The first of these categories is the general editor options found under the Options, Editor Options menu. These options, as the name suggests, control the overall behaviour of the editor and include settings like global settings, keyboard mappings, scripting etc.
The second category is the document type configuration found under the Options, Document Types menu.
To better understand the document type, consider the real world of programming where you may have c/c++, Pascal, text and log files. All are nothing more than text files but each has it's own special set of characteristics and requirements.
The document type configuration is designed to model this world by providing a logical grouping of settings based on file extension. In other words Zeus provides a configuration model where by text files can be configured based on their type.
To create a document type just do the following:
- Options Document Types menu
- New button
- Supply one or more file extensions that make up the document type for example log or log;dat
- Add a description for the document type for example My Log Files
- Apply the changes and close the dialog
So how does the document type work?
When a file is opened, Zeus will use the file extension to locate the corresponding document type for that file. If a document type is found the information it contains is used to manage the editing of the file. Zeus also has a concept of a default document type which can be thought of as default behaviour. If the file loaded does not belong to any document type Zeus uses the default document type to manage the file.
The document type adds a great deal of power to the configuration as it lets you configure Zeus to behave as a totally different editor based on nothing more than the extension of the file being edited.
But this extra power does come at a price, as it makes it possible to get lost in the configuration
When this happens, the best thing to do is load the file that is causing the problems and use the Options Properties menu. This menu will load the document type for the current file, and the caption of the resulting dialog will let you know to which document type Zeus is using to manage the file.Related topic: Example of Creating a Document Type