Writing OScript now consists primarily of editing text-based source files. CSIDE provides some tools to help OScript developers.

Editor Preferences

The OScript Preferences (available inside the Eclipse preferences) offer a variety of options to control the behavior of the editor. Preference options are divided into three sub-sections:

• Auto Edit Strategies: If enabled, these options allow the editor to update code automatically as you type. Options available include such things as automatically closing brackets, strings, and comments, as well as automatically indenting code as you type.
• Formatter: If the "Use New Formatter" option is checked, then CSIDE provides a number of customization options for you when you choose to make use of the "Format" menu option (which can be found in the "OScript" menu). Options available pertain to whitespace (in areas such as insertion, indentation, line endings) and code style (examples of these options include variable ordering, capitalization, and comment formatting). If there are sections of code that you always want the formatter to ignore: the option exists to 'wrap' these sections with comments including configurable tags to facilitate this.
• Syntax Coloring: Options exist for you to select text colors and styles for the various text elements in the CSIDE editors.

Overriding Features

If you don't already know the signature of a feature, function or script you're overriding, select Source > Override Features from the top-level menu to get a list of available features for the object in the current editor window.

Select the features you wish to override and hit Okay. A template containing the default value for the feature, copied from the parent, will be inserted into your object.

Xlates

Xlates allow you to move user interface string into a separate properties file so that they can be translated into other languages.

To replace a string with an Xlate, right-click on string and select "Xlate" from the context menu. You will be presented with the Find Xlate dialog.

From there, you can either choose an existing Xlate from the list or, if the desired Xlate does not exist, hit the "New" button.

From here, select the appropriate properties file, select or add the group, and optionally change the key and Xlate text. Hit Replace and your string will be replaced with the Xlate token.

Note that as of 16.2.11 CSIDE allows you to choose where the CSIDE looks for Xlate property files (either the Content Server installation, your local workspace (the default option), or both). The default as of 16.2.11 is the local workspace. The preference to change this setting can be found on the 'OScript' tab:

16.2.11 also provides the option to highlight string literals in an effort to expedite Xlate conversion:

By default this behavior is disabled. To enable this enhancement you need to check the following box on the 'OScript' → 'Editor':

Since some strings are not intended to be externalized: CSIDE provides two tags to disable the feature:

• To disable the feature for a specific string: append a comment containing $NON-NLS-#$ to the line of code that contains the string (where '#' is the number of the string on that line (for example: to disable the highlight on the first string you'd add a comment that includes $NON-NLS-1$))
• To disable the feature for an entire OS file: add a comment that contains $DISABLE-NON-NLS$

Xlating multiple Strings

If you would like to replace multiple string literals in an OScript source simultaneously: select the "Externalize Strings ..." option from the "OScript" menu. This brings up a table of string literals in the active source file (minus any strings marked to not be xlated, as per the above):

From this window if you click the 'Ignore' button: any strings that have been selected will be marked in the document to not be xlateable. Clicking the 'Xlate' button results in a second table being displayed which allows you to replace any selected string(s) with an xlate.

Code Refactoring

• Remove unused variables:This removes each local variable in functions that is never read from.
• Sort Features: This places each of the object's features in order by name.
• Fix Variable Declaration Order:This places variable declaration statements at the top of the function, placing statements that do not initialize the variable above those that do, as well as adding whitespace as appropriate.
• Remove Unnecessary Line Continuation Characters:Since the OScript compiler no longer needs line continuation characters in some circumstances: selecting this option allows the editor to remove them where appropriate.