Troubleshooting

Default CLI editor

Espanso includes a configuration setting in the config file default.yml to set an editor as the default CLI editor. The purpose of this setting is to enable the user to type espanso edit in the terminal to start the assigned editor. However, this setting does not have any effect in Windows. In order to set EspansoEdit as the default CLI editor in Windows it is necessary to manually add a user environment variable called EDITOR and set it to the full path of EspansoEdit.exe. This is described in more detail in the Espanso docs.

Tabs into spaces

Match files which contain tab stops may not be parsed by Espanso. In this case an Espanso error message is generated. The Edit menu includes an option to convert all tabs in the current file into spaces.

Multi trigger with plain scalars

There is currently a known issue that affects match listing and browsing when a file contains multi triggers with plain (unquoted) scalars. For example:

- triggers: [:trigger1, :trigger2]

To resolve this issue, edit the multi trigger so that the scalars are enclosed with either single or double quotes. For example:

- triggers: [':trigger1', ':trigger2']

This issue is an example of a YAML parser error.

App fonts too small

If you are using a high DPI screen the fonts in EspansoEdit dialogs and menus may appear too small. The following steps may resolve the issue:

1. Right-click EspansoEdit.exe (or the EspansoEdit shortcut) and select Properties.
2. In the Compatibility tab click the button to Change high DPI settings
3. Check the box to Override high DPI scaling behavior and then set Scaling performed by: to System (Enhanced).

Portable packages

The Tools menus includes an item to set the active folder to the folder used by Espanso portable. The Packages menu is then set to the portable folder .espanso\match\packages. However, a duplicate packages folder exists if Espanso was previously installed and has not been removed. In this scenario, packages may be installed to the default location %appdata\espanso\match\packages even when portable Espanso is running.

YAML parser errors

Several of the functions in EspansoEdit rely on use of a YAML parser to analyze match files. The parser is built on top of the LibYAML library, which is the most widely used library for parsing YAML. An error dialog is included in EspansoEdit which shows the filename, line number and column number when the parser encounters invalid YAML. A button on the dialog enables you to copy the full path of the file(s) for review later in the editor.

Espanso is written in Rust and uses a YAML parser that is also based on LibYAML. The only known difference in parsing between Espanso and EspansoEdit is the issue described above.