DP Tool Club 24/CD_ASCQ_24_0995.iso/dos/tools/aurora21/tips.dox

Text File | 1995-08-10 | 18KB | 430 lines

Miscellaneous Aurora User Tips
──────────────────────────────
This file contains a few miscellaneous Aurora user tips which you may
wish to review. For complete documentation on how to install and use
Aurora, see the Aurora Editor Users Guide (USER.DOX). Note that any key
definitions shown here are the Aurora-style defaults.


Basic Configuration
───────────────────
 ∙ The editor should always be installed in an empty directory. Never
   mix files from different editor versions.

 ∙ Whenever you make a change to any of the editor configuration files
   (such as CONFIG.AML, KBD.AML, MENU.AML, etc.), you must enter the
   'recompile' command ('Recompile the editor' <alt f2> on the Set menu)
   for your changes to take effect.

 ∙ If you prefer to start Aurora by another name, you can simply rename
   the file A.EXE to whatever you wish (such as E.EXE). Do not rename
   any other files distributed with the editor.

 ∙ You can re-install Aurora by selecting 'Run installation' from the
   'Macro List..' menu (on the Macro menu).


The Keyboard
────────────
 ∙ When adding new key definitions to KBD.AML, be sure to place each
   definition in the appropriate 'object' for the window in which you
   would like the key to be active. For most editing key definitions,
   this will be the 'edit' object.

 ∙ If you have added or changed keyboard definitions, you will probably
   also want to change any Menu definitions which show the old keys.

 ∙ To prevent the editor from using the keypad <grey/>, <grey*>,
   <grey->, and <grey+> keys as function keys, simply remove these
   function key definitions from KBD.AML. Be sure to remove them from
   within both the 'prompt' and 'edit' objects.

 ∙ To execute a key or macro function from the DOS command line, use the
   '-e' command line option. Key or event names must be enclosed in
   double quotes. For example:

     C>a -emymacro
        // executes the function 'mymacro' after the editor is started

     C>a -e"<shift f1>" -e"<alt =>"
        // simulates <shift f1>, <alt => after the editor is started

 ∙ New keyboard layouts for other editors/word processors may be added
   periodically to the Aurora Support BBS (see READ.ME for access
   details). Check the BBS if your favorite layout is not included in
   the distributed version of Aurora.


The Mouse
─────────
 ∙ If windows scroll too fast when using the mouse, change the
   'MouDelay' setting in CONFIG.AML to a higher value.

 ∙ To hide the mouse pointer whenever a key pressed, change the
   'MouseOpt' setting in CONFIG.AML to 'd'.


The Menus
─────────
 ∙ If part of a pull-down menu is displayed off the edge of the screen,
   you can use the mouse to grab the menu border and drag the menu to a
   better position.

 ∙ To hide the menu bar so that it is only displayed when <esc> or the
   right mouse button is pressed, remove 'm' from the 'EditStyle'
   setting in CONFIG.AML.

 ∙ To jump quickly to a file within a file picklist or the file manager,
   enter the first letter of the desired filename repeatedly until the
   cursor is positioned at the file.


Prompts
───────
 ∙ The ASCII Chart <alt => can be displayed from within a prompt and
   used to enter any character. The 'literal' <ctrl [> command can also
   be used to enter any character in a prompt. In addition, you can
   enter any character by holding down the <alt> key, then entering the
   decimal ASCII value of the character on the keypad, and then
   releasing the <alt> key.

 ∙ Use <pgup> or <pgdn> within a prompt, or press the left mouse button
   on the retrieve tab () to display a popup menu of all prompt
   history. You can enter a history string into the prompt by pressing
   the <enter> key or the left mouse button.

 ∙ Use the 'Prompt Style' command on the Window menu to sample the four
   editor prompt styles. To change the default prompt style when the
   editor is started, see the 'PromptStyle' configuration setting in
   CONFIG.AML.

 ∙ To move the cursor a relative number of lines away from the current
   position in the 'goto line' <ctrl j> prompt, specify '+' or '-'
   before the line number.

 ∙ The 'Macro Expression' prompt <ctrl v> on the Macro menu can be used
   as a command line calculator, since the macro language compiler and
   interpreter are available at this prompt. For example:

     Macro Expression>  say 1 + 2 + 30 - 40    <enter>
       // displays -7
     Macro Expression>  msgbox (4 * 15) mod 7  <enter>
       // displays 4
     Macro Expression>  write 1 + 2 * 3 + 4    <enter>
       // enters the string '11' at the cursor


The Desktop
───────────
 ∙ You can prevent windows from remembering their sizes, cursor
   positions, and settings by changing the 'SavePosition' setting in
   CONFIG.AML to 'n'.

 ∙ To use the existing DOS screen as the editor background when the
   editor is started, change the 'VidStr' setting in CONFIG.AML to ''
   (null).

 ∙ If your video card supports special video modes such as 132 x 43, you
   can use these video modes within the editor by setting the 'VidCols'
   and 'VidRows' in CONFIG.AML to zero. Then set the desired video mode
   in DOS before starting the editor.

 ∙ Use the 'showentry' command to display the screen as it appeared in
   DOS before the editor was started.


Syntax Highlighting
───────────────────
 ∙ To conserve editor resources, include only the syntax highlighting
   definitions in SYNTAX.AML that you actually use.

 ∙ Additional syntax highlighting definitions are containing in the file
   SYNTAX2.AML.

 ∙ If you are using syntax highlighting with multi-line comments in your
   program source code, you may wish to increase the number of lines to
   scan backward in SYNTAX.AML, for the file extension you are editing.
   Note however, that this will decrease scrolling performance for
   highlighted files.

 ∙ The 'hiliteword' <ctrl \> command highlights all occurrences of the
   word at the cursor. This can be very useful for finding instances of
   a word in a document, or marking occurrences of variables, functions,
   or other identifiers in your program source code.

 ∙ Individual keywords can be highlighted in colors different from the
   default keyword color by treating the keyword as an object variable
   and assigning it the desired color attribute. For example, in
   SYNTAX.AML:

     keyword
       .
       .      // end of keyword list

     _if   = color brightred on blue
     _else = color yellow    on blue


History
───────
 ∙ To erase all of your existing prompt history, window positions, etc.,
   simply delete HISTORY.DAT after you have exited the editor.

 ∙ Do not attempt to manually update the history file HISTORY.DAT. This
   file is automatically updated by the editor during normal usage.


Opening Files
─────────────
 ∙ To open a file manager window for the current directory from the DOS
   command line, enter "a .".

 ∙ To open a file from the DOS command line and place the cursor on a
   specific line, enter the option 'l' followed by the line number. For
   example:

     C>a myfile.txt/l253
       // opens 'myfile.txt' and places the cursor on line 253

 ∙ To open a binary file from the DOS command line or the Open prompt
   ('askopen' <alt e> on the File menu) using a specific line length,
   enter the option 'b' followed by the line length. For example:

     C>a myfile.txt/b240
       // opens 'myfile.txt' in binary mode with a fixed line length
       //   of 240

 ∙ To configure the editor so that tab characters (ASCII 9) are
   automatically expanded when files are opened, see example 21 of
   EXAMPLE.AML in the MACRO subdirectory.

 ∙ If you are using Aurora in an MS Windows 3.x DOS box running in
   enhanced mode, you can transfer up to 16k of text data to and from
   the Windows clipboard. This is done by loading from or saving to a
   file with the special drive name: ^. For example, from the Open and
   Insert and Save block prompts:

     File to insert in MYFILE.TXT>  ^:c
       // insert the contents of the Windows clipboard after the cursor

     Save block as>  ^:c
       // copy marked text to the Windows clipboard


Searching
─────────
 ∙ Frequently-used search strings can be saved in a separate file and
   copied to a find prompt as needed by using the 'copyblock2' <alt c>
   or 'paste' <grey*> commands. This can be especially convenient for
   long or complex regular expression patterns.

 ∙ To count the occurrences of a search string, use the 'a' search
   option. For example:

     Find>  gizmo/a  <enter>
       // displays the number of occurrences of the word 'gizmo'
       //   from the cursor to the end of the file

 ∙ Use regular expression searching to search for the beginning and/or
   end of lines. Do not attempt to search for line delimiter characters
   (such as carriage returns and linefeeds) in non-binary files. In the
   normal, non-binary editing mode, line delimiter characters are
   removed from the end of each line when the file is loaded and
   re-appended to the end of each line when the file is saved.

 ∙ The 'Find Occurrences' <ctrl h> command can be useful for extracting
   lines from a flat database file that match search criteria. For
   example:

     Find Occurrences of>  Joe/b
       // extract all lines where 'Joe' is found within a column mark

 ∙ The 'Find Occurrences' <ctrl h> command can be used together with
   regular expression searching to display a list of function headers in
   your program source code. For example:

     Find Occurrences of>  ^[a-zA-Z_].*\(.*[~;]$/x
       // finds C/C++ function definitions beginning in column 1

     Find Occurrences of>  ^ *{function}|{key}.*$/x
       // finds AML function and key definitions

 ∙ Selecting a file from a file manager scan window (generated by the
   'askscan' <ctrl s> command) will position the cursor to the first
   occurrence of the scan search string. Use the 'findlast' <ctrl l>
   command to find other occurrences.


Manipulating Text
─────────────────
 ∙ The 'quote' <shift f9> and 'commentline' <alt f1> commands can both
   be used for simple text quoting. <shift f9> performs block quoting,
   while <alt f1> quotes and unquotes text on a line-by-line basis.

 ∙ The editor is configured at installation to use 'live word wrap' when
   <ctrl w> is pressed. If you prefer the standard old-style word wrap,
   change the definition of <ctrl w> in KBD.AML to:

     key  <ctrl w>    setting 'W' TOGGLE   // toggle standard word wrap

 ∙ To reformat all of the text in a file, mark the entire file using the
   'markline' <alt l> command, and then enter the 'Reformat' command
   <alt r> on the Block menu.

 ∙ The 'fillblock2' <ctrl k><f> command can be used to fill a marked
   block with a repeating character or string. For example: to fill
   columns 40-47 of a data file with the date 12/25/96, mark the
   desired columns by using the 'markcolumn' command <ctrl b>, and then
   enter the date at the 'fillblock2' prompt.

 ∙ The clipboard Cut Append <ctrl grey-> and Copy Append <ctrl grey+>
   commands can be very useful for gathering separate blocks of text and
   grouping them together in the clipboard.

 ∙ To expand tab characters (ASCII 9) in the current file, use the
   'tabfile' <ctrl k><x> command.

 ∙ Have you ever been prompted to save changes in a file, and you forgot
   what changes you just made? Try using the undo/redo feature to review
   your changes. Just cancel the 'save' prompt and use the undo <ctrl u>
   and redo <ctrl y> commands to backtrack and retrace your changes
   before exiting.

 ∙ To the change the line delimiter that a file is saved with, load the
   file into the editor, change the current 'Line Delimiter' setting (on
   the Set menu) to the new line delimiter, and save the file.

 ∙ To disable CUA-style <shift> key marking, remove the 'smark' command
   from all key definitions in KBD.AML.

 ∙ Use the 'markpara' <alt 3> command to quickly mark the paragraph at
   the cursor.

 ∙ To rearrange all the words in a paragraph in sorted order:

     1. Use the 'markcolumn' <alt b> command to mark column 1 of the
        entire paragraph.
     2. Enter the 'formatblock2' command <alt r> to place each word on
        separate line.
     3. Enter the 'markpara' <alt 3> command to re-mark the separated
        paragraph with a line mark.
     4. Set Insert mode ON to ignore case during the sort.
     5. Enter the 'sortblock2' <ctrl k><o> command to sort the words.
     6. Enter the 'formatblock2' command <alt r> to re-join all
        separated lines back together into a paragraph.

 ∙ To view or edit a new location in the same file and then return to
   the original location at a later time, use one of the following
   techniques:

     1. Make a copy of the current edit window by entering the <copywin>
        <ctrl c> command ('Copy' on Window menu), and then move to the
        new location in the file. When you are finished, close the
        copied window with the 'close' <alt q> command to display the
        original window and cursor position.

     2. Set a bookmark at the original location using the 'quickbook'
        <ctrl 2> command, and return to it later using the 'cyclebook'
        <ctrl 6> command.


Working with very large files
─────────────────────────────
 ∙ If you are performing extensive 'search and replace all' operations
   in a very large file, or you are making other large-scale changes to
   the file, you will get better performance if 'Undo' is disabled on
   the Set menu.

 ∙ Aurora can be useful for editing very large files when running under
   OS/2 or Windows. Although other editors may exploit the virtual
   memory capabilities of these environments, Aurora uses its own
   virtual memory (optimized for text editing), and will not force other
   OS/2 or Windows applications to be swapped out or discarded when very
   large files are loaded and edited. The 'memoptions' setting in
   SYSTEM.AML should be set to 'o' for the best performance.

 ∙ Setting 'memoptions' to 'o' in SYSTEM.AML allows large files to be
   kept open (in DOS) while they are being edited. This feature can
   greatly increase the loading performance for very large files.
   However, in some cases there may be conflicts with other programs
   trying to access the open file. If this is a problem for you, set
   'memoptions' to '' (null).

 ∙ Before saving changes to very large files, you may wish to conserve
   disk space by disabling file 'Backup' on the Set menu. Obviously,
   this should only be done if you have backup files elsewhere.

 ∙ If you only need to browse the first part of a very large file, or if
   you have started loading a very large file by mistake, you can press
   <ctrl break> to interrupt the loading process at any point. Note that
   the loaded file will be truncated, and you will be prompted with
   "Truncated file - are you sure?" whenever you try to save the file.


AML Macros
──────────
 ∙ To obtain context-sensitive help on a macro language statement or
   function at the cursor, press <shift f1> for a brief description, or
   press <shift f2> for extended help. Note that most extension
   functions (EXT.AML source code) are not documented. For these
   functions, the cursor is moved to the function definition in EXT.AML.

 ∙ To compile and run an external macro in the current edit window, just
   enter the 'compilemacro2' <shift f10> and 'runmacro2' <shift f11>
   commands. These commands help to simplify macro development and
   testing.

 ∙ You can use the 'pickmacro' <shift f12> command to obtain a picklist
   of macros in the MACRO subdirectory. To run a macro from the
   picklist, move the cursor to the desired macro and press the <enter>
   key or click the left mouse button. The 'runmac "maclist"' <ctrl f12>
   command displays macros with a brief one-line description.

 ∙ Before modifying any internal macro code (EXT.AML, KBD.AML, etc.), be
   sure to make backup copies of your AML files. You should be
   reasonably familiar with the macro language before attempting these
   types of modifications.

 ∙ AML has a simpler function call syntax than most programming
   languages. Here are a few things to keep in mind when calling AML
   functions:

   If function calls with arguments are used in expressions, the entire
   function call should be enclosed in parentheses, not just the
   arguments. For example:

     x = fun1 (1) + fun2 (2, 3, 4);    // BASIC, Pascal, C
     x = (fun1 1) + (fun2 2 3 4)       // AML

   Function calls which have no arguments, and which are preceded or
   followed by operators, do not need parentheses:

     x = fun1 () + fun2 ();     // BASIC, Pascal, C
     x = fun1 + fun2            // AML

   If a single function call is an argument to another function, and is
   not preceded or followed by an operator, then it must be enclosed in
   parentheses. For example:

     x = fun1 (1, fun2 (), fun3 (2, 3, 4));   // BASIC, Pascal, C
     x = fun1 1 (fun2) (fun3 2 3 4)           // AML

 ∙ The 'key' statement is terminated by the keywords 'end', 'key', or
   'function', but not by the keyword 'object'. For example:

     key <alt c>   copy          // key definition for <alt c>
     key <alt d>   deleteline    // key definition for <alt d>
     end                         // end is required here

     object  fmgr                // change the current object
       .
       .

 ∙ New macros and AML configuration files will continue to be posted on
   the Aurora Support BBS (see READ.ME for access details). Many of
   these macros may only be available to licensed users. You may wish to
   check the BBS periodically for new macros.