Saving Customizations

Epsilon can save any new bindings you have made and any macros you have defined for future editing sessions. Epsilon uses two kinds of files for this purpose, the state file and the command file. They both save bindings and macros, but they differ in many respects:

A state file contains commands, macros, variables, and bindings. A command file can contain only macros and bindings.
When Epsilon writes a state file, all currently defined commands, macros and variables go into it. A command file contains just what you put there.
Epsilon can only read a state file during startup. It makes the new invocation of Epsilon have the same commands as the Epsilon that performed the write-state command that created that state file. By contrast, Epsilon can load a command file at any time.
A command file appears in a human-readable format, so you can edit it as a normal file. By contrast, Epsilon stores a state file in a non-human readable format. To modify a state file, you read it into a fresh Epsilon, use appropriate Epsilon commands (like bind-to-key to change bindings), then save the state with the write-state command.
Epsilon can read a state file much faster than a command file.

You would use command files mostly for editing macros. They also provide compatibility with previous versions of Epsilon, which did not offer state files. The next section describes command files.

The write-state command on Ctrl-F3 asks for the name of a file, and writes the current state to that file. The file name has its extension changed to ".sta" first, to indicate a state file. If you don't provide a name, Epsilon uses the name "epsilon.sta", the same name that it looks for at startup. You can specify another state file for Epsilon to use at startup with the -s flag.

For example, say Tom and Sue share a computer. Tom likes Epsilon just the way it comes, but Sue has written some new commands and attached them to the function keys, and she now wants to use those commands each time she uses Epsilon. She invokes write-state and gives the file name "sue". Epsilon writes all its commands and bindings on a file named "sue.sta". She can now invoke Epsilon with her commands by typing "epsilon -ssue". Or, she can use a configuration variable to specify this switch automatically every time she runs Epsilon. See Epsilon Command Line.

By default, when you write a new state file, Epsilon makes a copy of the old one in a file named ebackup.sta. You can turn backups off by setting the variable want-state-file-backups to 0, or change the backup file name by modifying the state-file-backup-name template. See Backup Files for information on templates.

Standard bindings:

Ctrl-F3 write-state

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