The Fundamentals of &quantaplus;

Robert Nickel

    robert@artnickel.com

Christopher Hornbaker

    chrishornbaker@earthlink.net

Reviewer
Fabrice Mous

    fabrice@kde.nl

Reviewer

# The Fundamentals of &quantaplus;

Within &quantaplus; there are several key concepts. To understand and take advantage of &quantaplus;, you must first learn these concepts, the fundamentals. This chapter will explain and show you these concepts, without which &quantaplus; would be primitive.

## The Workspace

&quantaplus; divides the workspace into three scopes: Global, Local, and Project. These distinctions affect various components in &quantaplus;.

Global

  Global items are available to anyone that uses &quantaplus;. From toolbars to actions, everything marked as global is stored in the common &quantaplus; folder structure. This has the effect of allowing a group of admins to save certain toolbars, actions, and templates in the global tree, which can then be used to keep a multi-user installation of &quantaplus; common to everyone on the system.

Local

  Local items make up a single user's personal collection of web development resources. These items are made up of a user's templates and toolbars. Local items are stored in a user's home folder. This makes all of the user's Local items available for personal use at instance.

Project

  Project items are are only available to a particular project. These can be anything from a &CSS; template to a toolbar with custom actions which perform a special task on a project's files. Simply put, this is the most limited scope. All of the items saved in the project workspace will be saved in the project's folder tree, allowing you to share your specialized tools and templates with whomever else you share your project with.

## The Multi-Document Interface

&quantaplus; editing the document you are now reading.

&quantaplus;' &MDI; is broken down into various parts: the editor window, the quick info trees, informational tabs and the toolbars. Please see , , , and for more information on these parts.

### The Editor Window

&quantaplus;' editor window.

&quantaplus;' editor window allows for multiple files to be opened at the same time. When just one file is open, the document fills the entire editor window. As soon as a second document is opened, a small amount of space is taken from the bottom of the editor window to allow for tabs to be displayed with the filenames and a status icon. The above picture shows a floppy icon beside the filename, indicating that the file has been modified and should be saved.

You can right click on the tabs with the mouse to get a context menu with entries related to the current document, like closing the current, other or all tabs; switching to other tabs; reloading, deleting or uploading the document; switching to a bookmarked line ; performing CVS operations on the current document.

Right clicking in the editor area will give you another context menu related to the edited document content, like basic editing actions (cut/copy/paste), editing the tag under the cursor, selecting the area covered by the tag under the cursor, getting context help about the word under the cursor or open a file if the string under the cursor points to a file.

At the top of the editor window is the editor toolbar set. Currently, &quantaplus; defaults to &HTML; 4.01 Transitional, which has a default set of toolbars that are loaded. As &quantaplus; progresses, the toolbars will be updated to meet the needs of users and to make use of newer features.

Toolbar usage is pretty straight forward. If you want to insert a basic tag, like <p>, into your document, then you can click on the icon that represents the tag. Now you can insert your data for the tag you have just inserted. If you wish to insert a tag that requires certain attributes (like an anchor), then you will get a dialog box with the various fields for you to fill in.

The anchor (<a>) dialog.

### The Toolviews

The Toolviews.

The Toolviews or Quick Info Trees (&QIT;) allow you to navigate, open, and gather information in &quantaplus;. Its tabbed format presents you with the Files, Project, Templates, Document Structure, Scripts, Attribute, and Documentation Trees.

&QIT; Explained

Files Tree

  This is where you can browse your entire file system. You are presented with two top-level roots of the file system. The first is your home folder and the second is the filesystem root folder - /. Use these to find existing files on your machine that you would like to edit or add to an active project. Right mouse button clicking on a file in this view gives you several options for managing the selected file and, also, allows you to insert the file into an active project, if any, or toggle the view between tree and list.

Project Tree

  Project management is one of the many powerful tools that &quantaplus; offers. This tab displays all files within your project and allows you to manage the files within the project through the use of &RMB; clicking. Actions, such as add, remove, upload, or delete files entirely from the disk, can be performed through this menu.

Templates Tree

  Another feature of &quantaplus; is templates. Templates can be anything you would like. Images, code snippets, an entire web page, et cetera. It is entirely up to you.

  Templates are sorted into three categories, which are based on their scope and the context they are being used. These scopes are carried over from &quantaplus;' workspace. Global templates are usable all times, local templates are usable to the current user, and project templates are usable only within their specified project. More on templates can be found in .

Scripts Tree

  Here you will find information about the various scripts available for use by you. The Global, Local, and Project concept allows here as well. By &LMB; clicking the entries, you gain access to all the available information about the script. And &RMB; clicking allows you to perform a few actions, such as running the script, editing the script, and mailing the script, for example.

Document Structure Tree

  This tab displays the parser's internal representation of your document. By &LMB; clicking on an element, your cursor will taken to the element's position in the document. By &RMB; clicking on an element, you are presented with a number of actions that deal with navigating and updating the tree.

Attribute Tree

  This tree appears below all the other &QIT;s. Within it you can quickly edit attributes and namespaces. The content-focused entry system allows you to modify all the available attributes with little more than a few clicks of the mouse.

  Attribute Tree

Documentation Tree

  Here you can find complete documentation on web technologies to aid your development. You can download pre-packaged documentation for &quantaplus; at &quantaplus;' documentation site, you can create your own documentation, and, by adding a folder named "doc" to a project, you can add, edit, and view project-specific documentation.

### The Informational Tabs

&quantaplus;' Informational Tabs.

By default &quantaplus; has two tabs located at the bottom of the window from which useful information can be obtained. These are the Messages window and the Problems window.

Messages Window Tab

  This tab displays information from any scripts run in quanta. For example, the DTD being used for the current document and any changes to the DTD are displayed.

Problems Tab

  This tab shows any errors in the markup of the current document. &quantaplus; scripts which are executed will also print error messages (if present) in this tab.

### The Toolbars

&quantaplus;' &HTML; toolbars.

&quantaplus;' toolbars have been extended greatly and are easy to understand. You click on the button and you get an associated action from that button. The beautiful part about toolbars is that you can define your own actions graphically within &quantaplus;.

Managing toolbars in &quantaplus; is easy. By selecting the Toolbars menu, you have the options to load, save, add, remove, and email toolbars. When you choose to load a toolbar, you may choose from one of the three workspaces in &quantaplus;. When saving a newly created toolbar, you can save it in the local scope or within a project's scope. If you would like to make a new toolbar available in the global scope, ask your admin to place it in &quantaplus;' global toolbar folder.

Another feature of &quantaplus; is the ability to email your toolbars. &quantaplus; sends the toolbar as a gzipped tar archive through &kmail;. If you receive a toolbar in email, then you can save (and load) it into &quantaplus; like any other toolbar!