FishMarket 1.0/FishMarket v1.0.iso/fishies/101-125/disk_121/uedit/uedit-tutor

Text File | 1992-05-06 | 27KB | 742 lines

                                Uedit-Tutor
                    Copyright (C) 1986-87, Rick Stiles
                                P O Box 666
                            Washington, IN 47501
                               [phone]


Dear folks,

(See Getting Started, below, for immediate instructions.)

Uedit should be:  Your Number One text editor.  Your second, and most used,
word processor.

Uedit doesn't try to compete with the finest, most expenseive word processor.
That's not its purpose.

It is superior in other ways:  Power, access, versatility and customizability,
huge capacity, ability to automate massive tedious editing chores, and other
virtues, as you'll discover.

Many use Uedit as their only word processor, because it has all the features
they need.  It can do amazing things that no word processor can do, and it can
do what you want in hundreds of ways instead of in just one "hardwired" way.


Uedit is Shareware.  You can get a copy from a friend or off a computer
network and try it out.  If you use it, you must buy it.

Uedit comes in two parts:  A Uedit-One diskette and a Uedit-Two diskette.

You can purchase the $15 Uedit-One diskette from your dealer and have much of
Uedit's power at your disposal.

Later on you might want to get the Uedit-Two diskette, which costs $30.  It
includes a registration form and the fully customizable UE program with the
built-in command compiler, along with the complete documentation.

If your dealer doesn't carry Uedit, you can order it from me.  For ordering
instructions, see Uedit-Policy.

Ask your dealer to start carrying Uedit.


                               About Uedit


You can try Uedit immediately without reading beyond this paragraph.  The
menus, Help, and Teach Mode will get you going.

When you use Teach Mode, be sure to try the shift/alt/ctrl/Amiga shift keys,
to find out what the various combinations do with the keys and mouse-clicks
and gadgets in the message line.

The goals in writing Uedit were openness, flexibility, power, friendliness -
above all to give Freedom of Choice to the user.

Being able to edit 100 files is only the beginning of the depth Uedit has got.

Learn Mode adds a new dimension, providing instant automation for people who
hate reading instructions and only want to know enough to get the job done.

The command language adds another dimension, letting you rewrite Every
command, even the gadget and mouse button commands - on the fly.

Then there is the overall configurability and customizability, being able to
swap and kill keys, change colors, customize the menus, etc.

Then there is the ability to switch configurations, changing the entire
personality of Uedit, without interrupting editing.

Then there is the fact that it sleeps so that other tasks run efficiently and
can start other tasks and load in their results so that you can use them.

BlitzFonts in Shareware (for $10) will give you faster text displaying with
your programs on the Amiga, including Uedit.  BlitzFonts is on Uedit's
diskette.  (Please send Hayes Haugen $10, if you use his program.)

(Uedit-Policy lists most of the Extras that come with Uedit.)


                                 Features


Uedit has too many features to go into here.  To name just a few, it has on-
line Help facility as well as Teach Mode that teaches the purpose of keys,
gadgets, clicks, and menu selections.

It has split windows, colored (hilite and invert) regions, interlace screen
and RGB color tuning, mouse-scrolling and mouse cursor-placement, a full set
of cut/copy/paste/clear capabilities, for both regular and columnar text.

It lets you edit up to 100 files at once, has paragraph reformatting, page-
making commands, printer selection and controls, undo-deletes, search-replace,
edit-while-you-print up to 12 documents or regions, ctrl-click-loading of any
filename anywhere, and much more.

The reason that Uedit's features can't be listed is that the user can create
new ones anytime.

To gain access to Uedit's full customizability, you must become a registered
user by purchasing the program.

For instance, in this Shareware release, the Key-Help file must be in your
current directory in order for Teach Keys to work.  When you get the UE
program, the Key-Help file can be created, named, and located, along with
countless other changes you can make in how Uedit works.


                              A Word of Advice


If you are not a programmer, or even if you are, ignore Uedit's command
language and anything technical-sounding in this tutorial.

Uedit was written for Ordinary People, not for hackers.  You don't need to
know anything technical in order to do powerful and automatic things with
Uedit.

Just try the program.  See how you like it.

Press the Help key.  Look at the menus.  Select "Teach Keys" or "Teach one" to
discover key assignments.  Print out the Cheat-Sheet file, if you want a
hardcopy for handy reference.

And remember:  Almost anything you don't like can be changed by the user.


                              Getting Started


Workbench and CLI:

You can run Uedit immediately in Workbench by clicking its icon.

You can run it immediately in CLI by typing "Run UES file1 file2 file3 etc".

To be able to run UES from any directory, run CLI and type the following:
                Copy    UES   C:
                Copy    NoName.info S:
                Copy    Data! S:
                Copy    Help! S:
                Copy    DU-Data! S:


Now you can run Uedit from any directory.  NoName.info must be in S:, if you
are going to select "Make icons" so that Uedit will create file icons for you.

Data! and Help! must either be in S: or in your current working directory.

Key-Help, which is used when you select "Teach keys" must be in your current
directory (until you get the full Uedit).


Here is what the key-prefixes mean in the menu selections:  S=Shift, A=Alt,
C=Ctrl, L=leftAmiga, R=rightAmiga.  Keypad keys are abbreviated with "kp".


If a menu selection says "L-0", it means that holding down the left Amiga key
and pressing "0" will do the same thing as the menu entry.  If it says "SA-
kp7", it means hold down Shift and Alt keys and press the 7 on the keypad.

Select "Teach keys" to learn about Uedit's keys.  When finished with Teach
Keys, press Amiga-ESC.

Amiga-ESC is Uedit's general purpose Abort key.  Use it to Abort any operation.


The function keys, F1 thru F10, do the following (with no shift keys):

    F1 = next file
    F2 = save file
    F3 = close file
    F4 = quit
    F5 = swap next 2 commands
    F6 = compile command following cursor (You need the full Uedit.)
    F7 = input search text and search fwd
    F8 = input replace text
    F9 = search fwd
    F10 = replace & search fwd


Files and buffers:  Uedit has 100 buffers, which can be used for holding
documents and bits and pieces of text.  The first 20 buffers are used for
holding up to 20 documents.

How many files (documents) Uedit will let you load in is determined by the
"Max files" menu selection.

The easiest way to load a file is to Ctrl-click its name in Uedit.

Thus, it's a good idea to keep a one-page file handy that has all of your
filenames in it, and always load this file when you run Uedit.  In one
window's worth of text, you can scatter dozens of directory/filenames.  Then
you can click-load any document that you want.

But you can also select "Directory", get a directory listing, and click-load
files from it as well.

The "Files" menu lets you load/insert/rename/restore/save/close files.  But
you will soon be doing these with the function keys.

To make the 4 invisible "gadgets" in the message line visible or invisible,
press Ctrl-g.

To make the cursor page/row/column indicator visible or invisible, press ctl-
2.  (These are in the menus: "Mark gadgets" and "Row/Column".)


Scrolling:  Scroll vertically by holding down the mouse button and moving the
mouse.  The arrow keys also do vertical and horizontal scrolling.

For faster scrolls, either hold down the up/down arrow key or use Shift, Alt,
or Ctrl with the arrow key.


Moving the Cursor:  Much of the time you may prefer placing the cursor by
clicking the mousebutton in the text.

The keypad keys 2, 4, 6, & 8 move the cursor up/down/left/right by word/
character/line/page depending on which shift key is used.

(Teach Keys will show you the logic of the keypad keys.)


Scratch deleting is what you'd normally use in meat & potatoes text work.  The
following keys do scratch deletes at the cursor location:

    Ctrl-d deletes the entire cursor line.
    Keypad-7 (unshifted) deletes word-left.
    Keypad-9 (unshifted) deletes word-right.
    Shift-kp7 (press Shift and then keypad-7) deletes character left.
    Shift-kp9 deletes the character under the cursor.
    Alt-kp7 (press Alt and then keypad-7) deletes to start of line.
    Alt-kp9 deletes to end of line.
    Ctrl-kp7 deletes to top of window.
    Ctrl-kp9 deletes to bottom of window.

These are the "scratch" delete keys.  When you do them, the deleted material
is stored in the scratch-delete (Undo) buffer.

Long as you don't move the cursor and make a delete somewhere else, you can
store any number of scratch deletes.

Undo scratch deletes:  Pressing keypad-0 inserts the Undo buffer at the cursor.

Thus, after doing a series of scratch deletes using the above keys, you can
place the cursor somewhere, press keypad-0, and insert the deleted material.

If you move the cursor and do another scratch delete, the Undo buffer is
cleared before the newly deleted text is stored.  You will find that you do
most of your cut & paste the quick & dirty way, using scratch-deletes and the
Undo key.


If you select "Undo buffer" in the Split Window menu, you can monitor the
contents of the Undo buffer and even type into it.

There can be up to 8 split windows in use.


There are many ways to do cut/copy/paste operations with Uedit and to do them
in parallel.

You can be doing cut & paste using scratch deletes, hilite region, invert
region, and columnar data, all at the same time.  If these aren't enough,
you've got 100 buffers to put bits and pieces into.


Creating a hilite region:  There are 3 ways to mark a hilite region.  Press
HELP and it will show them to you.

But rather than do that, try this:  Place the mouse high up and to the left in
the text.  Hold down the Shift key and click the mouse.

Move the mouse to the lower right in the text.  Hold down the Alt key and
click the mouse.

There should now be a hilited region.  This is one method of hiliting.


Try this:  Select "Hilite buf" in the Split Window menu.  This shows you the
contents of the copied hilite buffer.

Put the cursor anywhere in the hilited region.

Now press keypad-Minus, the "-" key on the keypad.  This "cuts" the hilited
region.  The region disappears.  (Don't move the cursor yet!)

Note that the cut material appeared instantly in the "Copied hilite" buffer.

Now press keypad-Enter.  This puts the "cut" text back where it was.  And it
is hilited.  To unhilite it, press alt-h or select "Unhilite".


To get rid of a split window, click the mousebutton in it, making it the
active window-split.  Then select "Elim curr" in the Split Window menu.


Columnar text operations:  Columnar regions are rectangular.

This means that when you create a hilite region to use for columnar text
movement, the Start of the hilite region must be in a Lefthand column and the
End of the hilite region must be in a Righthand column.


Place the mouse high up in the text and to the left.  Press Shift and click
the mousebutton.

Place the mouse low down and to the right, pointing to some word in the text.
Press Alt and click the button.

Select "Col display" in the Edits menu.  Now the region should be displayed as
rectangular.


Select "Col copy" in the Columnar menu (inside the Edits menu).  This makes a
copy of the columnar region.

Put the cursor anywhere with the mouse.  Select "Col insert" in the Columnar
menu and see what happens.

To remove the inserted, hilited columnar region, select "Col cut" in the menu.


You should experiment with the columnar text manipulations in order to
understand them.  (If you altered this Uedit-Tutor file just now, select
"Restore" in the Files menu to restore it to the original.)


When using columnar display mode, TABS are shown as "box" characters.  This is
so that columns line up correctly when spaces and TABS are intermixed.


Tab Ruler:  There are 5 tab tables in Uedit, numbered 0 to 4.

You can change the tab table your document is using by selecting "Tab table"
in the menu.

Individual documents can use different tab tables.  The tab ruler shows the
tabs in the current document's tab table.


Select "See ruler" to see what the tab columns are or select "Set ruler" to
set the tab columns.


If you have selected "Set ruler" and wish to set tabs at high columns beyond
the right edge of the window, hold the mousebutton down and drag the mouse to
the left, then release the button.

To slide the ruler to the right, drag the mouse rightward.


Tab columns can be set by clicking the mouse within 2 lines of the ruler, or
by using the keys that the help message says to.


Interlace mode:  You can see twice as many lines of text by selecting
"Interlace" in the Global Modes menu.

To return to normal Workbench window, select it again.  (Tuning the colors is
discussed below.)


Printing:  In the "Printing" menu, select "Print select" and put in a number 0
to 3, telling Uedit where you want your printing to go.

The message line tells you what the numbers 0-3 mean:
    0 = raw text out the parallel port
    1 = raw text out the serial port
    2 = processed text using the Amiga's printer device
    3 = raw text using the Amiga's printer device


If you embed Uedit's printer control codes in your text (such as for boldface,
italics, etc) using the "Bracket hilite" or "Embed code" menu selections, you
must set "Print select" to 2 or 3.


If you embed your own custom printer codes in the text, then you can use
"Print select" values 0, 1, or 3, and they will be sent to your printer in raw
form.


(To embed CTRL characters, such as ESC, press ctl-c and then the desired
character.  To identify any control character in the text, put the cursor on
it and press ctl-/.)


Print queue:  In the printing menu, you can select "Print hilite" or "Print
file".

Long as the print-job will fit into memory, you can queue up as many as 12
print-jobs and still go on editing while they print.


You can even queue up print jobs to different printers, by changing "Print
select" before selecting "Print hilite" or "Print file".

If the print-job is too big for memory, you will have to wait until printing
is finished before you can continue editing.


Save on idle:  By selecting "Save on idle" in the Local Modes menu, your file
will be saved during pauses in your work, if it has been changed.

The length of the pause can be set by selecting "Idle timer".


Margins, line-length, and lines-per-page:  In the Line/Page menu are
selections for lines/page, line-length, top/bottom margins, and end-of-line.

If you want an "inner" left margin temporarily, simply indent the text and
select "Autoindent", so that succeeding lines stay at the same indentation.


To control the right margin, simply set line-length to the desired value.


Cursor page/row/column:  To see the cursor's page/row/column, select "Row/
column" in the Global Modes menu.


Paragraph reformatting:  To reformat a paragraph, put the cursor in the line
where you want reformatting to begin.  Then select "Paragraph" in the
Reformats menu or press ctl-3.


Paragraph reformatting ends when it reaches a blank line or a different
indentation.  Different indentation says that you want a different left
margin, hence it is not considered part of the paragraph being reformatted.


Page formatting:  See the Page Formatting menu in the Edits menu.

Pages are determined by formfeeds in the text or by the line-count, using the
current lines-per-page value.


The Page Formatting menu has selections for going to page#, going to top of
page, going to bottom of page, inserting a page-division, deleting the next
page-division, and auto-inserting page-divisions in your entire document.


When a page-division is inserted, the page number is automatically put in.

You can erase the page number by selecting "Del page #".

Page numbers are put 1/2 the bottom margin distance from the bottom of the
page, where the bottom of the page is simply the lines/page setting (normally
66).

(Note that these are all user-customizable commands which you can modify when
you get the full Uedit.)


When a page-division is inserted, the top margin for the next page is also put
in, after deleting any blank lines.


The formfeed causes the display to draw a line across the window, making page
divisions easy to locate visually.


You can find page divisions quickly by using the "Bottom page" and "Top page"
menu selections.

To insert a page-division and page number at the cursor, press lAmiga-v or
select "Divide page".


To remove a page division, put the cursor above it and press lAmiga-d or
select "Del page div".


                              Odds and Ends


To abort any operation, press Amiga-ESC.

Primitive Mode is used for special text and number inputs.  The Title Bar and
the message line tell you what to do in Primitive Mode.

If you press F7 to input a search string, you'll be in Primitive Mode.  Type
in the search text, then press ESC or click the mousebutton to terminate the
input.

You can change the Primitive Mode terminator character from ESC to some other
Ctrl character (such as the Return key) by selecting "PM terminator" in the
menu or by pressing ESC.


You can search for two things at once by putting a "$" dollar sign between two
search strings.

The "?" question mark is used by search as a wildcard.

You can change these by selecting "Set wildcard" or "Set eitherOr".

"Search caps" toggles on/off the upper/lower case-sensitivity of searching.


The message-line gadgets are just like keys and mouse clicks.  They can be
swapped, killed, reprogrammed, learned, used in menu selections, and so on.
Gadgets can be used with shift-keys, so there are actually 32 gadgets in all.

Menu selections are always attached to a key, gadget or mouse button command.


If you swap a menu selection, the key you swapped it with will be executed
whenever you select that menu item.


Uedit sleeps when it can, so that other tasks will run faster.


Clicking the Title Bar will switch to the tiny window.  The tiny window comes
up inactive, so you can type into CLI immediately.

This also lets the Amiga reopen the big window in a better memory location.


Uedit works with Transactor Magazine's Tiny Window Manager, written by Nick
Sullivan.

If "TWM" is running on your Amiga, Uedit will not create its own tiny window
but will instead alert TWM which will create a gadget for Uedit.  ("TWM" is
provided on Uedit's diskette.)


If Uedit runs out of memory and the "Memory..." message appears, that means it
is compacting its stuff in memory, creating a larger area for the Amiga to use
for graphics.

If "Memory..." appears, you ought to save and close some documents.  Also it's
a good idea to click the Title Bar and reopen Uedit's window.


Uedit sleeps between your inputs.  If you don't type anything for 4 seconds,
it will do housekeeping.

If you select "Busies", you'll see which buffer is being worked on.  When the
housekeeping is done, it sleeps.


In the window's Title Bar, brackets [buf#,flags] contain the buffer number and
various flags.  If Learn Mode is currently learning, "L" will appear.  If you
run a learned sequence, "R" will appear.  If you are in Teach Mode, "T" will
appear.  If documents are queued up for printing, "P#" will appear, where # is
the number of print jobs yet to be done, up to 12 maximum.


Uedit picks up font changes made with Preferences or SetFont.  It works with
all known hardware add-ons.

(Except C Ltd's TimeSaver (tm), which blocks the Ctrl-mousebutton command,
which means you can't Ctrl-click-load filenames unless you remove the
TimeSaver entirely.  Merely turning it off won't fix the problem.  C Ltd says
they are going to fix the problem in a new version of TimeSaver.)


Some people start Uedit in their Workbench df0:S/Startup-Sequence and do
everything from inside it.  They let it run other tasks and continue editing
or let it sleep.


To see the current settings for line-length, lines/page, tab-table, margins,
Uedit Serial Number, etc, press shift-HELP or select "Show vals".  This also
shows you the size of the current document.

Some settings are global and others are local to the current document.


Changing a local setting like word-wrap changes the global setting for future
files loaded in.

To rotate the 4 Workbench colors, press alt-HELP until you see a combination
that you like.

To tune the RGB colors in Uedit's interlace screen, select "Lace color", use
the mouse to adjust colors.  Press ESC to terminate the RGB color tuning.


To recover the original configuration after fooling with commands, colors,
etc, select "Load data".

After making any of the changes discussed here, selecting "Save data" will
save all current settings to disk.


                              Editing Tricks


If you are like me and hate reading instructions, and expect programs to be
Easy Without Reading, then Learn Mode is for you.

No reading is necessary.  Learn Mode uses just the normal editing stuff.

It offers immense power and capacity to automate tediously repetitive jobs.

If you need to search and replace misspelled names in 300 documents, you can
teach Learn Mode how to do one and let it do them all while you take a nap.

To set up for such automation takes only as many seconds as it takes you to do
one operation yourself, showing Learn Mode what to do.


Simply press ctl-s to start Learn Mode, do the sequence of operations, and
press ctl-r to end Learn Mode.

Then press ctl-r to see how it works.  If you did it right and it works right,
press ctl-m to set the command multiplier and then press ctl-r to run it as
many times as desired.


The Manual has lots of Examples and Editing Tricks which show how to take
advantage of Uedit's versatility and power.  It describes how to use Learn
Mode to click-add numbers or click-bracket words, do mail-merges, and so on.


A useful trick is to swap "Run learn" (ctl-r) with the mouse's buttonUp
operation.  (A menu selection "Swap mouseUp" lets you do this swap.)

Then when you click the button, buttonDown will deposit the cursor like it
normally does, and buttonUp will execute a learned sequence!


The learned sequence can be anything.  It can, for instance, click-bracket
text with printer control codes.  The Manual's Editing Tricks presents many
such examples.


Or you can swap the mouse's buttonUp operation with another key, such as the
add-numbers key (ctl-=).  Just select "Swap mouseUp" and press ctl-=.

Then you can click-add numbers that are scattered in various documents.
Pressing ctl-\ will put the running total into the text at the cursor.


Learned sequences can be stored on disk as numbered files.  They are stored in
your current directory.  If you copy them to your S: device, Uedit will find
them from any directory.  The "Learn" menu lets you start, terminate, run,
load, and save learned sequences.

A stored learn sequence might, for example, go to top of document and type in
a header, or go to bottom of document and type your name and address.


                            Config! and Data!


Config! is a configuration file which is the Source of every command Uedit
currently uses.

(Config! is included with this Shareware distribution for informational
purposes, even though you can't compile it with UES, the Shareware Uedit
program.  When you register, you'll get the full, customizable UE program and
will be able to customize and compile both Config! and the other custom
configurations included in the Extras.)


Users often modify Uedit's configuration to suit their personal needs.  Simple
changes are easy, even for non-technical users, because the command language
reads like English.

Even some relatively major changes are easy for non-programmers to make.  Avid
users create their own heavily customized configurations.


Data! is a compiled copy of Config! which Uedit loads at startup.

Data! should be in your S: area or in your current directory, along with
Help!, the help file.  If Data! is in S:, you can run Uedit from any directory
or disk drive.

(Normally S: is assigned to the DF0:S subdirectory.  To assign it to
myDirectory, type "Assign S: myDirectory" in CLI.)


You can keep as many config and data files on hand as you want.

The "Save data" and "Load data" selections in the menu let you switch
configurations and save changes to Uedit that you have made while editing.
Thus you can customize it while using it.


You can load and save data files from/to any directory and under any name.

You can customize Uedit virtually to the point of reinventing it.


If you run Uedit by typing "Run UE -dDataFile .." or "Run UE -cConfigFile .."
in CLI, it will load DataFile or compile ConfigFile.  (You will need the full
Uedit in order to compile a command or a config file.)


You can have hundreds of commands on-line at the same time.  Keys can load,
compile, run, swap, and kill other keys, so there really is no limit to how
many commands can be available at the press of a key.


There can be up to 7 menus with up to 20 selections each with up to 12 submenu
selections, making a total of 1680 submenu selections possible.


The configurability of Uedit is extreme.

For instance, a Directory Utility configuration is provided with the Extras.
Using it, you can copy/delete/rename files among dozens of subdirectories
while at the same time pulling in documents and reading/editing/saving them.

All of this without even closing the documents you were working on before you
switched over to the dir util config in the first place.


Kurt Wessels, a user in Seattle, wrote a config called UStar which emulates
WordStar (tm) and Scribble! (tm).  Kurt's UStar is included in the Extras that
you receive on Uedit's diskettes when you register.

Others have written specialized configs for programming and to emulate popular
word processors or to meet their personal needs.


                             Acknowledgements


I wish to thank the many users who have given helpful feedback on Uedit since
it came out.  Most of the improvements since V1.0 have been because of them.

I especially want to thank John Youells, Mike Davenport, Tim Jones, and Tom
Althoff for their encouragement and willingness to spend money on long
distance bills in order to help Uedit in Shareware.


                      *****************************


Your feedback will be appreciated.