Once Protext has loaded you are presented with the normal editingscreen, containing no text. You may find a horizontal line containingthe Protext copyright message and version number about two thirds ofthe way down the screen. This shows that you are in Protext's commandmode which need not be used when menus are being used. If this line isvisible press Esc to remove it.
At the top of the screen you will see the two Status lines andbeneath them, the ruler line. The status lines contain details of thedocument being edited and also of the settings for various Protextfeatures. The ruler line always displays the ruler which is currentlyin use in the document. You should see a flashing cursor on the leftof the line beneath the ruler line. This is the editing cursor andalways indicates where the next character will be entered, or wherethe next action will take place.
Depress and hold down the right mouse button and the Menu Barwill appear at the top of the screen in place of the top status line.Move the mouse pointer up to the menu bar and you will find that amenu drops down as soon as the pointer highlights one of the menuoptions. Move the pointer to right and left and you will find thatdifferent menu boxes appear for each of the available options.
Now you have seen what the menus look like we can get down tocreating a document. Unlike some programs, Protext does not requireyou to name a document before you can start entering text, so you canstart immediately.
Just type in some text and you will see it start to appear in theediting part of the screen at the cursor position. When you wish tostart a new paragraph you should press the Return key twice. The firstpress tells Protext that it is the end of the paragraph and the secondone puts a blank line between paragraphs.
You can move around the text by using the cursor keys to go up,down, left or right a character at a time, or by holding down theShift key and using the left and right cursor keys you can movethrough the text a word at a time.
The Del key can be used to delete any character which is underthe cursor in addition to using the Backspace key to delete thecharacter to the left of the cursor, as already described.
In addition to deleting single characters, parts of a word, orcomplete words may also be deleted by holding down Shift and pressingDel to delete from the current cursor position to the end of the wordon which the cursor is placed, or Shift and Backspace to delete fromthe character before the cursor to the start of the word. Experimentwith these to see the effects.
You are now going to add a new sentence at the start of thecurrent paragraph, so move the mouse pointer over the first characterat the start of the paragraph and click the left mouse button to movethe cursor to the start of the paragraph.
Alternatively, you could have used one of the menu options. Tosee this in action we shall use another of Protext's features torestore the cursor to its previous position. Click on the right mousebutton and select the Move menu. Move the pointer down to the Lastposition option and select it. The cursor will be restored to itsformer position. This is a very useful option when you find you haveaccidentally moved somewhere you didn't intend to!
Now you can select the Move menu again, but this time click onthe previous paragraph option and the cursor will be once again bepositioned at the start of the paragraph. This is one of many examplesyou will find where Protext provides more than one way to perform atask. You could also have made use of Protext's special keystrokes,but we shan't concern ourselves with these in this tutorial. If youwant to try them, the appropriate keystrokes are shown to the right ofthe options in the menus and are fully described in the main manual(see our upgrade options for details).
Type in a further sentence or two at the start of the paragraphand you will see that the existing text moves over to the rightautomatically to make room for the new text. This is called insertmode but Protext also has an overwrite mode.
Display the menu bar and open the Option menu. You will see thatthis menu is similar to the other menus we have used except that someof the options have a tick against them on the left hand side. Theseoptions determine the default way in which Protext works and theirsettings remain in force until such time as you toggle them again.
Select the Overwrite mode option and a tick will appear on theleft. Close the menu, by clicking the left button with the pointeroutside the menu and then try typing a further sentence. This time,you will find that instead of moving the existing text to the right tomake room, the new text overwrites what was already there.
Most people choose to work in insert mode for most of the time,but it can be useful to be able to overwrite things rather than deleteand replace them sometimes. Select the Option menu once more andtoggle off the Overwrite mode option.
Now move the cursor back down to the end of the document with themouse and press Return a number of times until the text at the top ofthe screen starts to scroll out of sight, then type in a few morewords.
We shall now go to the start of the document and insert a newparagraph. As the top of the document has scrolled off the top of thescreen we can no longer just move the cursor to where we want.Instead, we can either use a menu option, or scroll the screen withthe mouse until we can see the start. If you want to use the menus,you can select the Move menu and the To start of text option, but fornow we shall use the mouse.
Position the pointer on the lower status line (the second linedown from the top of the screen) and click the left button. Each timeyou click on this line the screen will scroll a screen page towardsthe start of the document, until the start is on the top line. You canthen position the cursor at the start of the line by moving thepointer to the position and clicking.
We now need to insert a blank line at the top of the documentinto which to start typing the new paragraph. Select the Line menu andthe Insert line option. A new line will be inserted above the line onwhich the cursor is positioned. Now type in some more text. When youhave finished, press Return twice to end the paragraph and insert theblank line between paragraphs.
Having learned how to insert new lines, we shall now learn how todelete them. Position the cursor on the top line of the document. Itdoesn't matter where on the line the cursor is placed as we shall bedeleting complete lines. Select the Line menu and the Delete lineoption. The line on which the cursor was placed will disappear and thelines beneath will move up to fill the gap.
Protext also has an Undelete feature which is capable ofrestoring the last block of text deleted. As far as Undelete isconcerned, a block is any section of text over three characters longremoved in one go. This includes lines as well as marked blocks oftext (described later in the manual). To see this is action, positionthe cursor at the start
A useful tip is that the same block may be undeleted more thanonce. This can be put to good use when you have a number of lineswhich are similar which you want to enter. Just enter the line once,delete it, then undelete it as many times as you want. You can then goback and make any minor changes required to the other lines.
We shall now go to the end of the document, either by selectingthe end of text option from the Move menu, or by scrolling the textwith the mouse. To scroll to the end, move the pointer down to thebottom line of the screen and click the left button repeatedly untilthe end is visible, then position the cursor by pointing and clicking.
It would be a good idea to save the document at this point, as itis always good policy to regularly save your work. Select the Filemenu and the Save as ... option. Note that the option is followed bythree dots '...', as also are some other options in menus. This is anindication that the option leads to a dialogue box. When the option isselected, the dialogue box will appear, containing the message SAVEfilename:.
This is the first example of a dialogue box that we haveencountered. Protext has a number of dialogue boxes for differentpurposes and we shall come across further examples later, but in thiscase it is a Text Box. These are used where you are required to typein text, rather than just select something and always contain textdescribing what is required. Key in FIRSTONE as the name and press theReturn key to confirm the entry. That's it. Your document is safelysaved to disk.
As you will have noticed, the Move and Line menus provide anumber of other options in addition to those we have already used. TheMove menu allows you to move the cursor to the start or end of asentence, or line, to the previous or next paragraph, or page as wellas the start and end of a document. The Line menu allows you to notonly insert and delete lines, but also to delete parts of a line orsentence, from the current cursor position.
As these options function in the same way as those which youhave already used, we suggest that you experiment with them now, tosee the results, using the document you have already created.
õUsing the File Selectorõ
The file selector is automatically displayed whenever you selecta menu option to load or merge a file and in other situations where afile is to be loaded, such as a different configuration file. The fileselector may also be called from the File menu by selecting theCatalogue files ... option.
Protext's file selector allows you to carry out various disk'housekeeping' tasks, such as copying, renaming, deleting files andcreating new directories in addition to loading files. Otherhousekeeping tasks not available in the file selector, such asformatting disks, deleting directories and so on, may be carried outfrom Protext's command line.
Select the Load file ... option from the Files menu and all thescreen, apart from the status lines, will be replaced by a large fileselector with a menu of options at the bottom. Depending on how manyfiles there are in the current directory, one or more columns offilenames and directory names will be displayed. Directories arelisted first, followed by the files in alphabetical order.
Directories are always indicated by a <DIR> entry to the right ofthe name, whereas files have their size shown. When the currentdirectory is not the root directory, a special entry called <PARENT><DIR> is displayed at the start. This may be used to select the parentof the current directory.
The available options are displayed in a two line menu at thebottom of the window and may be selected either by pressing the keyindicated in square brackets, or by double clicking inside the squarebrackets.
To load a file, select the required file by pointing with themouse and double clicking on the entry, or highlight the entry with asingle click and then double click on the [Return] menu option. Thissame procedure is used when the Merge file ... option is selected, butwhen you click on the required file, it will be merged into thedocument at the current cursor location. Select and load a documentnow, then move the cursor to a suitable place in the document and usethe Merge file ... option to merge a selected file into the existingdocument.
If the current drive/directory is not the one containing thefile(s) you want to load or work on, you will need to change to it. Tochange drives, you must select the [D]rive change option, either bydouble clicking on the D, or by pressing the D key.
A dialogue box will open with the prompt Enter path: and youshould type in the name of the directory you want. The file windowwill clear and be replaced by the contents of the new drive and theheading at the top of the window will change to show the new drive anddirectory.
Move the mouse pointer to a directory entry and click on it tohighlight it. The directory may then be selected as the currentdirectory by pressing Return or double clicking on the entry in themenu. The list of files will change to show the files available in thedirectory.
If there are only a small number of files in the directory, it iseasy to find the file you require, but if there are a large number offiles it is often more convenient to see only a range of the files.This can be done by changing the file specification.
Double click on the F inside the square brackets to select the[F]ile specification option and edit the existing entry, usingwildcards and characters, to something which will match only some ofthe files. The list of files will change, showing only those fileswhich match the file specification. To show all files again, doubleclick on the [A] Show all option.
Several options are provided to enable you to rename, copy ordelete files. Select [C]opy file(s) and a dialogue box will requestCOPY from (filename):. this is a request for the name of the file, orfiles, you wish to copy. The file(s) do not need to be in the currentdirectory, which is why it does not automatically use a highlightedfilename.
Copy will also allow you to copy a number of files at the sametime by specifying wildcards. Once you have entered the name of thefile(s) you want to copy and confirmed the entry, a second dialoguebox will request COPY to (file or path):. If you have specified asingle file name you may specify a different filename for thedestination, but if you have specified wildcards, you must specify adestination directory.
If you leave this dialogue entry blank Protext will copy thespecified file to the current directory with the same name.
The final menu option in the file selector is the [N]ew dir.option and allows you to create a new directory as a sub-directory ofthe currently selected directory. Select this option now and adialogue box will open, requesting MKDIR directory name:. Key in thename you require and press Return.
