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Moving around in editor windows

Moving around in editor windows

It is important to note that unlike in conventional window-based text editors, the cursor and the selection are independent. Also, the cursor is always inside the viewable area of the text, so when you slide through a document, the cursor may move afterward (it will only do so when necessary).

BROWSING WITH THE MOUSE

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. 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.

MOVING AROUND WITH THE KEYBOARD

The following key combinations move you up and down in a text window.
Up, Down
one row up, down
Page up, Page down
page up, down, cursor row fixed in window
Ctrl Up, Ctrl Down
paragraph up/down (the beginning of a paragraph is the first letter on a line following a line with no text).
Alt Up, Alt Down
move displayed view up/down, cursor position fixed
Ctrl Home/Begin, Ctrl End
move to the beginning/end of the text
Alt Left, Alt 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).
The operations in the next three lists, one for moving around, two for adding and 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.
Left, Right
move one column (one letter) left/right.
Ctrl Left, Ctrl Right
word left/right
Home, Begin, End
move to the beginning/end of a line

BASIC EDITING WITHIN A LINE

a-z, A-Z, 0-9, !, @, /, etc.
when typed are inserted directly into the text. When Auto wrap (Options menu, Alt Shift W) is on, wrap words around whenever a word is started beyond the right margin. The beep you will normally hear 3 columns before the right margin can be switched off.
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.
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.
Ctrl Backspace/Delete
delete a word left/right of the cursor
Shift Backspace
delete to beginning of line
Shift Delete
delete to end of line
Erase line (Edit menu, Ctrl U)
empty the current line (but copy indentation from previous line)

LINES AND INDENTATION

Edith has a two sets of tab stops per window. The Tab key takes the tab stops in the lower row in the text ruler. By default, these tabs consist of three space characters. See text ruler panel for details. The tab and back-indent functions are line-based operations.
Tab
to next editor tab stop.
Shift Tab
to the next true tab stop. Note: the behaviour of Tab and Shift Tab can be swapped in the text ruler panel.
Escape
back-indent (back to the previous level of indentation, looking upward in the text) or shortcut expansion.
By default, the Auto indent (Options menu, Alt Shift I) function is on; this means that the Return key will copy the indentation from the previous line when creating a new one; so will Erase line (Edit menu, Ctrl U).
Return, Enter
Create a new line (with indentation) and move the cursor to the new line.
Join lines (Edit menu, Alt Shift J)
Join the current line to the next, replacing the indentation of the next line by at most one interconnecting space character.
Delete line (Edit menu, Alt D)
Delete the current line.
Copy (Edit menu, Alt C), Cut (Edit menu, Alt X)
When there is no selection, cut and copy apply to the current line.

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