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Text windows and basic editing facilities

Text 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.

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. 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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