also customise the icons within the toolbars.

This dialog box is used to configure various aspects of the look and feel of the screen, including color and font settings. The dialog box is presented as a tabbed dialog box allowing you quick access to the different setup components.

This dialog box is accessed from the Options. These options allow you to simply configure the external commands used to support the CRiSP RCS commands. CRiSP contains support for a number of standard and third party RCS systems. These are shown in a tree view on the left of the dialog. Selecting one of these will fill in the command profiles for each command.

The Advanced tab is mainly used for setting environment variables required for the appropriate RCS system. Not all RCS systems define or need these variables. Alternatively you can define the environments as part of your standard environment outside of CRiSP, but doing so from inside allows you to easily change the settings.

The various commands listed are used depending on the RCS menu command you select from the Tools menu. Each command is parameterized so you can easily tailor the command.

These options control the creation of backup files when you save a modified file to disk. You can control where backups are stored, how many old backups to keep and options for controlling the style of the backup file name.

The Convert on INPUT and Convert on OUTPUT sections of this dialog box let you configure how CRiSP maps spaces and tabs. Some people, when editing files, prefer hard tabs, whereas other people prefer soft tabs, i.e. replacing each tab character with the appropriate number of space characters. Having spaces instead of tabs can make editing more convenient depending on your personal habits.

CRiSP can convert files when loading them, and map spaces and/or tabs when the file is saved, so that you can edit files in the style to which you are accustomed whilst preserving the spaces and tabs layout of a file, e.g. because of project standards or because of compatibility with existing applications.

The Keyboard & Mouse settings dialog box is used to configure personal preferences for CRiSP regarding the keyboard and mouse operation. These include whether the <Alt> keys pop up dialog boxes or prompts appear on the command line, and whether the mouse should operate in a Unix style or Windows style. The most likely candidate for changing is the function key mappings depending on whether you like dialog boxes or prefer faster keyboard control. The mouse settings dialog box allows you to change the way the mouse is used.

This command is used by the ToolsExecute menu option. It is used to execute a command, usually based on the name of the current file. For instance, if the current file is called testit.cpp, then under Windows, CRiSP would attempt to execute the program testit.exe. 

The global attributes describe aspects of the language you are about to colorize. For instance all keywords may be specified as case independent, or a special language syntax needs to be catered for. The attributes which you can specify are described in the flags section.

This dialog box is part of the Language editing modes dialog. These options allow you to specify various options suitable for editing plain text files, such as setting auto-wrap and auto-indenting. (Note that you can use auto-indent for program files as well, although the other options may not be useful, and may get in the way of these types of files).

This dialog box allows you to configure various options when CRiSP starts up. CRiSP saves state information based on the current working directory you are in when you start and terminate CRiSP. This means you can work on a set of related files in one directory and a different set in a different directory, and when you restart CRiSP the actual set of restored files will depend on which directory you invoke it from. 

This section allows you to configure the visibility of various GUI components.

The following file information is diplayed:File name:, Buffer name, File Permissions, File Size, Last time the file was accessed (opened for reading), Last time the file was written to or the protection mask was modified, Last time file was modified etc.

The character classes are used to define what a keyword looks like. For instance, in the C language, the acceptable characters making up a symbol are the upper and lower case letters, the digits (0-9) and the underscore. ABC_DEF is a perfectly valid symbol name. In some other language, maybe the underscore is not valid; in shell scripts, the dollar sign is used to introduce a symbol but can also terminate a symbol name, e.g. $HOST$PWD. The character class definitions are pseudo-regular expressions containing character classes using the [..] notation.

The locking mechanism is designed to be used in an environment where you may lose edits to a file, because another user or application has written to the file whilst editing. CRiSP provides numerous safety checks to ensure you do not edit or overwrite someone elses work, but these mechanisms tend to kick in after you have made any modifications to a file, rather than before you start an editing session.

The dialog settings dialog box enables you to configure whether certain short cut keys are used to invoke a dialog box prompt or a command line prompt. The dialog box is divided into a number of sections, controlled by a folder-tab at the top of the dialog box.

Infotips, or code completion, is a facility for providing context sensitive help in the form of a popup menu or tooltip whilst you are typing in code. It is ideal for working on code where you have lots of functions or data structures but cannot remember exactly the syntax or format of a specific item. For example, the TCL language provides a number of functions which perform a generic action, but the specific task they perform is controlled by the first argument passed to the function.

For example, the [string] function takes a number of arguments to perform things like string matching, sub-string extraction etc. By typing in the function as in: [string] with the cursor placed after the string keyword, a popup will appear:

Types of Tips
When tips are enabled, then the tips will popup automatically as you are typing - you don’t need to remember any keyboard shortcuts. There are two types of tips - menu tips where a list of possible options are shown, and unambiguous function help tips, showing the prototype of the function or entity you are typing. Function tips are normally popped up as a result of typing open parenthesis or a comma

When typing a function call, CRiSP will popup a reminder tip as you type each function argument, highlighting the argument you are typing.
Menu tips are shown when there are more than one valid definition of the object (function or structure/class member). You can scroll through each one, and a popup function tip will show to the side of the menu popup (if one is available).
CRiSP will normally scan your own private tag database as part of your project to show you valid definitions. If no definitions are found then CRiSP will rely on its own built in database of tips. CRiSP comes with a variety of databases covering C, C++, Java, Perl, TCL, Cold Fusion, and SQL.

Enabling Tips
Infotips can be enabled on a per file extension basis. Visit OptionsLanguage Editing Modes where you can enable the tip for persistent settings.
The set tip command can be used to temporarily change code completion for the current buffer - either to enable or disable it. You can enable tips for the current buffer using the following Command:

prompt set command: set tip
You can disable tips by using the command: set notip

Invoking Tips
Normally, an infotip will popup as you are typing in. CRiSP detects the type of construct you are typing and based on internal databases or project tag files, will display a list of valid options. You can force CRiSP to evaluate the current construct and show a list of options by using the <Ctrl-Space> key. You can use this even if tips are turned off, or if you have just dismissed the popup window.
Examples of Tips
CRiSP supports a number of languages for info-tipping. Different languages have different specifications and the features provided by CRiSP vary for these languages. The following examples illustrate simple examples of invoking the tip feature.

HTML
CRiSP provides support for HTML files, prompting you with the valid element names after an opening angle bracket. To see this in action, edit a new HTML file, and type <. If tips are enabled then a popup menu will show the valid HTML elements available. To the right of this menu will be a comments window, showing a description of the element and the available attributes. (If tipping is not enabled, then press <Ctrl-Space> to get the popup). You can scroll through the list of valid elements and click on the attribute links for each element to get a short description of the features available.

This dialog box is part of the Language editing modes dialog. These options allow you to specify the names of external utilities (commands or programs) which should be used under various circumstances.

This dialog box is used to print the current buffer. It is normally quicker and more convenient to use the printer icon, but using this dialog box allows you to configure aspects of the printing. Printing works slightly differently under Microsoft Windows, compared to Unix. Unix does not contain a standard printing mechanism and so each application supports its own mechanisms to enable printing. With Windows, CRiSP supports printing using the native printing subsystem or using one of the builtin mechanisms based on Text, HTML or PostScript.

This dialog box allows you to change the font used in the editing window and/or used in the various dialog boxes.
There are three types of fonts which can be set:
Editing Area:        Used for the edit window. This is a normally a fixed width font.
Dialog boxes:       Used for dialog box buttons, menus and prompt fields.
Tables & trees:    Used for displaying information in a dialog box. Using a smaller font can allow you to see more entries in the dialog, e.g. files or functions.

File sanity is used by CRiSP to detect if someone else has modified or tampered with a file whilst you are editing it. If a file is modified whilst you are editing it with CRiSP then you will sometimes see strange results (such as losing synchronization with where lines start and end, or missing chunks of the file). This is because CRiSP does not maintain a private copy of a file being edited, but refers back to the original file on disk.

This dialog allows you to configure the clipboard (scrap) options. The scrap or clipboard provides a means for cutting and pasting text either within CRiSP or to/from another application.

These definitions are used for the Preprocess command which can be used to preprocess a file and show the results of hiding lines which are not to be included.

This dialog box contains various miscellaneous settings.

This dialog box allows you to configure what the edit mode cursor looks like. Changing the edit cursor can be useful on certain screens so that the cursor stands out more against the text and color scheme you choose.

The menu editor dialog allows you to modify and create custom menus. These menus are typically accessed with right-mouse click context selection. CRiSP lets you build multi-level nested menus, with shortcuts, and context sensitive visibility/sensibility.

This dialog box is used to set the comment delimiters used when reformatting text. Typically this happens when you use <Ctrl-F>or the Comment or Comment box commands on the EditText formatting submenu.

This dialog box lets you configure the tabs in the Contents Window. You can reorder the settings and/or hide individual tabs which are of no interest to you.

The color selector dialog box is used to interactively set the colors of the various window areas in the main CRiSP editing window. It allows you to set the colors not only of the main areas but also of the colorizer token types. CRiSP can display different file types according to a set of individual language rules. For example, C/C++ files can have the foreground and background colors of comments in a different color to the normal text in a window.