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[ JDK VERSION : 1.5.* ] Numerous places in the help system, wiki, and others refer to the Menu pick Tools -> Options and the Alt key. The Mac does not have these, and the help should refer to the Mac equivalents. Joshua Smith has identified a number of places (see NetCAT alias, [docs]).
Changed subcomponent to documentation so votes don't get thrown away. Travis
There are a number of places in the NetBeans documentation where it directs the user to go to the Tools menu and to select Options. There is no such menu item on Mac OS X. Instead the user should go to the NetBeans application menu (which is simply labeled NetBeans) and select Preferences... Specific Examples That Refer to Tools -> Options ------------------------------------------------------- 1) http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/Java_EditorUsersGuide Other colorings: For complete list of semantic colorings please go to Tools->Options->Fonts & Colors and pick Java from the "language" combo box. Please let us know if you are missing yours favourite semantic coloring. Writting a new template You can define new templates using the templates "language" by going to Menu->Tools->Options, choose the Editor category and the Code Templates tab. You may want to look at how the existing Java templates look like and try to create your own. Or look below where the template language is shortly described. 2) http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/TS_60_FormSimpleJTableDataBinding Java DB install dir and database location can be configured in Tools | Options -> Advanced Options -> IDE Configuration -> Server and External Tool Settings -> Java DB Database 3) http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/60/cpp-setup-instructions.html If your network uses a proxy, choose Tools > Options from the main menu, select Manual Proxy Settings, enter the HTTP Proxy and Port for your proxy, and click OK.
How do you suggest to fix this? It would be unmaintainable to have all the pages duplicated with the references, the only difference being this platform specific detail. For Wikis, I can imagine replacing all the "Tools->Options" references with a WikiWord that would take you to a small article explaining to the Options. For help, it can be made the same way. Is it really worth it?
Is it worth it? That is a good question. For people who are experienced NB users on some environment other than English Windows. It is only an annoyance that virtually every explanation, tip, template, or tutorial assumes this environment with rare exceptions. For new users that are not in that environment, it could stop then from understanding the explanation or following the tutorial. Your idea of a "wiki-word" sounds excellent. One each would be needed for: - "Tools -> Options" to "NetBeans - > Preferences" (for Mac) - Directory separators (for Windows vs. everything else) - User directory ( ~/.netbeans/... vs c:\Documents and Settings\...) - Current lack of official support for UML and mobility on Mac. - Language (English vs locations of equivalents in other languages) My mundane idea was to put a boilerplate at the top or bottom of each page with a link to this kind of explanation. Perhaps Joshua or others have additional ideas, or points that I missed. Travis
Yes, I think it's worth it. For years, books and magazines dealing with Photoshop have had phrases that said, "Type Ctrl-I (Mac - Cmd-I) to do such and such...". It just means that authors have to be aware that they are writing for a cross-platform audience. If any author should be aware of that, it's a Java author. One option would be to simply say, "Throughout this article, if you are told to configure your IDE use Tools -> Options on Windows, Solaris and Linux and use NetBeans -> Preferences on Mac OS X" This is similar to what you find in articles now that say, "Type java -cp C:\some\place.jar pkg.Class on Windows or java -cp /some/place.jar pkg.Class on Mac OS X, Linux or Solaris." Some put it every place that you're told to do anything with paths. Others just put it once and tell the reader to modify all paths in a similar way. Either way is fine as long as the author addresses the issue. Another option would be to put Options in the Tools menu on the Mac so that both Windows and Mac users would haver Tools -> Options and Mac users would also have NetBeans -> Preferences as a way to get to the same place. This just solves the Tools -> Options references though. It doesn't address articles written to a cross platform audience in general. There are lots of ways that this could be handled, but documenting to Windows and excluding Mac, Linux and Solaris is confusing and annoying for everyone that doesn't run Windows. The number of people in that category is growing.
Changed version to 6.5 [I can't check on 7] from 6.0 I think it was. Changed subcomponent from documentation to UI since this should be noted in the menus somewhere. This could be related to the issue that X11 uses the menus of options and exit, as described here; http://blogs.sun.com/wangwj/entry/netbeans_with_soylatte However, I am not using soylatte/java6 and I did nothing unusual. It is *extremely* confusing to find the option for type ahead macro text substitution. Prefs/Editor/CodeTemplates comes up with "html" and null in all the values. Thus it looks like this submenu of Editor is not helpful if you don't notice that "html" has other choices. On briefly hunting all the menus, it looks nothing like the documentation window layout format that others have showed for this feature, such as here http://www.java-tips.org/other-api-tips/netbeans/code-templates-in-netbeans.html Sigh. I hope this gets fixed. As an easy fix, I suggest adding a cross-reference to "prefs" from the "tools" menu.