Every macro, whether or not you originally recorded it, is stored on
disk and can be edited as a text file. The file name of a macro
must have a .bsh
extension in order for jEdit
to be aware of it.
By default, jEdit associates a
.bsh
file with the BeanShell edit
mode for purposes of syntax highlighting, indentation and other
formatting. However, BeanShell syntax does not impose any indentation or
line break requirements.
The Macros menu
lists all macros stored in two places: the macros
subdirectory of the jEdit home directory, and the
macros
subdirectory of the user-specific
settings directory (see the section called “The jEdit Settings Directory” for
information about the settings directory). Any macros you record will be
stored in the user-specific directory.
Macros stored elsewhere can be run using the Macros>Run Other Macro command, which displays a file chooser dialog box, and runs the specified file.
The listing of individual macros in the Macros menu can be organized in a hierarchy using subdirectories in the general or user-specific macro directories; each subdirectory appears as a submenu. You will find such a hierarchy in the default macro set included with jEdit.
When jEdit first loads, it scans the designated macro directories and
assembles a listing of individual macros in the Macros
menu. When scanning the names, jEdit will delete underscore characters
and the .bsh
extension for menu labels, so that
List_Useful_Information.bsh
, for example, will be
displayed in the Macros menu as List
Useful Information.
You can browse the user and system macro directories by opening the
macros
directory from the
Utilities>jEdit Home Directory
and Utilities>Settings Directory
menus.
Macros can be opened and edited much like ordinary files from the file system browser. Editing macros from within jEdit will automatically update the macros menu; however, if you modify macros from another program or add macro files to the macro directories, you should run the Macros>Rescan Macros command to update the macro list.