Text Editor Settings

Most text editors offer options or preferences for how text is displayed. We suggest enabling the following options:

• Line numbers can help you find specific lines in a theme file. This is often helpful when instructions for a plugin refer to a specific line code that requires editing.
  
  
• Invisible or non-printing characters make it possible to clearly see spaces, tabs, and other characters that may or may not need to be present.
  
  
• Syntax coloring displays code and other content in a variety of colors, making it easier to distinguish various file content. Syntax coloring can also help you identify "broken" PHP or HTML coding.
  
  
• Wrap text to window prevents you from having to scroll horizontally to edit text on a long line.
  
  

In this Appendix, we explain how to enable these features in both HTML-Kit and TextWrangler. If you use a different text editor, use the Options or Preferences command or consult the software's documentation to learn how to enable these features.

Tip

• With syntax coloring enabled, when editing a file, watch for any text which seems to be in the "wrong" color. This usually indicates that you have an unclosed or invalid HTML tag or PHP command.