• Introduction
• OpenIt Usage
• OpenIt Options
• Recent Changes
• To Do
• Notes
• Feedback

The OpenIt plug-in provides a quick and easy way to open files in jEdit.  Users simply open a dialog box, start typing the name of the file they wish to open and, as they type, the list of files will be updated to match what they are typing.

Features include:

• Configurable sourcepath settings
• Automatic sourcepath refreshing with configurable refresh rate
• Real-time regular expression filter

This version requires (at least):

• JDK 1.4.0
• jEdit 4.0 final

The OpenIt plugin was designed to be quick and easy to use.  There is a single jEdit action called, Open File that, when performed, opens a small window with a textfield to enter a file name.

When the user starts to type in the name of the file, all matching files in the user-specified source path will be shown in a scrollable list under the window.  An example of this is shown below:

There is also a Hide/Show Filter button that, when pressed, shows/hides a small filter dialog that allows users to type in a regular expression that will filter the list of files currently in the file list (if there are any).  The file list is filtered as the user types in the regular expression.  The checkbox in the filter dialog must be checked for the filter to apply.

HINT: do not make your regular expression too long!  This will slow down OpenIt's response time.
 

OpenIt Options

The OpenIt plugin supports the following option panels to allow users to configure the plugin:

• Sourcepath Options
• Popup Window Options

This option panel allows the user to set the sourcepath that contains the files they want to be able to open in jEdit with the popup window.  This is normally one or more Java source paths - the base directories of all your Java source files (ie. D:\work\src).  However, as the OpenIt plugin can open any type of file that jEdit can open, this could just be a project directory (or directories) where files that may be opened in jEdit reside.  Adding and removing source/search paths can be done by using the Add and Remove buttons.  The Add button will display a JFileChooser to choose any number of source paths that contain files you may wish to open in jEdit.

This option panel contains a File Exclusion Regular Expression Filter.  Users can type in a glob/regular expression to match all files they want to filter out of the OpenIt popup file list.  For example, if a user did not want to see compiled java class files (*.class), they would simply type the following into the filter textbox:

    *.class

If multiple types of files need to be excluded, this can be done in the standard way by including the "|" character between file types.  For example:

    *.class|*.xml|*.#*

This option panel also contains a Directory Exclusion Regular Expression Filter.  This is similar to the file exclusion filter, but only excludes directories (and any sub-directories) that match the filter pattern.  The directory exclusion filter can be used in the following ways:

• Exclude Absolute Directory - excludes an absolute directory (eg. C:\\source\\test - excludes all files in the specified directory and any subdirectories)
• Exclude Subdirectory - excludes a subdirectory (eg. *org\\etheridge\\openit - excludes all files in the specified directory(s) and any subdirectories.  Using the example pattern the directory: C:\source\plugins\org\etheridge\openit would be excluded).
• Exclude Any Matching Directory - excludes any directory whose name matches the specified pattern (eg. *etheridge - excludes all files in any directories that end with the pattern etheridge.)

HINT: these files are filtered out during the sourcepath refresh task - which is done periodically in a background thread, so you should not see any performance degradation regardless of how big the filter is.

This option panel also allows the user to specify in seconds, how often the sourcepath should be refreshed from the filesystem.  This is useful if you are creating a lot of files in jEdit that you may want to open again in the same jEdit session.  This value defaults to 60 seconds.

HINT: the more directories you include in the source path, the longer it will take for the sourcepath to be refreshed!  (However, this is done in a background thread so you can still continue in jEdit!)

HINT: If any of the settings in this option panel change, when you press OK the sourcepath will be refreshed automatically in a background thread.  Depending on the size of the sourcepath, this can take a few seconds.  If you attempt to find a file immediately after pressing OK, you may not see the files in the modified sourcepath.  Just wait a few seconds and try again ;)

Popup Window Options

This option panel allows the user to specify any configuration items that relate to the popup window.  These settings include:

• Substring Matching - if this option is activated, any filename containing the entered substring will be displayed.  For performance reasons, substring matching will only occur if the entered string is greater than one character long.  For example, if I entered "a", only files starting with "a" would be found, however if I entered "al", both filenames starting with "al" AND filenames containing "al" would be displayed.

NOTE: substring matching may descrease performance slightly.

• Clear Popup - whether  the file list should be cleared before the window is displayed
• Case Sensitivity - whether the filenames will be matched in a case-sensitive manner
• Display Package Names - whether Java files will have their package names displayed
• Display Directories - whether the file's directory will be displayed
• Display File Extensions - whether file extensions are displayed (ie. .java)
• Display Icons - whether file-type icons are displayed
• Display File Size - whether the file's size is displayed

• 1.0 (Nov 02, 2003)
• Initial Release
• 1.01 (Nov 08, 2003)
• Updated to use the jEdit 4.2 deferred loading mechanism, although OpenIt will still work in older versions.
• Rejigged initial loading of file index to give user indication of why it is taking so long ;)
• Modified window positioning to always be in the center of the current view.
• 1.02 (Nov 22, 2003)
• Search/Source Path can now be configured with JFileChooser.
• Popup file list will scroll back to start when down/page down is pressed on the last list element, and vice versa when the up/page up is pressed on the first list element.
• Excludes Regular Expression Filter - any files matching the specified regular expression will not be shown.
• More granular configuration options for showing directories/packages with Java files. (This configuration is now distinct from other types of files).
• 1.03 (Jan 09, 2004)
• New "substring matching" functionality - if this configurable option is activated, any filename that contains this string will be found (previously the file was only found if the filename started with the specified string).
• 1.04 (Feb 22, 2004)
• Directory Exclusion Regular Expression
  
• new configuration item to allow users to exclude directories (and any nested sub-directories) from the OpenIt search path.  This is useful for        excluding unwanted directories like CVS directories.
• allows exclusion of any matching directory pattern including:
• absolute paths (ie. C:\\source)
• particular subdirectories (ie. *org\\etheridge\\openit)
• any directory at any level (ie. *openit)
• etc...
  
• 1.05 (Mar 05, 2004)
• Regular Expression Ignore Case - added "Ignore Case" functionality to regular expression exclusion filters. This may be helpful for Windows users. (Thanks Esteban!)

Things I would like to do if I have the time:

• Allow for source jar files in the source path.

The OpenIt plugin was written as an alternative to the FastOpen plugin that requires the ProjectViewer plugin to run.  I do not use the ProjectViewer plugin so I decided to write my own stand-alone version with a few more features.

If you do use the ProjectViewer plugin you may find FastOpen useful as it integrates with ProjectViewer's project file listings, otherwise OpenIt may be for you.
 
 

Feedback

Feel free to email me, Matt Etheridge <matt@etheridge.org> with any bugs or general feedback.  Otherwise try these:

• jEdit-users mailing-list <jedit-users@lists.sourceforge.net>.
• jEdit-devel mailing-list <jedit-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>.