About Yazmak

Yazmak is a customizable multi-tab Unicode text editor for Windows. The colors of all parts of the window can be modified along with the font used to display text, and these settings are automatically saved to a configuration file when modified. Tools for searching and manipulating text are included.

The files included in the ZIP archive are Yazmak.exe, Manual.html, and Default.ycf. It is recommended to copy these files to a new directory.

The ability to load user-defined settings relies on the presence of Default.ycf in the same directory as Yazmak.exe. If the file is not detected when the program is executed, a message will be displayed and the file will be created when an option is modified and/or the program is closed. The documentation file Manual.html must be in the program directory to be viewable from within Yazmak.

Version Information

3.0:

• Rewritten for .NET 8.0.

• Multi-level Undo/Redo is supported for typing and Paste operations.

• Tool menu operations can be undone from the confirmation dialog which is displayed when a menu item is clicked.

• Improved appearance of the toolbar.

• Removed Previous Tab and Next Tab buttons from toolbar; added Documentation button.

• Removed UTF-7 support.

• Added support for Latin 1 (ISO-8859-1) text encoding.

2.2:

• Added support for additional text encodings UTF-7, UTF-16, and UTF-32.

• Read-only files can be viewed in Yazmak.

• Added Force Quit menu item to the File menu.

• Added Tools menu with text operations Replace, Remove, Reverse, Capitalize, and Lowercase.

2.1:

• Text encoding (UTF-8, Windows-1252, or ASCII) can be selected for opening and saving files from the File menu.

• Find feature now supports optional case matching.

• Fixed a bug with the Always On Top menu item not displaying its checkmark correctly.

2.0:

• Rewritten from scratch to support multiple tabs.

• Added toolbar with pictographic buttons; this can be optionally hidden.

• Line number, column number, file position, number of lines, and length of text in each tab is displayed in the toolbar.

• User configuration options are saved to the appropriate file automatically when modified; manually saving default view configuration is no longer necessary.

• Multiple files can be opened at a time in a single window under different tabs, either by dragging and dropping onto the program icon or into the program window.

• Improved HTML documentation.

Program Startup

Yazmak can be loaded in a blank state, can load any number of files dropped onto the program icon or window, or it can be used to open files from the Open With menu. The program will first look for the file Default.ycf in the same directory it is running in and load using the view settings contained therein. If the file is not found, a message will be displayed and the file will be created when an option is modified and/or the program is closed.

If a file is read-only, its name in the tab will be enclosed in angle brackets (<>) and its contents cannot be modified. Tools are disabled in read-only tabs.

User Interface

If a file is loaded, the full path to the file is displayed at the bottom of the window in the corresponding tab.

The toolbar contains buttons for most common activities: New, Open, Save, Save As, Print, Close Tab, Find, Undo, Redo, Select All, Cut, Copy, Paste, Font, and Color Options. This can be hidden by unchecking Show Toolbar in the View menu. This option will be stored in the configuration file.

The File menu includes all available file operations: New, Open, Close Tab, Save, Save As, Print, Encoding, Force Exit, and Exit. Open, Close, Force Exit, and Exit will prompt the user to save the current text if it has been edited. Files will be opened and saved using the selected encoding in the Encoding submenu. The currently selected encoding is also visible on the toolbar. Supported encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, Windows-1252, Latin-1, and ASCII.

The Print menu item will open a dialog box for the user to select a device and number of copies before the current text box is sent to the printer. The font used for printing is the same as the font used for the text box. Printed text will match the selected foreground color, and word wrap is always applied.

Right-clicking in the text box provides common operations: Undo, Redo, Select All, Cut, Copy, and Paste. These operations are also listed in the Edit menu, along with Find, Previous Tab, and Next Tab.

The Find window can be accessed in the Edit menu or by pressing Ctrl+F. Pressing the Enter key in the Find box will trigger the Find button. The search performed is optionally case-sensitive, and the number of results is displayed in the Find window. The Next button will iterate through each result. Only the selected tab can be searched; the selected tab can be changed while the Find window is open.

The Tools menu contains utilties to manipulate text in the current tab. Replace and Remove will open separate dialog boxes, and if any text is selected, it will automatically appear in the dialog. Both operations are case-sensitive. Reverse, Capitalize, and Lowercase will execute immediately on the selected text, or the current tab if no text is selected.

After a tool item has been used, a message box will appear allowing the changes to be undone or kept.

All menu items have an associated keyboard shortcut underlined when the Alt key is pressed besides the shortcut keys listed in this file.

View Configuration

The View menu allows the user to modify the following attributes:

Font

Set the font of the text box, including size and style. This applies to all tabs.

Toggle Word Wrap

Toggle word wrap on or off for the current tab only; default is on.

This option is not saved in the view configuration.

Always On Top

Keep Yazmak above all other windows when it loses focus; default state is unchecked.

Show Toolbar

Show the toolbar; default is on.

Text Color

Set the foreground color of the text box. This applies to all tabs.

Background Color

Set the background color of the text box. This applies to all tabs.

Window Color

Set the window color.

Tab Border Color

Set the color of the tab area surrounding the text box. This applies to all tabs.

Set Current as Default

Save the current view configuration as Default.ycf in the program directory, the file containing the view configuration loaded by default at program execution.

(This provides a means of saving manually; view configuration settings are always automatically saved.)

Export Settings

Open a dialog to save the current view configuration to a file.

Import Settings

Open a dialog to load settings from a view configuration file, typically with the YCF file extension.

Revert to Default Settings

Reset all current view settings to the built-in program default settings (distinct from the settings that may be listed in Default.ycf). This applies to all tabs.

View Configuration Files

All view settings which can be changed in Yazmak, including Always On Top status and window size, can be saved to a file. This can then be manually loaded by the user, or set as the default view configuration when loading Yazmak using the Set View as Default option from the View menu. Changes made to relevant settings are automatically saved to Default.ycf.

A view configuration file is stored as plain text, each line containing both a variable name and its value separated by an equal sign (=).

Recognized variable names are: FontFamily, FontSize, FontStyle, AlwaysOnTop, ShowToolbar, TextColor, BackgroundColor, WindowColor, TabBorderColor, WindowWidth, WindowHeight, and TextEncoding. Any lines beginning with an unknown variable name and/or missing equal sign are ignored. When Yazmak saves a YCF file, the above order is used, but the variable names can be written in any order. Typically a YCF file consists of 12 lines, but they can be shorter or longer. If a variable assignment in a YCF file is missing, the corresponding built-in default setting is used instead. If a variable assignment occurs more than once, the last assignment is used.

TextColor, BackgroundColor, WindowColor, and TabBorderColor are 32-bit ARGB integers.

WindowWidth and WindowHeight are integers representing the window width and height in pixels.

TextEncoding may be one of the following: utf-8, utf-16, utf-32, windows-1252, iso-8859-1, us-ascii.

Example YCF File (Default.ycf):

Keyboard Shortcuts

File Operations

Ctrl+N	New
Ctrl+O	Open
Ctrl+Q	Close Tab
Ctrl+S	Save
Ctrl+P	Print

Editing Operations

Ctrl+F	Find
Ctrl+Z	Undo
Ctrl+Y	Redo
Ctrl+A	Select All
Ctrl+X	Cut
Ctrl+C	Copy
Ctrl+V	Paste
F11	Previous Tab
F12	Next Tab

Other Operations

F1	View documentation