FrontEnd

Load the package

 <<BTools`FrontEnd`

‌

StyleSheets

StyleSheetEdit allows one to very easily edit stylesheets, even without opening the stylesheet. For example, we can make a notebook and edit its stylesheet programmatically:

 snb = CreateDocument[{Cell["Title", "Title"], Cell["A block of text...", "Text"]}]; 
 StyleSheetEdit[snb, 
  "Text",
  {
    FontColor->Red,
    FontFamily->"Helvetica"
    },
  "MakeCell"->True
  ]

Then we can find the style cell where this is implemented:

 StyleSheetCells[snb, "Text"]

(*Out:*)

On top of this we have:

• StyleSheetNew - makes new style cells

• StyleSheetEditAliases - edits the InputAliases for a given notebook

• StyleSheetEditAutoReplacements - edits the InputAutoReplacements for a given notebook

• StyleSheetEditEvents - edits the CellEventActions or NotebookEventActions for a given cell/notebook

• StyleSheetEditTaggingRules - edits the TaggingRules for a given notebook

‌

Block Indentation

MakeIndentable makes a Cell or Notebook block-indentable

 inb = CreateDocument[{NotebookRead@EvaluationCell[]}]; 
 MakeIndentable[inb]

The indentation methods themselves can be called with IndentationEvent or BatchIndentationEvent . The latter applies an indentation event to the entire notebook, which can be useful with the "Replace" event for turning "∖[IndentingNewLine]" indented into "\n" indented cells

‌

Formatting elements

FormattingTools implements a number of useful formatting elements. Chief among these are the Gradient* family of elements, starting with GradientButton . For example, we can make a button bar:

 GradientButtonBar[{1:>2, 3:>4, 5:>6}, FrameMargins->5]

(*Out:*)

And we can use whatever colors we like:

 GradientButtonBar[
  {1:>2, 3:>4, 5:>6}, 
  FrameMargins->5,
  Appearance->
    {{Hue[0, .5, 1], Hue[0, 0, 1], Hue[.6, .5, 1]}}
  ]

(*Out:*)

Or one of a small collection of named styles:

 Row@
  Table[
    GradientButtonBar[{1:>2, 3:>4, 5:>6}, 
      FrameMargins->5,
      Appearance->app
      ],
    {app, {Automatic, Flat, "Retro", "Palette", "Shiny", "Negative", "Test1", "Test2"}}
    ]

(*Out:*)

There are also generalize nine-patch appearances. NinePatchCreate turns anything into a nine-patch to be used as an Appearance . It's used, for example, in NinePatchNameTag to make a nice name-tag appearances.

 Panel[
  StringTake[ExampleData[{"Text", "LoremIpsum"}], 1000],
  Appearance->
  NinePatchNameTag[
    {Background->Hue[.6,.5,.5], RoundingRadius->5},
    {Background->White},
    {Background->Hue[.6,.5,.5], RoundingRadius->5}
    ]
  ]

(*Out:*)

But we can use it on other things:

 Panel[
  StringTake[ExampleData[{"Text", "LoremIpsum"}], 1000],
  Appearance->
  NinePatchCreate@
  PillImage["", 
    FrameMargins->5, 
    Background->Lighter[Pink,.5],
    FrameStyle->Pink
    ]
  ]

(*Out:*)

‌

NotebookTools

NotebookTools provides some useful functions for working with boxes and notebooks.

StoreExpression generates a compressed form of a variable (only OwnValues are currently supported) and writes a cell to restore that variable:

 var={1,2,3}; 
 StoreExpression@var

(*Out:*)

The Newlineate family of functions adds newlines to boxes:

 NewlineateCode@{1, 2, 3}

(*Out:*)

{
  1,
  2,
  3
  }

The primary difference between them is whether to use recursion and what type of newline to insert.

‌

Front-End Resources

The SyntaxHiglighting stylesheet is most useful as a parent style. It defines a number of cell styles that can be used for more simply customizable syntax highlighting. An example of that is here .