Under Edit → Preferences, the preferences for the user interface concerning indentation, fonts, and syntax highlighting can be edited.

Figure 26.16. MATE Preferences

Indentation

Sets Tab Size (for TAB) and Indentation (for automatic indents).

Font

Sets Font (fixed-width fonts only) and Font Size.

Syntax highlighting

Sets Formats, their color and the font type Bold (optional). Reset To Defaults will reset all formats to their default settings.

Extras

Select Show line numbers to show line numbers in the editor.

Select Show graphical scrollbar to show a scroll area with an approximated text display in the edit area instead of the usual vertical scrollbar.

Select Show spaces as dots to display spaces in the edit files with dots.

Select Tab key always autoindents to translate TAB into the indent set above.

Select Autoindent on paste to automatically indent a selection on pasting it.

Select Use spellchecker to enable spell checking in .mhelp, CSS, HTML, and XML files.

Select Show messages from all MeVisLab instances to show the messages written to the debug output console of all running MeVisLab instances to the debug output console of MATE. If not selected, only messages from non-application, non-background instances will be shown.

Select Disable automatic module creation to disable the creation of a module when starting to edit module files (.def, .script, .py).

Select Load last session on startup to load the last active session and its files on starting MATE. The session files are being loaded lazily.

Select Enable line wrap to enable wrapping of lines too long to display. This option can be set individually for other document types.

Select Keep closed documents in sessions to keep documents on closing in the currently active session. Otherwise, a document will be removed from the session on closing the document.

Under the links MDL, Python, JavaScript, and Module Help, the tab, indent sizes, and line wrap behavior for each language can be set. This will override the general settings.

Select Use internal HTML preview in the Module Help preferences to tell MATE to open generated module help documents in an interal HTML view instead of the system web browser.