Editor Settings
Official

See:
Description

Editor Settings

org.netbeans.api.editor.settings

The editor/settings module consists of several EditorSettingsAPIAPI classes for accessing editor related settings. The classes are stored in the org.netbeans.api.editor.settings package. Each class is responsible for a different group of settings:

• FontColorSettings - the map of names (i.e. Strings) of colorings and their parameters (i.e. AttributeSets).
• CodeTemplateSettings - the map of template names (i.e. Strings) and their bodies (i.e. Strings).
• KeyBindingSettings - the list of MultiKeyBindings. Each MultiKeyBinding is a list of keyboard shortcuts associated to an Action.

Editor settings for a particular mime type can be obtained through MimeLookup

    MimePath mimePath = MimePath.parse("text/x-java");
    FontColorSettings fcs  = (FontColorSettings) MimeLookup.getLookup(mimePath).lookup(FontColorSettings.class);

What is New (see all changes)?

• Feb 28 '08 Added border related constants to EditorStyleConstants

  Several new constants were added to EditorStyleConstants to support drawing rectangular boxes around text in the editor.

• Feb 14 '08 Added CodeTemplateDescription.getMimePath

  The CodeTemplateDescription.getMimePath and a new constructor were added to accomodate a mime path where a code template was registered.

• Sep 13 '07 Added EditorStyleConstants.Tooltip

  The EditorStyleConstants.Tooltip constant was added allowing to specify tooltips in highlighting layers.

• Jun 15 '07 Added CodeTemplateDescription.getUniqueId

  The CodeTemplateDescription.getUniqueId method was added and the constructor was extended to accept uniqueId parameter.

• Jun 10 '07 CodeTemplateSettings.getCodeTemplates siganture changed

  The CodeTemplateSettings.getCodeTemplates signature was changed to return Collection<CodeTemplateDescription> instead of List. Although an incompatible change this class had never been functional and should not have been used by anybody.

Use Cases

Accessing settings

All editor settings are mime type specific and therefore should be retrieved using MimeLookup. The following example shows how to retrieve the FontColorSettings for java files and how to get AttributeSet with coloring attributes for a particular coloring (i.e. in this case the colors used for highlighting selected text)

    MimePath mimePath = MimePath.parse("text/x-java");
    FontColorSettings fcs  = (FontColorSettings) MimeLookup.getLookup(mimePath).lookup(FontColorSettings.class);
    AttributeSet coloring = fcs.getFontColors(FontColorNames.SELECTION_COLORING);

Listening on changes

If clients need to react on changes in editor settings they can attach LookupListener to the LookupResult they got for their particular settings class from MimeLookup. The following example shows how to do it.

    MimePath mimePath = MimePath.parse("text/x-java");
    Lookup lookup = MimeLookup.getLookup(mimePath);
    LookupResult result = lookup.lookup(new Lookup.Template(FontColorSettings.class));
    
    result.addLookupListener(new LookupListener() {
        public void resultChanged(LookupEvent ev) {
            //... the client's response to the settings change
        }
    });

The FontColorSettings class implementor is responsible and will create a new instance of FontColorSettings whenever some coloring will change. This new instance will be placed in MimeLookup replacing the old one.

Exported Interfaces

This table lists all of the module exported APIs with defined stability classifications. It is generated based on answers to questions about the architecture of the module. Read them all...

Group of java interfaces

Interface Name	In/Out	Stability	Specified in What Document?
EditorSettingsAPI	Exported	Official	API

Implementation Details

Where are the sources for the module?

The sources for the module are in the NetBeans Mercurial repositories.

What do other modules need to do to declare a dependency on this one, in addition to or instead of a plain module dependency?

Nothing.

Read more about the implementation in the answers to architecture questions.