Amiga Computing 56/ac056a.adf/Beginners.doc

Text File | 1978-01-11 | 13.9 KB | 48 lines

õCreating your first documentõ

    Once Protext has loaded you are presented with the normal editing
screen, containing no text. You may find a horizontal line containing
the Protext copyright message and version number about two thirds of
the way down the screen. This shows that you are in Protext's command
mode which need not be used when menus are being used. If this line is
visible press Esc to remove it.
    At the top of the screen you will see the two Status lines and
beneath them, the ruler line. The status lines contain details of the
document being edited and also of the settings for various Protext
features. The ruler line always displays the ruler which is currently
in use in the document. You should see a flashing cursor on the left
of the line beneath the ruler line. This is the editing cursor and
always indicates where the next character will be entered, or where
the next action will take place.
    Depress and hold down the right mouse button and the Menu Bar
will 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 a
menu drops down as soon as the pointer highlights one of the menu
options. Move the pointer to right and left and you will find that
different menu boxes appear for each of the available options.
    Now you have seen what the menus look like we can get down to
creating a document. Unlike some programs, Protext does not require
you to name a document before you can start entering text, so you can
start immediately.
    Just type in some text and you will see it start to appear in the
editing part of the screen at the cursor position. When you wish to
start a new paragraph you should press the Return key twice. The first
press tells Protext that it is the end of the paragraph and the second
one 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 the
Shift key and using the left and right cursor keys you can move
through the text a word at a time.
    The Del key can  be used to delete any character which is under
the cursor in addition to using the Backspace key to delete the
character to the left of the cursor, as already described.
    In addition to deleting single characters, parts of a word, or
complete words may also be deleted by holding down Shift and pressing
Del to delete from the current cursor position to the end of the word
on which the cursor is placed, or Shift and Backspace to delete from
the character before the cursor to the start of the word. Experiment
with these to see the effects.
    You are now going to add a new sentence at the start of the
current paragraph, so move the mouse pointer over the first character
at the start of the paragraph and click the left mouse button to move
the cursor to the start of the paragraph.
    Alternatively, you could have used one of the menu options. To
see this in action we shall use another of Protext's features to
restore the cursor to its previous position. Click on the right mouse
button and select the Move menu. Move the pointer down to the Last
position option and select it. The cursor will be restored to its
former position. This is a very useful option when you find you have
accidentally moved somewhere you didn't intend to!
    Now you can select the Move menu again, but this time click on
the previous paragraph option and the cursor will be once again be
positioned at the start of the paragraph. This is one of many examples
you will find where Protext provides more than one way to perform a
task. You could also have made use of Protext's special keystrokes,
but we shan't concern ourselves with these in this tutorial. If you
want to try them, the appropriate keystrokes are shown to the right of
the 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 paragraph
and you will see that the existing text moves over to the right
automatically to make room for the new text. This is called insert
mode but Protext also has an overwrite mode.
    Display the menu bar and open the Option menu. You will see that
this menu is similar to the other menus we have used except that some
of the options have a tick against them on the left hand side. These
options determine the default way in which Protext works and their
settings remain in force until such time as you toggle them again.
    Select the Overwrite mode option and a tick will appear on the
left. Close the menu, by clicking the left button with the pointer
outside the menu and then try typing a further sentence. This time,
you will find that instead of moving the existing text to the right to
make 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 delete
and replace them sometimes. Select the Option menu once more and
toggle off the Overwrite mode option.
    Now move the cursor back down to the end of the document with the
mouse and press Return a number of times until the text at the top of
the screen starts to scroll out of sight, then type in a few more
words.
    We shall now go to the start of the document and insert a new
paragraph. As the top of the document has scrolled off the top of the
screen we can no longer just move the cursor to where we want.
Instead, we can either use a menu option, or scroll the screen with
the 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 for
now we shall use the mouse.
    Position the pointer on the lower status line (the second line
down from the top of the screen) and click the left button. Each time
you click on this line the screen will scroll a screen page towards
the start of the document, until the start is on the top line. You can
then position the cursor at the start of the line by moving the
pointer to the position and clicking.
    We now need to insert a blank line at the top of the document
into which to start typing the new paragraph. Select the Line menu and
the Insert line option. A new line will be inserted above the line on
which the cursor is positioned. Now type in some more text. When you
have finished, press Return twice to end the paragraph and insert the
blank line between paragraphs.
    Having learned how to insert new lines, we shall now learn how to
delete them. Position the cursor on the top line of the document. It
doesn't matter where on the line the cursor is placed as we shall be
deleting complete lines. Select the Line menu and the Delete line
option. The line on which the cursor was placed will disappear and the
lines beneath will move up to fill the gap.
    Protext also has an Undelete feature which is capable of
restoring the last block of text deleted. As far as Undelete is
concerned, a block is any section of text over three characters long
removed in one go. This includes lines as well as marked blocks of
text (described later in the manual). To see this is action, position
the cursor at the start
    A useful tip is that the same block may be undeleted more than
once. This can be put to good use when you have a number of lines
which 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 go
back and make any minor changes required to the other lines.
    We shall now go to the end of the document, either by selecting
the end of text option from the Move menu, or by scrolling the text
with the mouse. To scroll to the end, move the pointer down to the
bottom line of the screen and click the left button repeatedly until
the 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 it
is always good policy to regularly save your work. Select the File
menu and the Save as ... option. Note that the option is followed by
three dots  '...', as also are some other options in menus. This is an
indication that the option leads to a dialogue box. When the option is
selected, the dialogue box will appear, containing the message SAVE
filename:.
    This is the first example of a dialogue box that we have
encountered. Protext has a number of dialogue boxes for different
purposes and we shall come across further examples later, but in this
case it is a Text Box. These are used where you are required to type
in text, rather than just select something and always contain text
describing what is required. Key in FIRSTONE as the name and press the
Return key to confirm the entry. That's it. Your document is safely
saved to disk.
    As you will have noticed, the Move and Line menus provide a
number of other options in addition to those we have already used. The
Move menu allows you to move the cursor to the start or end of a
sentence, or line, to the previous or next paragraph, or page as well
as the start and end of a document. The Line menu allows you to not
only insert and delete lines, but also to delete parts of a line or
sentence, from the current cursor position.
    As these options function in the same  way  as those which you
have already used, we suggest that you experiment with  them  now, to
see the results, using the document you have already created.

õUsing the File Selectorõ

    The file selector is automatically displayed whenever you select
a menu option to load or merge a file and in other situations where a
file is to be loaded, such as a different configuration file. The file
selector may also be called from the File menu by selecting the
Catalogue files ... option.
    Protext's file selector allows you to carry out various disk
'housekeeping' tasks, such as copying, renaming, deleting  files and
creating new directories in addition to loading files. Other
housekeeping tasks not available in the file selector, such as
formatting disks, deleting directories and so on, may be carried out
from Protext's command line.
    Select the Load file ... option from the Files menu and all the
screen, apart from the status lines, will be replaced by a large file
selector with a menu of options at the bottom. Depending on how many
files there are in the current directory, one or more columns of
filenames and directory names will be displayed. Directories are
listed first, followed by the files in alphabetical order.
    Directories are always indicated by a <DIR> entry to the right of
the name, whereas files have their size shown. When the current
directory is not the root directory, a special entry called  <PARENT>
<DIR> is displayed at the start. This may be used to select the parent
of the current directory.
    The available options are displayed in a two line menu at the
bottom of the window and may be selected either by pressing the key
indicated in square brackets, or by double clicking inside the square
brackets.
    To load a file, select the required file by pointing with the
mouse and double clicking on the entry, or highlight the entry with a
single click and then double click on the [Return] menu option. This
same procedure is used when the Merge file ... option is selected, but
when you click on the required file, it will be merged into the
document at the current cursor location. Select and load a document
now, then move the cursor to a suitable place in the document and use
the Merge file ... option to merge a selected file into the existing
document.
    If the current drive/directory is not the one containing the
file(s) you want to load or work on, you will need to change to it. To
change drives, you must select the [D]rive change option, either by
double clicking on the D, or by pressing the D key.
    A dialogue box will open with the prompt Enter path: and you
should type in the name of the directory you want. The file window
will clear and be replaced by the contents of the new drive and the
heading at the top of the window will change to show the new drive and
directory.
    Move the mouse pointer to a directory entry and click on it to
highlight it. The directory may then be selected as the current
directory by pressing Return or double clicking on the entry in the
menu. The list of files will change to show the files available in the
directory.
    If there are only a small number of files in the directory, it is
easy to find the file you require, but if there are a large number of
files 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, using
wildcards and characters, to something which will match only some of
the files. The list of files will change, showing only those files
which match the file specification. To show all files again, double
click on the [A] Show all option.
    Several options are provided to enable you to rename, copy or
delete files. Select [C]opy file(s) and a dialogue box will request
COPY from (filename):. this is a request for the name of the file, or
files, you wish to copy. The file(s) do not need to be in the current
directory, which is why it does not automatically use a highlighted
filename.
    Copy will also allow you to copy a number of files at the same
time by specifying wildcards. Once you have entered the name of the
file(s) you want to copy and confirmed the entry, a second dialogue
box will request COPY to (file or path):. If you have specified a
single file name you may specify a different filename for the
destination, but if you have specified wildcards, you must specify a
destination directory.
    If you leave this dialogue entry blank Protext will copy the
specified 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 of
the currently selected directory. Select this option now and a
dialogue box will open, requesting MKDIR directory name:. Key in the
name you require and press Return.