OptionsDialog

Options Dialog

The options dialog controls the behavior of the application and the currently open wiki. To open it, choose "Options" in the wiki menu.

Application-wide

The following options apply to the whole application and therefore to each wiki opened in it.

General options

New window on wiki URL
When double clicking on a wiki: URL, a new instance of the application is started, otherwise, the current instance loads the new wiki.

Store relative paths to wikis
Paths to the recently opened wikis (listed in menu "Wiki"->"Recent") are stored relative to WikidPad installation directory in the future if this is checked. "In the future" means that existing entries in "Recent" are not modified and may become invalid when changing this option. Useful e.g. if you have WikidPad and your wikis on a USB-stick.

Default open/new dir.
Directory to start when using "Wiki"->"New" or "Wiki"->"Open" in the menu. If empty, WikidPad chooses a default.

Sort order
Choose the desired alphabetical sort algorithm for wiki words, todos, attributes in tree or when SearchingTheWiki.
The "C" order is the way previous WikidPad versions worked (uppercase letters first, non-English characters in illogical order at the end).
The new "Default" order sorts according to default order determined by the operating system. Normally, uppercase letters are sorted inorder (AaBbCc). If you want uppercase letters (more exactly: all characters but lowercase ones) before the rest (ABCabc), check
Uppercase first.
This setting has no effect for "C" order. Alphabetical sorting of children of a wiki word in tree is always inorder.

Rename links when renaming wiki word
When renaming a wiki word, WikidPad can try to rename all links to this word as well, but this is not fully reliable. Here you can check if this renaming should be done or not or if WikidPad should ask for each renaming.

App-bound hotkey
Here you can define a hotkey to show or hide WikidPad (they may only work on Windows). Hotkeys work system-wide, not only if WikidPad is active.

In the text field you can enter a hotkey in the same way as the menu shortcuts are. Unlike menu shortcuts, you can also use "win" as modifier (like "alt" or "ctrl"), but the hotkey must have at least one of "ctrl" or "alt" modifiers to work.

The checkbox before the text field allows to temporarily deactivate the hotkey without deleting the field content.

There is also an option to set a second hotkey which is bound to the current wiki instead of the app. See OptionsDialog below in "Current wiki" options.

Rename dialog defaults
Default settings for the wiki word rename dialog

Modify all links to the wiki word
Also rename subpages
See RenamingWikiWords for the meaning.

Temporary files
A group of settings about the placement of temporary files. These settings may need a restart of WikidPad to take effect.

Prefer memory where possible
If checked, main memory is used instead of files where this is possible. This especially affects temporary tables created while sqlite-based wikis are open.

Temporary file directory
Set the kind of location of temporary files:

System: Place files in operating systems default place for temporary files
Config. dir.: Place in the "WikidPadGlobals" subdirectory of the current configuration directory (useful for WikidPadOnUSB)
Given: Use path entered in "Temporary path" below.

Temporary path
If "Temporary file directory" is set to "Given", enter here the path to temporary directory.

User interface

Minimize to Tray
Minimize to system tray instead of the normal taskbar.

Switch Tabs in MRU order
Switch between the page tabs with Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab in an order where the most recently used tabs are selected first.
Instead of the default shortcuts you can look how to change them at ChangingKeyBindings and modify entries "GoNextTab" and "GoPreviousTab" in "KeyBindings.py".

Minimize on close button
Pressing the close button on the main frame (the little "X") does not close but minimize WikidPad. In conjunction with "Minimize to Tray" it minmizes to the try area.

If you really want to close, use menu "Wiki"->"Exit" then or the context menu when right-clicking on the tray icon (if "Minimize to Tray" is active).

Statusbar time format
Set the time format the statusbar should use to show modification and creation date of the current wiki page. The format can also be set by clicking on the small "..." button which starts the same dialog as used for setting the date format for the editor.

UI language
Choose the preferred language of the user interface.

This setting only takes effect after restarting WikidPad.

Recent wikis list length
Set the number of wikis to show in menu "Wiki"->"Recent"

Auto-show log window
Automatically show log window if new error messages arrive (see WikiDocumentAttributes ).

Auto-hide log window
Automatically hide log window if no more error messages are present.

Structure window pos.
Where (relative to main window) should the PageStructureWindow be positioned? "Hidden" deactivates it.
KNOWN BUG: After changing the position of the window, restarting WikidPad is necessary. See RestartWikidPad for details.

Structure window heading depth
Up to (and including) which heading level should headings be displayed? "1" Means only top-level heading (one plus sign), "15" means all headings.

Auto-hide structure window
After double-clicking an entry in PageStructureWindow the window is collapsed (hidden) automatically if this is checked.

Structure window selection auto-follow
If checked and document structure window is visible, changing cursor position in editor can also change selection in structure window to always show the heading which is nearest above the current cursor position.

Security options

Process insertion scripts
Control if insertions with key "eval" should be evaluated as Python expressions or not, see also Insertions.

Script security
Set the security level for script execution, see InlinePythonEval.

Reverse script search order (global imports first)
If checked, the order for searching of executable scripts is reversed, global imports are searched first (if allowed by the security setting above). See InlinePythonEval.

Tree options

These apply to the tree on the left of the main window.

Tree auto-follow
The tree tries to always select the wiki word currently shown in the editor or HTML-view.

Tree update after save
After each (automatic or manual) save, the tree icons and shown children are updated. This may need some time and may create some flicker going from top to bottom through the tree.

Hide Undefined wiki words in Tree
If a page contains wiki word links to non-existing pages, these are not shown as children in the tree.

Tree auto-hide
After selecting an item in tree, the tree is hidden automatically.

Font
Select font of tree. The empty field means default font.

Background color
Specify background color of tree.

Position main tree
Controls where to place the main tree (to the left, right, top or bottom)

Position view tree
You can also have a second tree which has the "Views" node as root. You can place it relative to the main tree (above, below, left or right) or choose "hidden" if you don't want it.

KNOWN BUG: After changing the position of main or view tree, the trees do not react on clicks properly any longer. Restart WikidPad. See RestartWikidPad for details.

HTML preview/export

See Options HTML preview_export.

Editor

Auto-unbullets
When this option is active and enter is pressed on a line which contains only a bullet or a numbering without text, the bullet is removed. See BulletedLists for details.

Append closing bracket on auto-complete
When suggesting the completion for a bracketed wiki word, e.g. "[Not Came" you can decide if a closing bracket is suggested ("Not Camel Case") or not ("[Not Camel Case").

Synchronize editor by preview selection
This provides some workaround to synchronize scroll position in HTML preview with the position in editor.
If this option is checked, you can select some text in the preview and when switching back to the editor, the first occurrence of the selected text is searched and selected in editor, too.

Tab width
How many spaces should a tab be wide. This affects real tabs as well as the number of spaces used to replace a tab if "Edit"->"Settings"->"Tabs to spaces" is checked.

Image pasting

When pasting bitmap data into WikidPad it can be saved as an image file into the "files" directory of the wiki and a link to it can be generated. These options control how to do that:

Filename prefix
A prefix to use for the filename. If this filename plus suffix exists already in "files" dir, an underscore and a sequence of 20 random letters or numbers is appended to create a unique filename. E.g. you want to store a PNG-file with prefix "foo" then WikidPad checks if "foo.png" is already in the "files" directory (if prefix is empty, this is not tried). If "foo.png" exists it tries something like "foo_2NIUXQ0OGVRDT1O3JNUN.png". If this exists already it tries again (up to 20 times) before giving up.

File type

None: Don't store images at all
PNG: Store in PNG format (lossless compression)
JPEG: Store in JPEG format (lossy compression)

Quality
Number to define quality of JPEG compression (0:worst, 75:default, 100:best)

Ask settings on each paste
If checked, each time you paste an image, a dialog box asks for the above settings to set them individually.

File dropping

Prepend before links
Between links
Append after links

When dropping files into editor (which are shown as file URLS then) you can set here what to prepend before all links, set between them and what to append. By default nothing is prepended/appended and a space is placed between links.

You can put a newline in these fields as \n. For a single backslash type \\.

Editor colors

Plain text color
Specify the color of plain text (like this one) in the editor by pressing the little "..." button to start the color dialog or by entering a numeric HTML color (e.g. "#000000" for black) in the text field. Leaving the field empty chooses the default color.

Link color
Set the color of links (URLs and existing wiki words, e.g. http://nowhere) in the editor. See "Plain text color" above for details.

Attribute/script color
Set the color of attributes and scripts (e.g. ) in the editor. See "Plain text color" above for details.

Background color
(Works only partially). Specify the background color of the editor. See "Plain text color" above for details.

Selection fg. color
Specify the foreground color of selected text. See "Plain text color" above for details.

Selection bg. color
Specify the background color of selected text. See "Plain text color" above for details.

Margin color
Specify the color of the editor margin on the left (normally gray) which can also contain line numbers.

Text cursor color
Set the color of the text cursor (the small blinking vertical bar).

Clipboard catcher

This page is only visible if the necessary prerequisites are met to make the clipboard catcher work, see ClipboardCatcher.

Prepend before clipboard snippet
Control what the ClipboardCatcher should prepend before each caught snippet. This option supports time formats (as these shown in "Set Date Format" dialog in "Editor" menu)

Append after clipboard snippet
Control what the ClipboardCatcher should append after each caught snippet. This option supports time formats (as these shown in "Set Date Format" dialog in "Editor" menu)

Avoid doubled snippets
If the same text is pasted multiple times consecutively to the clipboard, it is pasted only the first time. Some applications execute a single paste command as multiple pastes to the clipboard which would lead to multiple inserts without this option set.

User notification
Choose if you want to hear a sound when a clipboard snippet is inserted.

Sound file
Choose the sound file to play (if you have chosen to be notified by sound above). If the field is empty, a default sound is played.

File Launcher

This page is only visible on non-Windows systems.

Path to file launcher
Enter here the path to a script or program which takes the path or URL of a file and runs the application associated with this file. For Linux, find the "xdg-open" script (or install it first) which should do that.

Mouse

Middle button without CTRL
Set the reaction of a middle button click on a wiki word in editor, internal preview, tree or wiki-wide search results if CTRL is not pressed while clicking. You can choose between opening the word in a new tab in foreground, in background or in the same (active) tab.

Middle button with CTRL
Same as before, but set reaction if CTRL is pressed while clicking the middle button.

Left double click in preview
When double clicking into preview (not on a link), this can either do nothing, switch the tab to editor or open a new tab with same page, but in editor mode.

Middle click on tab
This can either do nothing, close the tab or clone it (open same page in a new tab).

Dropping files
Dropping files with SHIFT
Dropping files with CTRL

Control what should happen if you drag and drop files from explorer into the editor with no key pressed, with SHIFT pressed or with CTRL pressed.

Possible choices are:

Nothing
Absolute URL: Insert absolute URL(s) to the file(s)
Relative URL: URL(s) starting with "rel:"
Copy into file storage: Copy file(s) into file storage and create relative URL(s) to it
Move into file storage: Copy file(s) into file storage and create relative URL(s) to it
Ask: Show dialog to ask what to do. Allows also to set what to prepend/append/set between links (see OptionsDialog)

Chron. view

Position
Where (relative to main window) should the ChronViewWindow be positioned? "Hidden" deactivates it.
KNOWN BUG: After changing the position of the window, restarting WikidPad may be necessary. See RestartWikidPad for details.

Chronological view: Date format
Set the time format the timeline should use to show the dates. The format is also used when interpreting a date entered by the user in the time view.
The format can also be set by clicking on the small "..." button which starts the same dialog as used for setting the date format for the editor.

Auto-hide
After selecting an item in timeline, timeline is hidden automatically.

Show word list on hovering
Should the list of related wiki words be shown when hovering over a date with mouse.

Show word list on select
Should the list of related wiki words be shown when selecting (clicking on) a date.

Show empty days
Should "empty" dates without relatzed wiki words be shown in the timeline?
This option can also be set in the context menu of the timeline.

Show dates ascending
Control if the dates in timeline should be sorted ascending or descending.
This option can also be set in the context menu of the timeline.

Versioning: Date format
Set the time format the version list should use to show the dates. The format can also be set by clicking on the small "..." button which starts the same dialog as used for setting the date format for the editor.

Searching

Wiki-wide search defaults
Set the search options to use for wiki-wide search dialog:

Simple regex

"Anded" regex

As is

Case sensitive, Whole word

Context characters before and after
Chooses the number of characters to show before and after a found match as context in wiki-wide search. For an "anded" regex, the beginning of the page is shown with so many characters as the sum of the "before" and "after" values. Using context may slow down the searching a bit.

Count Occurrences up to max.
Counts how many matches a page contains and shows this number in parentheses after each page name in wiki-wide search results. This option slows down searching. To avoid too long search times you can restrict here the maximum number of occurrences to count on a page.

Fast search defaults
Set the search options to use for the small search field in toolbar. Same options as for "Wiki-wide search defaults" above.

Delay before auto-close
Controls how many seconds of inactivity before the incremental search is closed automatically. 0 means "wait forever".

Advanced

Use IME workaround for editor input
Fixes some problems when entering characters in non-Western languages, e.g. when using UniKey (Vietnamese input method editor) under Windows or typing Russian under Linux. You must restart WikidPad to make the change have an effect.

Translate menu accelerators for keyboard layout
Windows only. Translates accelerators (aka shortcuts) of the menus to work with special keyboard layouts where the ctrl-level (layout when CTRL is pressed) differs from layout in base-level. After translation the shortcuts look wrong but work correctly. The translation is based on the layout on WikidPad startup, changes while WikidPad is running are not processed. This option has only an effect after restarting WikidPad.

Forbid cancel on search
Checking this option forbids to cancel a running wiki-wide (or fast) search by clicking into the search field. For some OS (especially Mac OS) this increases search speed considerably.

Single process per user
If you open a new WikidPad instance while another is already running, the new window is handled by the same process as the first one. This option has only an effect after restarting WikidPad. It is on by default.

Advantages:

You can safely open the same wiki in multiple windows (on the
same computer and by the same user only!)
Less resources (esp. memory) are needed to run multiple windows

Disadvantages:

If one window is busy due to a search or database rebuild, all windows do not react.
If one window crashes (in fact the process driving it) all windows crash.
An IP-socket connection is needed for communication between
processes. The connection is invisible for other computers on
a network or the internet, but a personal firewall software
may alarm you nevertheless. Also, if multiple user use
WikidPad on the same computer at the same time, all must use
their own home directory as configuration directory (this is
the default).

Warn about other processes
This option is only available if "Single process per user" is checked. On startup of WikidPad it checks if there are other WikidPad processes and warns about them if so.

It has a few restrictions at the moment:

Works only on Windows
Only compares the executable (path and name) of new and existing processes. So when you do not use the Windows binary to start but Python directly it warns about other processes started with the same "python(w).exe"
Does not warn about processes started by other users (this is intentional)

No cycles in tree
If two or more pages reference each other (e.g. NodeA -> NodeB -> NodeA) these cycles are not shown. Precisely: if a child of a word is already an ancestor (parent, grandparent, ...) of this word, it is not shown.

Scroll under pointer
Windows only, experimental. When using the mouse-wheel on Windows it normally scrolls the control which currently has the focus (is active). With this option the control under the mouse pointer is scrolled instead. This only works for some controls, for the others you first have to click into the control (give it the focus) and then scroll while mouse pointer is over the control.

Ignore wiki lock file
Create wiki lock file
Change these settings only if you know what you are doing! See WikiLockFile.

Timing

Sync. highlighting limit
Limit of page size in bytes when to switch from synchronous highlighting (calculated after each keypress) to asynchronous highlighting (calculated in the background and shown when ready). Recommended value: 300 to 500 bytes

Highlight start delay
For async. highlighting how long to wait after key press (in seconds) before starting the highlighting work in background. Recommended value: 0.2 to 0.5 seconds

Short hint delay
Set how many milliseconds before showing the short hint tooltip in editor. 0 deactivates the tooltip. See WikiDocumentAttributes for details.

Update step min. delay
After each change the tree(s) are updated to reflect changes like added or removed children of a page. This updating is done step by step where each step must be executed in the GUI-thread. Non-technically this means that WikidPad may lag during the tree update. The minimal delay setting defines the number of seconds (or fractions thereof) WikidPad waits after an update step before the next step is executed.
Recommended value: 0.0 to 0.2 seconds

Autosave

Autosave active
Save current page content to disk (if modified) after a few seconds of inactivity.

There are two delays which both must be exceeded before a save operation is triggered (if Autosave is active).

Delay after key pressed
How long to wait after the last keypress in the editor (default: 3 seconds). Recommended value: 1 to 5 seconds.

Delay after page dirty
How long to wait after the page was initially modified (dirty) after last save (default: 15 seconds). Recommended value: 15 to 180 seconds.

Current wiki

These options apply to the active wiki only

General options

First word at startup
Wiki word which should be shown as first one each time the wiki is opened. If the field is empty, the last words when the wiki was closed are shown on opening.

Default export dir.
Set the default export directory into which exports should go.

Remember expanded tree nodes
Control if expanded tree nodes should be remembered by WikidPad. This means if you collapse a tree node which contains expanded child nodes yet and expand the node later, the child nodes are expanded again. The following modes are supported:

Not at all: Doesn't remember expanded nodes (like before version 1.9beta15)
While wiki open: Forgets the node states when wiki is closed
Always: Stores the node states in wiki configuration file and restores them on reopening

It may happen that the mechanism stores expanded nodes which don't exist any longer, e.g. if the link from parent page to a child page is deleted and the child page was represented by an expanded node this is not always recognized by WikidPad, so some "garbage" may be stored.

By setting the option to "Not at all" then closing the options dialog, then setting the option back to what you had before, all node state information is cleared. The info of the main tree (not the "Views" tree) is also cleared when setting a new root.

Max. characters on each tab
If you have very long wiki page names and therefore very broad tabs you can restrict the number of characters to show on a tab. Use 0 for no restriction.

Template page names reg. exp.
Enter here a regular expression which must match for a page name to be listed as a template in the "Use Template" submenu. See Templates.

Allow index search
Control if indexed search should be possible. See SearchingTheWiki/Index.

Force ScratchPad visibility in tree
Shows the special page ScratchPad always as child of the tree root, even if it is not really a child.

Read-only wiki
Check this if you want to prevent the wiki from acidental modifications.

Auto-show log window
Automatically show log window if new error messages arrive (see WikiDocumentAttributes).
If the check-box is gray, the application-bound setting (see above) is used, otherwise this wiki-bound setting overrides it.

Page file names ASCII only
If set, all filenames of newly created pages only contain ASCII-characters (no umlauts, accented characters etc.). Already created files are not renamed even if the file content is modified afterwards.
This option is especially recommended on Mac OS or for wikis which will be interchanged with Mac users.
This option does not apply to Compact Sqlite DB backend because it does not have separate page files.

Graceful handling of missing page files
If a page file is deleted or inserted into the "data" directory externally tries to update the core database if it encounters this change.

If not set, missing files which are listed in the core database issue an error and newly added files are ignored.

This option does not apply to Compact Sqlite DB backend because it does not have separate page files.

Wiki icon
Set here the name of icon to use in the system tray instead of the default icon. If the field is empty the default icon is used. The icon of the main window is not influenced by this setting (because it does not work).

Wiki-bound hotkey
Wiki-bound hotkey to show/hide wiki. See OptionsDialog

Headings

Heading prefix
Control the heading level of the initial main title of new pages and fill between one and fifteen '+' in this field (if using default wiki language). Default is "++".

Wikiword to heading
How should the main heading of new pages be generated from the wikiword:

As is: Use wikiword as heading
Add spaces: Add spaces to wikiword in front of each uppercase letter ("NewWikiWord" -> "New Wiki Word")
No title: Don't show a heading at all

Use link title if present
If you came to a not yet created page through a titled link (e.g. This is the title) and this option is checked, the link title will be used as title of the page.

Headings as aliases: Up to heading depth
All headings with a level less or equal this number are shown in the "Open Wiki Word" dialog. You can select them to come to the wiki page they are on. If value is 0, no headings are processed. After changing this value, you may have to rebuild the wiki to see an effect.

Versioning

Where to store
Set where version information should be stored, either in the main "Database" files or as "Separate files" which creates one file for each version to save and additionally one file for each wiki page which has versions, so "Database" is the recommended option.

The database backend "Compact Sqlite" only supports storing in database so this option is grayed out for such wikis.

Steps to complete version
To reduce used disk space, most versions are stored as "reverse difference". This means only the changes from the next newer version to this version are stored. This has two drawbacks: Calculating changes needs some time for large pages and, much more important, the version is only correct if the rev. diff. data of this version is correct and the next version is correct. If the next version is also stored as rev. diff. this goes on iteratively until the next completely saved version (the newest version is always complete).

This means if one of these versions is damaged and therefore incorrect, this version and all older ones up to the next complete one (if any) are incorrect as well.

So you can set that versions are stored as complete from time to time. If you e.g. set this value to 10 (the default) each tenth version is stored completely. If you set it to 1, each version is complete, 0 creates only reverse difference versions.

Regardless of this setting a version is always saved as complete if the reverse difference data would be larger than the complete data.

Wiki language

Wiki language
Choose the language (syntax) of the wiki. Each language is provided by a plugin.

WikidPad default 2.0

Footnotes as wiki words
Interpret Footnotes (e.g. "[42]") as wiki words.

Advanced

Modif. date must match
Filename must match
Modif. date is enough
See FileStorage.