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2. Wing IDE for OS X

Wing IDE uses X windows on OS X, but support for X is not by default part of all versions of OS X. Thus you also need to obtain and install an X server and X Window manager. There are a number of options for this:

Apple's X11 Server for OS X is among the fastest and best integrated options. It includes both the X Server and a native Aqua window manager, although you can replace the default window manager with your favorite if you wish. Apple X11 Server comes with OS X 10.3 and later, but is not installed by default and must be installed separately, usually from Install Disk #2 (but location varies by exact version of the OS). Sometimes the installer is hidden by default so you'll need to scroll down in the Finder window for the installation disk to find it. For OS X 10.3, X11 is also available as downloadable package from Apple's website, but this version will not work with OS X 10.4. If all else fails, search on your install disks for X11User.pkg, which is the package to install.
For OS X 10.5, if you run into problems with the X11 Server shipped by Apple, try using the latest version of XQuartz. This may contain fixes not found in the version on your installation disks.
XDarwin (1.1 or later) can be used together with the window manager of your choice. Window Maker is one that users have reported as working well. OroborOSX (0.75a4r2 or later) also works but can be quite slow in comparison with other options (as of 0.8 preview 2). Note that for some versions of OroborOSX, you need to unpack both the top-level OroborOSX tar file and the XDarwin.tar file located inside the installation.

Once this is set up, you're ready to install Wing IDE. Just download Wing IDE, double click on the disk image, and move its contents place on your disk (or, you can just run Wing directly from the disk image).

Next make sure your X Windows server chosen above is running and set up to allow connections from X clients on :0.0. Wing will automatically start Apple X11 Server if it is present and not yet running.

Then double click on the Wing IDE app. The first time you start Wing, it will ask you to accept the license agreement and will ask for a license. Use the first (default) option in the dialog that appears to obtain a 10 day trial license (this can be renewed twice when the trial period expires).

At this time, Wing will create a User Settings Directory in ~/.wingide3, which is used to store preferences and other settings.

The location of Wing's internal application contents folder is referred to as WINGHOME. For example if you unpacked Wing into /Applications/Wing then WINGHOME will be /Applications/Wing/WingIDE.app/Contents/MacOS.

To start Wing from the command line, execute wing located in WINGHOME (/Applications/Wing/WingIDE.app/Contents/MacOS/wing in the above example). When you do this, you may need to set your DISPLAY environment variable to point to your X Server (for example setenv DISPLAY :0.0).

See the Tutorial and Wing IDE Quickstart Guide for additional information on getting starting with Wing IDE.

Usage Tips

Wing starts with a keyboard mapping that emulates the most commonly used key standards on the Macintosh. This mapping will not work properly unless you uncheck the "Enable Keyboard Shortcuts under X11" preference in Apple X11 Server configuration (this was called "Enable Key Equivalents under X11" in older versions). Wing will warn when this option is checked, but may fail to do so under other X11 server software. Wing also tries to detect if an Apple keyboard is in use, but you may need to set the Apple Keyboard preference to yes or no if the detection fails.

You can alter keyboard mapping (for example, to use Emacs bindings instead) with the Personality preference, or change individual key mappings with the Custom Key Bindings preference. If you do use a keyboard personality other than the OS X personality, you may want to map the option or command key to the Alt modifier using the Global X11 Alt Key preference. The option key should be used only if you don't need the option key to enter individual characters. Note that this preference affects all X11 applications, not just Wing. It may also affect whether the Custom Key Bindings preference will accept Command as a key modifier.

Under OS X 10.4 (Tiger), the option/compose key used to enter accented and other foreign characters will not work because of changes in the Apple X11 applications. To fix this, enable the Fix Option key bug in Tiger (OS X 10.4) preference. This will affect all X11 applications, not just Wing.

If you are running other X11 applications and want to work around this bug yourself, you'll want to either enable the XKEYBOARD extension on the X11 server or use xmodmap to assign the Mode_Switch key to a modifier other than mod1. The xmodmap script that Wing runs when the Fix Option key bug in Tiger (OS X 10.4) preference is enabled is ${WINGHOME}/resources/osx/fix-tiger-mode-switch.xmodmaprc. The script removes Mode_Switch from mod1 and adds it to mod5 and is run only if the preference is enabled and xmodmap reports that Mode_Switch is assigned to mod1.

If the X11 Application "Use the system keyboard layout" preference is enabled, then the X11 server may modify its keyboard mapping when the system keyboard changes. You may need to disable this preference or restart Wing after the keyboard layout changes because Wing will not re-apply the fix after the X11 keyboard changes. This should only be an issue if you change keyboard layouts while Wing is running.

Depending on the version of Apple X11 Server and possibly other factors, any of the keyboard preference changes made in X11 Server configuration or those Wing preferences indicated above as affecting all X11 applications may require restarting both Wing and Apple X11 Server before the work properly.

Changing Display Themes

Although Wing is not a native OS X application, it starts up with a display theme that tries to match the OS X look and feel (font size often needs to be altered from the Display Font/Size preference). Additional display themes can be selected from the Display Theme preference.

It is also possible to download other themes for GTK2 and place them into Contents/MacOS/bin/gtk-bin/share/themes inside your Wing IDE installation. Once this is done and Wing is restarted, they will show up in the Display Theme preference.

One nice OS X like theme is AquaX, currently not included with Wing because we cannot redistribute it under its licensing.

Note that only themes that do not use a theme engine or use one of those in /bin/gtk-bin/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/engines in your Wing installation will work with Wing IDE. We cannot make any guarantees for performance or results when using themes not included with Wing IDE, although Aqua X is known to work well.

Finding WINGHOME

When using the Zope Support Module or following instructions that refer to WINGHOME note that WINGHOME is defined as the location of the wing executable, which on Mac OS X is inside the Contents/MacOS folder of the Wing IDE app folder. E.g., if you unpacked Wing into /Applications/Wing then WINGHOME will be /Applications/Wing/WingIDE.app/Contents/MacOS.

Mouse Buttons

Right-click for menus by holding down the Option/Alt key while clicking. Middle-click by holding down the Control key while clicking. These defaults can be changed in your X11 server's preferences. For example, under Apple X11 Server, change so Option/Alt is button two and Control is button three with this command:

defaults write com.apple.x11 fake_button2 option
defaults write com.apple.x11 fake_button3 control

Or change so that Option/Alt is button two and Apple/Command is button three:

defaults write com.apple.x11 fake_button2 option
defaults write com.apple.x11 fake_button3 command

Then restart the X11 Server.

Window Focus

You can configure Apple X11 Server to automatically transfer focus to the window the mouse pointer is over, or to pass through the click that is used to bring focus to the window so it is also processed by the application.

To move focus with the mouse pointer:

defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm true

To pass through the focus click:

defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_click_through -bool true

You must restart Apple X11 changing either of these configurations before they take effect.

Other configuration options like this can be obtained by looking in the manual pages for quartz-wm and Xquartz:

man quartz-wm
man Xquartz

Known Problems

At least some versions of the MacPorts packaging of Python are known not to work with Wing's debugger because it contains an _md5 module that won't load. To work around this, use a different distribution of Python instead.

The copy of Python shipped with OS X does not include source files for the standard libraries, so Wing's editor will not offer autocompletion values for those modules. To work around this, use a copy of Python installed from the standard source distribution.

There is no way to control-click on a Mac, so control-left-click for the goto-definition feature doesn't work. Instead, use Goto Selected Symbol from the Source menu instead; this works relative to position of the insertion cursor in the current editor and can be accessed by the key binding shown in the Source menu.

Please send bug reports to bugs at wingware.com.

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