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Mac Magazin/MacEasy 19
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Mac Magazin and MacEasy Magazine CD - Issue 19.iso
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Wissenschaft & Technik
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Alpha
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Help
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Quick Start
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1996-02-07
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Alpha Quick Start
===============================================================================
= Contents
===============================================================================
[ Any underlined text is a hypertext link; clicking on it takes you to
another part of the documentation. Typing "control-." (Pop Position
from the Search menu) returns you to the starting point. ]
Installation
Creating and Saving Documents
Editing Documents
Drag and Drop
Searching
Quick Finds
Multi-file Searching
Marks
The Window
Text Manipulations
Wrapping
Editing "TeX" documents
Credits and Registration
===============================================================================
= Installation
===============================================================================
If you are reading this document, installation must be finished.
Alpha relies on the files in the Tcl and Help subdirectories being in
the same director as Alpha itself. The Alpha folder can be anywhere
on your disks, the only caveat is that the names of any containing folders
or disks must not contain names brackets, curly braces, or quotes of any kind.
Alpha creates a subdirectory within the system preferences folder,
but you should never have to worry about this.
===============================================================================
= Creating and Saving Documents
===============================================================================
Documents can be created in Alpha via the "New…" menu item under the
file menu. Existing files can be opened via the "Open…" item, by
double-clicking on Alpha documents in the finder, or via the FileSets
submenu underneath the File menu (more on this later).
Once a document has been opened, you can modify it by typing in it,
cutting and pasting, or using drag-and-drop editing.
Files can then be saved and/or closed, also via the File menu.
===============================================================================
= Editing Documents
===============================================================================
At its most basic, editing in Alpha is very similar to editing within
any other mac environment. The current insertion point is shown by
the blinking insertion point (or the block cursor, depending on your
settings. The cursor keys can be used to move the insertion point, as
in any other application.
However, Alpha can also move via larger increments of text:
option-left - one word left
option-right - one word right
command-left - beginning of line
command-right - end of line
Holding down the shift key tells alpha to extend the selection the
designated distance.
[Tip: most of the standard emacs editing commands are also
available, see the "Edit:Emacs" submenu.]
Text can be cut, copied, or pasted by selecting a region of text and
using the items in the Edit menu.
Additionally, Alpha supports all the latest Drag and Drop technology.
Any selected piece of text can be dragged to another part of the same
window, or to another application merely by dragging it. To try this
out, i) select a piece of text (double-click on a word), ii) move the
cursor over the selected text (the cursor should now be an open
hand), and iii) mouse down on the selected text and drag it elsewhere.
An outline of the selected text will accompany the cursor until you
release it, and a caret will mark the current insertion point while
you move the cursor. Note that you must have either system 7.5 or the
Drag and Drop init installed for this to work.
===============================================================================
= Searching
===============================================================================
Alpha allows searching for character strings in either the
current window, or within multiple files, whether or not they are
currently open.
Searching is usually accomplished via the "Search" menu. "Find"
brings up a dialog box that allows a search string, a string
optionally used to replace found text, and several options. These
options are:
• 'Forword' - Search backwards or forwards.
• 'Ignore Case' - The search routine can ignore the case of both the
search string and the text to which it matches.
• 'Word Match' - The search only matches complete words.
• 'Grep' - Regular expression matching. Regular expressions allow
searching for specific character patterns, rather than just a
single character sequence. See here for more information.
• 'Mult Files' - see below.
• 'Patterns' - This is a popup menu that allows search strings to be
saved and later re-used.
Once a string has been found, the "Search" menu allows the text to
be replaced with the 'Replace With' string from the "Find" dialog.
[Tip: As with all dialogs in Alpha, buttons may be selected
from the keyboard by pressing command-c, where 'c' is the first
character of the button's text.]
[Tip: Pull down the "Search" menu and press the option key.
There are several new items. "Search Start" returns the insertion
point to where the last search started. "Replace All" uses the
search and replace strings to make substitutions through the rest of
the file.]
Quick Find
Alpha allows the Find dialog to be bypassed by "Quick Find" and "Reverse
Quick Find" from the "Search" menu. The function search for character
strings as you type. Use Escape or any function to terminate a search.
Quick finds always ignore case, but do not match words or allow regular
expressions.
Multi-File Searches
Multi-file searches are accomplished by using file-sets, or lists of
files. File-sets are usually a list of files in a single directory.
They can be created either through the file-set menu (under the File
menu for AlphaLite, a stand-alone menu for the full version of
Alpha), or through the Find dialog (select multiple files and then
use the popup menu to select ``New Fileset'').
To create a fileset, you supply a name, the folder that contains the
files, and a pattern to select which files from the folder are to be
contained in the fileset. To select all, the pattern should be `*'. To
select just the files that end in `.tex', the pattern would be
`*.tex'. To select all files that end in either `.c' or `.h', the
pattern would be `*.{c,h}'.
Once you have a fileset, you search through the entire thing just be
selecting ``Mult Files'' and the fileset from the popup menu. The `Batch'
option allows all matches to be listed (not available in AlphaLite).
===============================================================================
= Marks
===============================================================================
Alpha maintains allows manipulation of marks, which are pointers to
particular positions in the file. This file, for instance, has marks
pointing to each of the major sections of the document (use the Marks
menu to go to a different section, and then to come back to the
'Marks' section).
The marks popup menu (the icon w/ '{}' above the vertical scrollbar) allows
marks to be automatically established for a file. For instance, 'Mark File'
will automatically create a mark for each section and subsection of a latex
document.
===============================================================================
= The Window
===============================================================================
Alpha's windows have several non-standard features. They are the following:
• Command-clicking on the title-bar anywhere but right on the title pulls
down a menu showing the window's current mark, and allows marks to be
automatically created for all supported modes (C, LaTeX, etc.). A mark is
merely a placeholder for a specific position in a file, much like a
bookmark.
• Command-clicking on the title pulls down a popup showing the complete
pathname of the window's file.
• Option-clicking on the titlebar brings down a menu of include files, if
working w/ Symantec.
• Above the vertical scrollbar is a black "split-pane" bar. Double-clicking
or dragging the split-pane bar splits the frontmost window into two
separately scrollable panes. Either pane can be edited, any changes
appear in both panes if they show the same text. Move from one pane to
the other by typing control-x, then 'o'. Go back to a single pane by
either double-clicking again or dragging the bar back to the top of the
window.
• Above the split-pane bar (the '{}' icon) is another way to access the current
marks for the front window.
• Above the Marks menu is either nothing, a red disk icon (showing that the
window is dirty and needs to be saved), or a lock icon (meaning that the
file is read-only).
• The status window at the bottom of the primary display has three popup
menus:
• "File Attributes" menu. Shows various attributes of the current
window that can be changed. "MPW", "Think" and "None" refer to how much
state is saved in files' resource forks, Usually, you should leave it
at "MPW", which tells Alpha to save the current insertion and window
positions. "Mac", "Unix", or "IBM" refers to the way carriage returns
are formatted.
• "Mode" menu, which shows the current mode and allows it to be changed.
Bindings, keyword colorings, and many other features differ from mode
to mode (AlphaLite has only two modes, 'TeX' and 'Brws' which is used
to view search results).
• Line menu. Displays current line and column. Clicking calls a dialog
that allows a specific line to be found.
===============================================================================
= "Text Manipulations"
===============================================================================
Automatic Wrapping
Wrapping refers to Alpha automatically inserting line breaks as you
type. The 'Config:Mode' (the 'Mode' menu is under the Windows menu
for AlphaLite) lets you modify several mode-specific flags. One of
these is 'wordWrap'.
When 'wordWrap' is checked, Alpha automatically insert a carriage
return when a line becomes too long.
If 'Soft Wrap' is on as well (toggle from the windows menu), Alpha
will ``re-flow'' the entire paragraph whenever the current line gets
too long or too short.
Other Text Manipulations
From the 'Text' menu:
• 'Fill Paragraph' - reflows the current paragraph so that lines are
approximately the same length.
• 'Fill region' - does the same to text that is currently selected.
• 'Downcase Region' - converts all selected characters to lower case.
• 'Upcase Region' (hold down option key) - converts all selected
characters to upper case.
• 'Text to Alpha' - This menu item prompts the user to select a directory,
and then recursively changes the creator of all text files in that
directory to Alpha. This is useful if you receive text files created by
another editor (Note: this item is under "Utils:File Utils" in the full
version of Alpha).
===============================================================================
= "TeX" Editing
===============================================================================
Click here for details.
===============================================================================
= Credits and Registration
===============================================================================
Alpha and AlphaLite are both shareware, $30. One registration pays for
both versions, and all future upgrades of either. You may pay either by
sending a check to:
Peter Keleher
8006 Barron Street
Takoma Park, MD 20912
or by using the "Register…" app that comes w/ installation. Click here to
launch the register app.
Send bug reports to me at keleher@cs.umd.edu.
Alpha's home page is "http://www.cs.umd.edu/~keleher/alpha.html"