Arachie says "Hi"   Arachnophilia Frequently Asked Questions




Click one of these links to move to the question and answer:

This list will expand with time. If you have a suggestion for a common question, please submit it here.

General FAQ | Visit my Online HTML tutorial | Where did my files go? | Creative Problem-Solving


  • I tried to upload my multi-directory site by way of the FTP service, but something very strange happened.

  • Make sure you have placed a forward slash -- "/" -- at the beginning of your remote directory path. This is a very common cause of problems. Unfortunately, some configurations require that the slash not be present, so it cannot be arbitrarily added by the program. You must put it in.
  • I made a bad program selection that, after it was made, I cannot undo from within Arachnophilia. How do I recover?

  • (usually asked with regard to program font family or size)

    1. Exit Arachnophilia.
    2. Use Notepad or another editor to edit (user home directory)/.Arachnophilia/ArachConf/Arach.ini.
    3. Change the mistaken entry manually.

    Example -- program font size too large. Change this entry:

    programFontSize=(number)

    Make this number something like 10 - 12.
    Or to correct a bad choice of program font name, change to:

    programFontName=Monospaced

    4. Save the file, restart Arachnophilia.

    If this approach doesn’t work, delete the directory (user home directory)./Arachnophilia after saving any parts of it you want to preserve. Or rename this directory, to avoid losing something you may want later.
  • My favorite tag is not included in Arachnophilia.

  • You can add any number of toolbar buttons and menu items. You can create entire new toolbars and menus. You can switch between huge subsets of commands for different purposes.

    It is not possible to include even a small fraction of all the tags and variations on tags that now exist. And tnere is no point to that -- to try to include them all would make a program too large to use.

    Just add the tags you want -- your additions become part of your copy of Arachnophilia. Start by reading the documentation.
  • I've never tried to run a Java program before. How do I do it?

  • If you have not downloaded the Windows package and/or you want to find out how to launch Arachnophilia directly:

    1. Make sure you have installed the required Java runtime engine.
    2. Windows: Open a DOS window.
    3. Other platforms: open a command shell.
    4. Move to the Arachnophilia program directory.
    5. Type "java -jar Arachnophilia.jar".

    This can, of course, be made part of a batch/shell file.
  • Using Arachnophilia's File Picker, I don't see the files I expect to see in a directory

  • This is because the file list is filtered according to the accepted file suffixes for the chosen file type. If you want to see all files, choose "All" using the file type selector at the bottom of the display.

    And remember -- you can always add file suffixes to any file type you want, in the configuration file (user home directory)/.Arachnophilia/ArachConf/FileData.txt.
  • How do I wrap lines?

  • Arachnophilia has two displays:

    1. A syntax-highlighted programming editor without line wrapping, and
    2. A normal line-wrapped text display.

    To switch between them, simply right-click and choose the one you want.
  • Arachnophilia takes a long time to start. Why?

  • This is caused by the Java runtime engine, which must load before Arachnophilia can run. This doesn't mean the Java version of Arachnophilia is slower than its predecessor -- in fact, in many tasks it is faster. It just takes longer to launch.
  • I can't get Arachnophilia to run. It installed uneventfully, but it won't run.

  • This may be caused by a bad installation of Arachnophilia's user directory. Take these steps:

    1. Delete the directory (user home directory)/.Arachnophilia
    2. Download the current Arachnophilia build from the Arachnophillia Home Page www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia.
    3. Reinstall.
    4. If this fails, look for an error log file at (user home directory)/.Arachnophilia/ArachErrorLog.txt. If it exists, this file may offer some clues. If you submit a bug report, be sure to include the contents of this file.

    CareWare Description | Main Page