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<title>Bluefish manual preface</title>
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<meta name="AUTHOR" content="Jim Batis">
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<meta name="COPYRIGHT" content="Copyright (C) 2000, Dimitris Batis">
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<meta name="generator" value="Bluefish 0.6">
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<h1>Preface: A little bit about Bluefish</h1>
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<h2>About Bluefish</h2>
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<p>The Bluefish project was started by Chris Mazuc and Olivier Sessink. Both
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authors where programming a HTML editor and decided to merge both projects
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to improve the development. First the project was named ProSite, later
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THTML-editor. At this time Neil Millar joined the development and added the
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color chooser and the weblint integration. The first public releases were
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about to start and a logo was needed. The name discussion started again and
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this time Neil came up with a cute logo and name: <i>Bluefish</i>. This is
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still the current name and logo.</p>
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<p>More developers joined and Bluefish started to get more attention from
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the open source community. Bluefish was multiple times chosen as best
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editor, or app of the week, got 5 golden penguins on <a href=
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"http://www.linuxberg.com/">Tucows/Linuxberg</a>, was top rated at <a href=
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"http://www.linuxapps.com/">Linuxapps</a> and more developers joined.</p>
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<h2>Distribution and availability</h2>
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<p>Bluefish is distributed via the world wide web. The current website is <a
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href="http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/">http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/</a> but
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new release can be found on many mirrors as well, notably <a href=
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"http://www.linuxberg.com/">Tucows/Linuxberg</a> worldwide. Developers
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releases are announced on the development mailinglist. Send an email
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containing "subscribe bluefish-dev" in the body to <a href=
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"mailto:listar@lists.ems.ru">listar@lists.ems.ru</a> to join development,
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translations or testing. Usually development releases can be found in the
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download directory of the main website as well.</p>
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<p>New releases of this manual should be accessible on this main website as
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<p>Bluefish mainly uses the GTK and posix C libraries. Most unix systems
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will run Bluefish without any problems. Bluefish is developed on i386-Linux
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but we hope it will run on any other posix machine. Platforms known to work
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are Solaris (Ultrasparc), Linux (Alpha, i386, Ultrasparc), True64 (Alpha),
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<p>For extended functionality install imlib (including libjpeg, libgif and
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libpng), weblint, netscape, tidy and any filters you might want to use.</p>
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<p>There are two ways to install Bluefish. The first is to get an
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already-compiled binary package and the second way is to compile it
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<p>If you choose a binary package, refer to your systems manual on how to
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install (<i>man apt-get, man rpm, man dpkg</i>).</p>
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<p>If you choose to compile it yourself, we have made the procedure very
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easy and all you have to do is to follow the following four steps.</p>
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<h3>First step: Unpacking</h3>
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<p>After you have grabbed a copy of Bluefish in compressed/packed format,
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the first thing you must do is to unpack it. This procedure varies according
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to the compression format. Here we will explain how to unpack the
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<i>GZipped/tarred</i> and <i>bz2</i> format.</p>
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<h4>Gzipped/tarred format</h4>
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<p>Let's say that the file is <b>bluefish-x.x.x.tar.gz</b> (in reality,
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x.x.x will be the version number). Go to your home directory (or any
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temporary directory you might want to use) and type:<br>
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<code>blashyrkh:~# tar xzvf bluefish-x.x.x.tar.gz</code></p>
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<p>This will unpack all contents and build the nessecary directory tree
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structure. The source code of Bluefish is now found at directory
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<code>bluefish-x.x.x</code>.</p>
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<h4>Bzipped format</h4>
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<h3>Second step: Configuring</h3>
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<p>Now you must enter the bluefish directory (for reasons of simplicity,
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let's say that Bluefish code is at
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<code>/home/blashyrkh/bluefish-x.x.x</code>. As you will notice, in that
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directory there is an executable file called <i>configure</i>, which helps
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you configure the code to suite your operating system and machine, as well
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as your preferences on the features you want to use. It also makes sure that
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all the required libraries and files exist before trying to compile the
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program. Usually, all you have to do is type:
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blashyrkh:~# cd bluefish-x.x.x
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blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# ./configure
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<p>This will work correctly on most machines and will configure Bluefish
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with the default options. If a program (e.g. ispell) is not found, then any
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Bluefish functions relevant to that progam won't be compiled. The above
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will install Bluefish at <code>/usr/local/bin</code>.</p>
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<p><i>configure</i> also allows you to customize Bluefish before it is
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compiled. It can accept a series of options as a parameter, all of which can
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be listed (and explained) if you type:<br>
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<code>blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# ./configure --help</code></p>
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<p>Since there are a lot of options, we'll only explain a few basics
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here, for complete listing refer to the command described above. First of
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all, as we've said, Bluefish will be installed in
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<code>/usr/local/bin</code>. The best way to change all installation paths
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(the lib path, exec-bin path, etc.) is to add <i>--prefix=DIR</i> at the
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command prompt and all other paths will automaticly adjust. For example, if
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you want to install Bluefish at <code>/usr/X11R6/bin</code>, then type:
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blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# ./configure --prefix=/usr/X11R6
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<h3>Third step: Compiling</h3>
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<p>After configuring the compilation options, all you have to do is
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blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# make
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<p>Normally, no warnings or errors should appear and the compilation will
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create the nessecary executable files.</p>
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<h3>Fourth step: Installing</h3>
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<p>The last step is to place <i>bluefish</i> and its data to their
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correspodant directories. This can be done automaticly using
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<p>What you need to notice is that you need to be <b>root</b> or use
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<i>su</i> to be able to use <i>make</i> for installation, as the
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<code>bin</code> directories in <code>/usr</code> can be writeable only from
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<b>root</b>. After you have gained access, you can type:<br>
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blashyrkh:~/bluefish-x.x.x# make install
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<p>You're now ready to run Bluefish</p>
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<h2>Using National Language Support</h2>
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<h2>Authors and contact</h2>
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<p>For general comments please contact bluefish@bluefish.openoffice.nl. For
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more specific questions join the development mailinglist of contact the
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author of the code (found in AUTHORS). The authors and translators are
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(alphabetically listed):</p>
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<li>Erik Alvarez</li>
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<li>Jim JMK Batis</li>
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<li>Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho</li>
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<li>Marc LeMaire</li>
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<li>Pablo De Napoli</li>
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<li>Hylke van der Schaaf</li>
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<li>Martin Samesch</li>
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<li>Olivier Sessink</li>
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<li>Roland Steinbach</li>
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<li>Karel Tejnora</li>
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<li>Rasmus Toftdahl Olesen</li>
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<li>Aleksey I Zavilohin</li>
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