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Text File | 1989-01-26 | 13.5 KB | 309 lines

Welcome to DREDIX! We'll be explaining how to use DREDIX in a series of short, simple lessons. Each lesson will appear here, at the top of the screen. You'll be able to try out what you learn at the bottom, where the cursor is. When you're finished with a lesson and ready to go forward, hold down the Ctrl key and press f. If you want to go back to an earlier lesson, press Ctrl-b. Now, press Ctrl-f and the lessons will begin ... @ ENTERING TEXT Type something on the alphanumeric keyboard. Did you notice how each letter was entered onto the screen where the cursor was, and then the cursor moved to the right? This is the basic way you enter text using DREDIX. Now try using the RETURN key. Notice how it ended the line and moved the cursor to the start of the next line? Try entering some more text, and when you're ready to go on, press Ctrl-f. If you want to go back to the previous lesson, press Ctrl-b. @ MOVING THE CURSOR UP, DOWN, LEFT AND RIGHT To move the cursor around, you use the arrow keys at the right of your keyboard. Press the up arrow to move up, the down arrow to move down, the left arrow to move left and the right arrow to move right. Try it. Did you notice that sometimes pressing an arrow key didn't do anything? If there's no place to go (for example, UP when you're already at the top), then that's where the arrow key takes you: no place. Press Ctrl-f to go on, and Ctrl-b to go back. @ INSERTING TEXT If you move the cursor to somewhere WITHIN a line of text and then type, the new text will be inserted where the cursor is. Since the old text has to go somewhere, DREDIX pushes it to the right. Give it a try. Try this too: Move the cursor to the middle of a line and press RETURN. The line is split! You can think of this as inserting a "RETURN" into a line. Press Ctrl-f to go on, and Ctrl-b to go back. @ DELETING TEXT One more lesson, and you'll know all you need to start typing a manuscript or a program. What if you want to erase something you've typed? If you notice a mistake right away, you can just backspace over it with the backspace key. Or, you can just move the cursor under the character you want to delete, and press the key marked Del. Try it out. So now you can enter, insert and delete text! Press Ctrl-f to go on ... @ JOINING LINES Remember how you could insert a RETURN as though it were an ordinary character? You can delete a RETURN, too! Try moving the cursor to the far right of a line (not the last line, though), and pressing Del. Two lines are joined into one! So inserting RETURN splits lines, and deleting RETURN joins lines! There's lots more to come, so press Ctrl-f and we'll continue... @ GETTING HELP One of the most useful commands is the HELP command. You can issue this command at any time to get some help from DREDIX about what to do in whatever situation you`re in. Try it: hold down Alt and then press h. Are you back? Do it again, if you want. Commands like "hold down Alt and then press h" will be abbreviated "Alt-h" in these lessons, on the help screens and in the DREDIX User's Manual. Now press Ctrl-f ... @ EDITING FILES Tired of typing? Want to get a lot of text in a hurry? The EDIT command tells DREDIX to read in a file of text (or a program, or some data, or whatever). To issue this command, press Alt-e. (Remember: hold down Alt and then press e.) Answer "y" (followed by RETURN) if you get an "OK to lose changes" question. DREDIX has displayed the prompt "File:" and placed the cursor after it. It wants you to type a file name. Type the name "text". (Don't forget RETURN.) You should have a window-full! Press Ctrl-f to do some things with this text ... @ SCROLLING Now, there's more text in the file "text" than DREDIX is showing (you probably suspected as much). Move the cursor with the down arrow. Notice what happens when you reach the last visible line? DREDIX scrolls the text automatically! Now go back with the up arrow. DREDIX scrolls it back up. In fact, you're free to move the cursor through the text any way you want, and DREDIX will move the window to keep up. Practice a while if you like (go ahead and change the text if you want to--you can't hurt anything). Then it's Ctrl-f and more ... @ SCROLLING SIDEWAYS DREDIX not only can scroll up and down, but it can scroll sideways, too! To see this, you'll have to help out by editing the file "text" a little, but you've already learned all you need. First, join two lines together by moving the cursor to the end of a line and pressing Del. You've probably made the line too long to fit on the screen (more than 80 chracters). Move the cursor to the right (as though you were moving it off the screen). The window moves with it! You might want to play around with this a while. It's fun! And then Ctrl-f ... @ THE SCREEN It's time we explained a few things about the screen. As you can see, it's divided into two windows. You've been working in the lower window, and we've been displaying lessons in the upper window. At the lower right DREDIX tells you what file you're editing, the column you're in, the line you're on and the total number of lines. It also tells you what "buffer" you're in (B2), but we won't worry about buffers right now. Messages show up at bottom-left, and prompts above messages. Now, Ctrl-f ... @ JUMPING AROUND Moving the cursor up and down a line at a time can get pretty tedious if you have a large file. Here's how to move around in a hurry: the Home key moves the cursor to the very first character in the file, and End moves it to the very last character. Try it (you should still have "text" in your window). PgUp moves the window a bunch of lines up, and PgDn moves it a bunch of lines down. How much is a bunch? It's however big the window is: 10 lines right now. Of course, if there's nowhere to go, you go nowhere. Ctrl-f ... @ DELETING LINES If you want to delete a whole line, you could delete a character at a time. But there's an easier way: use Alt-d. If you delete a line by mistake you can "undo" the damage with Alt-u. You can think of Alt-d and Alt-u as opposites. Try to undo the deletions you just made. Then delete them again, and undo them again, and ... Enough of this game ... onward with Ctrl-f ... @ WINDOWS DREDIX actually has two windows, numbered 1 and 2. We've been in window 1, and you've been in window 2. You have to stay in window 2 while you're taking these lessons, but when you use DREDIX for real, you can edit in a full-screen window (window 1) or in split-screen windows (1 and 2). You'll use the F2 key to go to window 2, the F1 key to go back to window 1, and Alt-o to restore the screen to one window. A full explanation is in the DREDIX User's Manual. Press Ctrl-f to go on ... @ SEARCHING Scanning the whole file to find the text you're looking for is OK, but there's a nice of way of getting DREDIX to do the hunting for you. You type a pattern, and DREDIX finds the text that matches it. Here's how it goes: press Alt-s, and DREDIX will prompt you for a pattern. Try it! Now, type the pattern. How about the letter "e" for starters? (Don't forget RETURN.) DREDIX has moved the cursor to the first "e" it found. You can edit there just as if you had moved the cursor yourself. Ctrl-f for more ... @ MORE ON SEARCHING Frequently, when DREDIX finds something that matches your pattern, it's found the wrong match. Maybe it wasn't the first one you wanted, but the next one? You can tell DREDIX to look further along without retyping the pattern. Just press Alt-F10, and DREDIX will find the next match. Go ahead, try it. Try more patterns (they're not limited to single letters, of course). There's more to patterns than we can go into here, so on to translating (Ctrl-f) ... @ TRANSLATING Automatic translation is one of DREDIXs most powerful features. For this you use Alt-t. DREDIX will prompt for a pattern and then for a "replacement". Whatever the pattern matches will be replaced by the text you supply. Do this: press Alt-t. Then type the pattern "girl" (without the quotes), and after RETURN, the replacement "young woman", followed by RETURN. DREDIX will stop the cursor at "girl" and display a message. To decrypt it, press Alt-h to get help (we thought you'd like to use help for once). Then Ctrl-f ... @ MORE ON TRANSLATING You can make the replacement string empty, and thereby just delete whatever the pattern matched. You supply an empty replacement string just by responding to the "Replacement:" prompt with an immediate RETURN. There's too much more on translating for us to go into it all now. So we'll move on. If you'll press Ctrl-f ... @ SAVING YOUR CHANGES When you're finished making your changes, press Alt-w to rewrite the file you're editing with the version you've created inside DREDIX. Until you press Alt-w, your changes aren't saved. Since a power failure or other glitch can terminate your editing session at any time, it's a good idea to write your changes with Alt-w every few minutes, even if you're not finished editing. That way you stand to lose only your most recent changes if things go wrong. Press Ctrl-f ... @ QUITTING Feel like quitting? Well, even if you don't, you might want to later, so here's how: press Alt-x (the same keystroke that escapes from Alt-t). If you try to quit without writing your changes (Alt-w), DREDIX will ask you if it's OK to lose your changes. If you answer "y", you'll quit anyway. If you answer "n", DREDIX won't quit and you'll get a chance to save your work first. This is a nice safety feature! If you don't want to quit, school's still in session, so press Ctrl-f ... @ GOING PLACES Would you like to go directly to a line by specifying a line number? Try Alt-g. It'll prompt you for a line number, and if you supply one the cursor will go there right away. It's a little like searching, but via a line number instead of a pattern. Useful if your compiler just gave you an error message and you want to see what the line in question looks like. Now, we'll move on to moving, with a gentle press of Ctrl-f ... @ MARKING LINES TO BE MOVED Moving lines from one place to another is a three-step procedure: 1. You mark the line or lines you want to move (with Alt-k). 2. You place the cursor anywhere on the line where you want the marked lines to be moved to. You can do this with the arrow keys, with searching (Alt-s) or with the go command (Alt-g). 3. You press Alt-m, and DREDIX moves the text you've marked. Press Ctrl-f and we'll go through it step-by-step ... @ MARKING Do this: put the cursor someplace, and press Alt-k. Notice that DREDIX tells you that it's waiting for the second mark. Then place the cursor a few lines away, and press Alt-k. DREDIX will highlight the lines you've marked with a reverse-video bar in column 1. After you've marked things, press Ctrl-f and we'll move them someplace ... @ MOVING Now that some lines are marked, place the cursor somewhere else (above or below the marked lines), and press Alt-m. DREDIX will move the lines. They're still highlighted, though, so you can easily see what DREDIX has done. To turn off the highlighting (and cancel the marks), just press Alt-k again. Notice that DREDIX moved the lines to FOLLOW the target line. (A useful fact to keep in mind.) Copying lines is just as easy. Press Ctrl-f and you'll see ... @ COPYING Copying is exactly like moving, except that the lines you've marked aren't disturbed in any way: they're still marked, and still highlighted. But a group of lines just like them will be appended after the cursor. Follow the steps we did for moving (use Alt-k to mark, and then position the cursor to where you want the copy). Then press Alt-c. Presto, a copy. You can move and copy BETWEEN windows, too. Just place the cursor in another window before pressing Alt-m or Alt-c (try this later). And now, for Ctrl-f ... @ DELETING A GROUP OF LINES There's another useful thing you can do to a group of marked lines besides move them or copy them: you can delete them. The marking part is just like it is for moving and copying. To delete the lines, you press Ctrl-d (instead of Alt-m or Alt-c). If you've deleted the marked lines by mistake, you can use Alt-u (undo) to get them back--one line at a time. Try Ctrl-d for yourself, and then press Ctrl-f to move on... @ CONGRATULATIONS!!! If you've gotten this far, you've passed the course. Not that there isn't more to learn, though. After you've used DREDIX for a while, you'll want to read the User's Manual thoroughly so that you can use DREDIX to its fullest. Press Ctrl-f for a list of some more handy DREDIX features that you can learn about from the manual. @ ADDITIONAL DREDIX FEATURES * Using multiple buffers * Appending/inserting blank lines * Jumping to start/end of lines * Status of files/buffers/windows * Merging files * Fancy, "wild-card" patterns * Additional cursor motions * Moving right and left by words * Overtype mode * Using multiple windows @ THE END Press Ctrl-f to start the course over, or Alt-x to exit. Emerging Technology Consultants, Inc. 1877 Broadway Boulder, CO 80302 303-447-9495 Tutorial and program (C)Copyright 1984 Emerging Technology Consultants, Inc.