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Text windows and basic editing facilitiesText windows and basic editing facilities
The text window is a concept of central importance in Edith. This
section explains the regular operations of moving around in a text
window, making selections, and typing text.
Movement and selection with the mouse
It is important to note that unlike in conventional window-based text
editors, the cursor and the selection are independent.
- Click the left mouse button anywhere in the text window to
move the cursor (and clear the selection unless Additive selection (Mark menu, Caps Lock)
is on).
- Move the mouse over the text while holding down the left mouse
button to select a continuous text fragment. This will
generally not move the cursor.
- Double click the left mouse button to select a word.
- Move the mouse over the text while holding down the
Control key to select a rectangular area of text.
- Switch to Additive selection (Mark menu, Caps Lock) to add new fragments to the
selection.
- Hold Shift to adjust the end points of a selected
fragment.
- Click and hold the left mouse button inside a selected fragment
to drag and drop the selected text, either to another text
window or the buffer displays in the master panel.
- currently, no drag-and-drop protocols for communication with other
applications have been implemented.
- Click the middle mouse button to paste the X Selection into
the text.
- The right mouse button pops up a menu, whose contents vary
depending on whether the menu bar is switched on or off.
Scroll bar
The size of the slider is an indication of how much of the document is
displayed in the window; the text moves up and down immediately as the
slider is moved.
- Use the arrow buttons to scroll line-by-line.
- Use the slider to slide through the document.
- Click on the slider background with the left mouse button to
`page up' and `page down'.
- Use the middle or right mouse button to jump anywhere
immediately.
- On large documents, holding the Shift key down while sliding
results in a more `high precision' movement (one text line per
pixel in the scroll bar).
There is no horizontal slider; to quickly scroll horizontally
however, you can grab the text ruler with the left mouse button and
move it around.
Gadgets
The menu bar, scroll bar,
ruler, button bar and lower status/input line
can be en/disabled in the size and gadgets panel.
The text row and column are shown in the upper right corner of the
window. When a text is modified, this is also indicated. When the lower
status line is switched on, miscellaneous other information is shown
there.
Keyboard shortcuts on text windows
The operations in the next two lists, one for moving around, one for
adding/deleting simple text, are called line-based operations. The
notion of a line-based operation is important, because a sequence of
such operations is thought of as one action; for example, after typing
or deleting text, Undo (Edit menu, Alt U) will make everything undone that has been done
to the line you last changed. Moreover, these operations are the ones
that are recorded by the dribble recorder.
All keyboard shortcuts not listed here, are found in the
menus.
Moving around with the cursor keys
- Control left, right
-
word left/right
- Page up, Page down
-
page up, down, cursor row fixed in window
- Control up, down
-
paragraph up/down (the beginning of a paragraph is the first
letter on a line following a line with no text).
- Alt left, right
-
move to the previous/next marker. On
browser windows, these shortcuts are for Back (Browse menu, Alt Left) and
Forward (Browse menu, Alt Right).
- Alt up, down
-
move displayed view up/down, cursor position fixed
- Home, Begin, End
-
move to the beginning/end of a line
- Control Home/Begin, Control End
-
move to the beginning/end of the text
Basic editing with the keyboard
- a-z, A-Z, 0-9, !, @, <, /, etc.
-
when typed are inserted directly into the text
- Backspace
-
delete the character left of the cursor. If the cursor is at the
beginning of a line, append the current line to the previous one.
- Delete
-
delete the character right of the cursor. If the cursor is at the
end of a line, append the next line to the current one.
- Control backspace/delete
-
delete a word left/right of the cursor
- Shift backspace
-
delete to beginning of line
- Shift delete
-
delete to end of line
- Tab
-
to next edit/true tab stop.
- Escape
-
back-indent (back to the previous level of indentation, looking
upward in the text) or shortcut expansion.
- Control U
-
Erase line (Edit menu, Control U).
Selection
Typing while there is a selection does not destroy or replace the
selected text. Normally, walking away from the selection using the
cursor keys will cause the selection to be cleared. This is not the
case when Additive selection (Mark menu, Caps Lock) is switched on.
- Shift + cursor keys, Home, End, etc.
-
create a selection. When Additive selection (Mark menu, Caps Lock) is selected, multiple
fragments can be selected.
- Alt Shift A
-
set beginning of (single fragment) selection. If there was no
previous selection, the selected fragment will extend to the end
of the text. Set the end point by (1) moving over with the cursor
keys and End selection (Mark menu, Alt Shift B), or (2) moving to the end point with the slider,
and Shift click/drag.
- Alt Shift B
-
set end of single fragment selection. If there was no previous
selection, the selected fragment will start at the beginning of
the text.
- Alt Z
-
clear selection
- Control ], Alt Q
-
Select south-east quadrant (Mark menu, Alt Q)
- Control [, Alt Shift Q
-
Select north-east quadrant (Mark menu, Alt Shift Q)
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