SORTING THE ELEMENTS ON AN OUTLINE LEVEL


 A. To sort the elements on a particular outline level,
    choose Sort Outline Level from the Outline menu. This
    function allows you to organize elements in much the same
    way as a dictionary organizes words (and all children of an
    element are moved along with their parent).  Choosing this
    function brings up an Option Box with three settings that
    control the sort:

    1. Sort Direction - You can sort elements in either forward or
       reverse order.  If set to "Increasing", this will sort
       elements in the conventional forward order.  If set to
       "Decreasing", this will sort elements in the opposite of the
       forward order.

    2. Type Of Sort - If set to "Dictionary", this will sort in the
       following order from lowest to highest: punctuation,
       numbers, upper and lower case letters without regard for
       case, blanks.  If set to "Pure Ascii", this will sort in the
       following order from lowest to highest: blanks, punctuation,
       numbers, upper case letters, lower case letters.

    3. Field Number To Sort - PC-OUTLINE sorts based on the
       characters following a colon in an element.  In the child of
       this element, "Sample 1" is the 0th field, "b" is the 1st
       Field, "3" is the 2nd field, and "OK" is the 3rd.

       a) Sample 1  :b   :3    :OK



 B. Move the cursor to the children of these elements and try
    several sorts for yourself. Try different settings of Sort
    Direction, Type of Sort, and Field Number.  Watch how the
    order of the elements change - keeping track of their
    original positions is easy with the words "Sample 1",
    "Sample 2", etc.   (Note that if you sort by a Field Number
    higher than the number of fields of any element in the sort
    - 4 or more in this example - then sorting will simply
    reverse the order of the elements. Doing it again will
    simply reverse the order again, back to their original
    places.)

    1. Sample 1  :b   :3    :OK
    2. Sample 2  :c   :41   :OK
    3. Sample 3  :d   :3    :OK
    4. Sample 4  :e   :19   :OK
    5. Sample 5  :a   :7    :OK