Customizing preferences

Preferences of LispPad are defined on four different tabs for configuring the Lisp environment, the console with the read-eval-print loop, the built-in text editor, as well as syntax highlighting used in editor and session windows.

Environment

Every time a new session is created, a prelude is being loaded into the interpreter and executed. The prelude is a Scheme program (a .scm file) which is used to set up a session. The “Prelude” setting on the environment tab can be set to two different values:

It is possible to load the default/internal LispPad prelude file into an editor window by opening the “File” menu and pressing the “control” key. This will show the menu item “Open LispPad…”. Selecting it will bring up an “Open File” dialog for the folder that contains all LispPad-internal files. “Prelude.scm” is the default prelude file.

Similarly, it is possible to browse LispKit-internal files by opening the “File” menu and pressing the “option” key.

Libraries referenced from Scheme code are looked up from a set of folders. The “Libraries” setting controls how libraries are found. It can be set to two different values:

Preferences Environment Pane

Since the LispPad application is sandboxed, it is difficult to read and write files from outside of the sandbox. In order to work around this limitation, LispPad allows users to define a custom Home folder. This is controlled via the “Home” setting:

Console

LispPad allows users to configure the following aspects of sessions:

Preferences Console Pane

Editor

LispPad allows users to configure the following aspects of editor windows:

Preferences Editor Pane

Syntax

LispPad allows users to configure syntax highlighting for both Scheme as well as Markdown formats. Syntax highlighting can be controlled in three different ways:

  1. Syntax highlighting can be switched on/off on a per-format basis
  2. Automatic indentation can be switched on/off on a per-format basis
  3. Colors that are used by the syntax highlighter can be freely configured.

There are two checkboxes with the following semantics:

Preferences Syntax Pane