TextArea Sputnik/en

This is Mozilla Firefox plug-in that helps to edit «TextArea» in any external text editor and partially solves the problem for lack of «Undo» and «Find/Replace» functions.

This plug-in has to be configured («Tools»/ «Extensions»/ «TextArea Sputnik»/ «Options») by setting the following parameters:

• path to external text editor (this editor has to be able to get filename from command line);
• coding of input file (in case your editor doesn’t support UTF-8, you can choose one of more than ten most prevalent codings):
  • UTF-8
  • windows−850
  • windows−1251
  • windows−1252
  • iso-8859-1
  • iso-8859-2
  • iso-8859-5
  • koi8-r
  • euc-jp
  • iso-2022-jp
  • shift_jis
• file extension, that can be used to assign syntax colors or any other specific settings of text editor;
• in case your editor can only interpret double-bytes DOS-separators corresponding option has to be set.

It is recommended to use light text editor (in order to open file immediately).

For example, Notepad++, that can be downloaded at:

• http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

It is possible to configure some syntax colors and folding rules for «wiki» extension.

If you press right mouse button at the text edition area then context menu will appear. Clicking on «Edit» menu will copy text to file, that unique for any (URL, textarea) pair, and then will call specified text editor. After edition you have to save the file in editor and return to the initial text area.

• if you press left mouse button, the file’s content will be exported to text area, and the file will be deleted. However, if your editor doesn’t close and isn’t configured to close deleted files automatically, then you will be able to continue editing, and from time to time export file’s contents to text area.
• if your press both mouse buttons or middle one, then after export the file will not be deleted. It can be used similarly for sequence of exports (after every export you can make «Preview», and continue to edit the text). The only problem may occur if you finish file’s edition, close editor, but export file in the textbox without deleting it, then probably if you click next time at the textbox you may export older version of the file.

Download

• Download and Install the «TextArea Sputnik»

Compatibility

It has been tested with versions 1.04, 1.07, 1.5.0.1, 2.0 – problems haven’t been detected.

Links

The idea of such plug-in isn’t new, a long time ago there were

• Mozex
• ExternalEditor

Unfortunately, there were problems with Russian (coding settings and separators), and ExternalEditor blocked Firefox by the modal dialog, so that it was unable to edit multiple TextArea, and leads to hangs while attempting to copy in editor from Clipboard (some text copied from browser).

Perhaps this plug-ins haven’t such problems now.

Contacts

Please contact mailto:stas-fomin@yandex.ru, if you have any problems or suggestions.

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