Electrics - automatic typing by Alpha
The term "electric" is used in the sense of "automatic, power assisted
behavior", which is intended to save time, keystrokes, and brainpower. All
the "electric" features are features, which makes Alpha do automatic typing
for you. HTML modes electric preferences are set using in the
submenu of the HTML menu.
Electric braces
Enabling Electric braces tells Alpha to treat the left or
right brace '{', '}' keys as special keypresses which enter the '{' or '}'
character, followed by a carriage return and then indent the following line
correctly. In HTML mode the braces are only electric inside SCRIPT and
STYLE elements. Outside SCRIPT and STYLE elements typing '{' or '}' simply
inserts a '{' or a '}'. Note! For the electric braces to
work you must select your keyboard in the dialog .
Electric semicolon
Enabling Electric semicolon tells Alpha to treat
the semicolon key ';' as special keypresses which enters the ';' character
followed by a carriage return and then indents the following line
correctly. The ';' key is context-dependent so you can still enter a for(
; ; ) loop in JavaScript code without Alpha messing things up. In HTML mode
the semicolon is only electric inside SCRIPT and STYLE elements. Outside
SCRIPT and STYLE elements typing ';' simply inserts a ';'.
Electric return
Enabling Electric return tells Alpha to indent the following
line automatically whenever you press return.
Electric tab
Enabling Electric tab tells Alpha to treat tab as
a special key. Typing tab either moves the insertion to the next template
stop (•) or if there is no template stop
indents the current line. To insert a tab character type opt-tab.
Auto-indent when typing > of a tag
This setting is found on page 2 in the dialog box
in the menu. I does not appear among
the other electric preferences because it does not belong to the Alpha's
global set of electrics. (It should perhaps be called "Electric greater".)
Enabling this feature will tell Alpha to indent the current line when you
type the > of a HTML tag. This will make sure that the code is correctly
indented when you simply type the code without using the menu items for
HTML elements.
