Cream of the Crop 22/Cream of the Crop 22.iso/editor/ce361.zip/MANUAL

Text File | 1996-11-11 | 19KB | 403 lines

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                     *  CMEditor -- Version 3.61   *
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CMEditor USER'S MANUAL:

Background:

   CMEditor was originally written as the editor module for CMFiler, my
multipurpose disk/file manager designed to bring together and simplify
99% of the file management functions you would ever need.  I eventually
broke out a standalone version at the urging of several users.  If you
find CMEditor useful and continue to use it beyond a 60-day evaluation
period, I require that you register your copy for $10.  Please read the
section on registration, and note the benefit of receiving on-disk a
registered copy of the current version of CMEditor, a copy of the
shareware version of CMFiler for your evaluation, and, by permission of
the author, a copy of the shareware version of Integrity Master, the
outstanding anti-virus and system integrity program by Wolfgang Stiller.
Note that the versions of CMFiler and Integrity Master provided in this
offer are for your evaluation and MUST be registered for the fee required
by the author if you continue to use them beyond a fixed evaluation
period.

Running CMEditor. . .

   First, you may rename CMEDITOR.COM to CE.COM, to reduce the number
of keystrokes required to run it.  For convenience, I will refer to CMEditor
as CE from here on.  Execute CE from the DOS prompt with the following
command line (brackets indicated optional parameters)::

   CE FILESPEC [@Monitor[Screenlines][:Palette[Border]]] [-View]

     where:

     FILESPEC is the specification of the file to be edited,

     Monitor is the letter V,C,M,E,T or L, where:
          V=VGA, C=CGA/EGA, M=Monochrome, E=Epson LCD or equivalent,
          T=Tandy LCD or equivalent, and L=generic LCD display,
     ScreenLines=25, 43 or 50 (supported if monitor is VGA-capable),
     Palette=1,2,3 or 4, where:
          1=white on blue, 2=cyan on black, 3=blue on white, 4=white on black,
     Border is the letter b if screen border is to be painted (VGAs only),

     View is the letter v if file is to be viewed only, not edited.

   CE automatically saves the monitor information for reuse the next time it
is run, in an internal configuration area, so once you get the video display
the way you like it, you need never again include the video display parameters.


                           CMEditor - 1
   The following command lines are examples of legal syntax:

   ce letter.txt
   CE LETTER.TXT @V43:2
   ce c:\letters\my-ltr.doc @v50:1b -v
   CE my-ltr.doc @c:3

Record Delimiters. . .

   The default color display mode for "record delimiters" [carriage
return (CR), line feed (LF), and the combinations CR+LF and LF+CR] is to
show their color values, which are cued in the legend at the bottom
(blue=CR, green=LF, cyan=CR+LF, magenta=LF+CR). In addition, the end of
the file is denoted with a red End-of-File (EOF) mark. Sometimes it is
very useful to know exactly what delimiter combination your word
processors use, so you can duplicate it when you edit with CE. You can
toggle the colored delimiter symbols off and on with Alt-Minus or the
gray minus key. (This is also covered in a help screen you can get by
pressing Alt-H or F1.)

Information Area. . .

   The name of the file being viewed is shown in the lower left prompt area.
The lower right prompt area shows the ASCII value of the character at
the cursor (decimal and hex), the position of that character in the
file (starting with 1), the
line (called "record") the cursor is on, and the position of the cursor
within the line (called "Column", which for a long record is not
necessarily the same as the screen
column).  This information display may be toggled off and on with Alt-Plus
or the gray plus key.

   When the modifier key Alt- or Ctrl- is pressed, this information
area displays the block, navigation and special editing commands enabled by
the modifier key.

Line Wrapping. . .

   The default display mode is line wrapping, where any line longer than
80 characters is wrapped to the next screen line, so that all text is visible.
This mode can be toggled between "Wrap" and "No Wrap" (see the Wr/NW at
upper right for current status) with Alt-W.  In the NoWrap mode, each
line longer than 80 characters simply extends off the screen to the right,
but is accessible for viewing by putting the cursor on it and [Ctrl- or
Shift-] Rt Arrow-ing (see below) to any place on the line.
Cursor Movement. . .

   The arrow keys, either on the cursor keypad or numeric keypad, move
the cursor one line up or down and one character left or right.
Ctrl-Left/Rt Arrow move left or right one word at a time, and
Shift-Left/Rt Arrow and Home/End move to the beginning or end of the line,
as in PCWrite. A second press of the Home/End key moves to the top/bottom
of the page, and a third press moves to the beginning/end of the file.


                           CMEditor - 2
   PgDn/PgUp moves the display up or down one page frame (20, 38 or 45
lines), and leaves the cursor on the same relative video line.
Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn moves the display by 10 page frames for fast paging through
a file. Shift-Up/Down Arrow moves to the top/bottom of the current
page. Alt-B/E moves to the Beginning/End of the file contents in memory.

   The mouse moves the cursor similar to the arrow keys. A special
mouse feature allows variable speed scrolling as well. Hold the right
button down and move the cursor down a little bit. The file begins to
scroll slowly up the screen. Move the mouse down a little more and the
scroll rate increases, through a total of four speeds. Moving the mouse
up reverses the direction.

   For very long files, exceeding available memory, the editor loads only
as much as fits. When you get to the end of that section (i.e., the
current "file contents in memory" referred to above), the next operation
that asks for another page or line causes the editor to load in the
next section, remembering the file position of the start of the
previous section so it can backtrack if you want. (It actually loads the
next section with some overlap to the previous section, so that a little bit
of backtracking does not result in reloading the whole previous section.)
This "heel-and-toe" sequential loading is limited to 50 sections.

   A switch (Ctrl-M) allows masking non-ASCII characters.  This helps in
viewing word processing files, such as WordPerfect files, which have non-ASCII
characters distributed throughout the text.

Find a String. . .

   Want to look for a particular word or string of characters?  The
key combination Alt-F (for "Find") opens up a data window at the bottom for
you to enter a short string.  The word that the cursor is on is seeding
into this window.  Pressing Up Arrow will insert the previous search string.
After you edit the string and press Enter, CE will find the first appearance
of the string from the current cursor position, and put the cursor on it.
Alt-X (for "neXt") finds the next appearance, and can be used repeatedly until
the string no longer appears, which is signalled at the bottom of the screen.
The search process starts at the cursor location and goes to the end of the
file.  The search is case-insensitive.

Leading and Trailing Blanks in the Data Window. . .

   The data entry routine truncates leading and trailing blanks, but blanks
may be included as leading or trailing characters by enclosing the string
at either or both ends with quotes (") Suppose, for example, you wanted to
find all of the appearances in a file of the word "mark", but not
"remark". Press Alt-F and, in the data entry window enter:
Find string: >"mark               <.  This works for the replace string as
well.


                           CMEditor - 3
A String Search Shortcut. . .

   If the cursor is on a word for which you want to find the next appearance,
press Ctrl-G (for "Goto next appearance").  This is a shortcut for Alt-F, and
has the further benefit of recycling the search from the top of the file if the
word is not encountered between the starting point and the end of the file.

Editing a File. . .

   Exit view mode with either Esc or Enter. The mouse left button is the
same as Enter. (Note that any tags in the source panel are still there.)
Now you are ready to edit!  Position the cursor on a file that you have
an extra copy of somewhere, and press E (for Edit). CE again loads the
selected file, but this time with an internal "switch" set which tells
the editor module to support editing. (Or, in View mode, press Alt-D,
for "switch to eDit mode".)

Edit Mode Limitations. . .

   CE permits edit mode only if the file fits all at once into
available memory, has fewer than 16,380 records, and (in NoWrap mode) has
no record longer than 8190 bytes. CE will revert to view mode if
these conditions are not all satisfied.  If you have a lot of memory tied up
in resident programs or RAM disk/cache, then you may not be able to
edit extremely large files. Chances are, however, that this will never be
a practical limitation.

Typeover vs Insert. . .

   Look at the small reverse video box in the upper right corner of the
screen.  "T/O" or "Ins", then CE is in edit mode. Toggle between typeover
(T/O) and insert
(Ins) modes with the Insert key. Typing action is just like any word
processor.  In typeover mode, the Bksp key does not pull the text left. This
is to avoid unintentionally shortening the file when editing
length-sensitive files, such as .COM and .EXE files.

Editing a Line. . .

   You operate on a line at a time, and the "normal" editing keys work -
i.e. Bksp, Del, Tab, Shift-Tab, the unmodified and modified arrow
keys discussed above, and any ASCII-code keys. To create a new line,
just Shift-Arrow to the beginning or end of the current line, depending
on whether you want the new line above or below the current one, and hit
Enter. This inserts the default delimiter combination, CR+LF, into the text
to set up a new line void of text, but ready for you to start typing.
The combination Ctrl-Enter gives you a menu screen from which you may select
a different record delimiter. Join two lines by deleting the record
delimiter at the end of the first line to be joined. Delete a line with
Ctrl-Y ("Yank"). Delete from the cursor to the end of the line with
Ctrl-D. Delete a word and its associated whitespace with Ctrl-T.


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More on Record Delimiters. . .

   On CGA/EGA/VGA monitors, the record delimiter appears as a single
colored "blank" character at the end of the line, whether it is actually
two characters (e.g., CR+LF) or one (e.g., LF). It may be deleted to join
two lines, but not over-struck - it always pushes right, even when you are
in typeover mode. The red "End-of-File" (EOF) marker is not actually part
of your file, but rather is only a visual aid for you to see where the
text ends. When the cursor is on the EOF marker, the "byte number" in
the legend corresponds to the number of the next character, if you were to
type one. The EOF marker also always pushes right, and cannot be deleted.
The height of the cursor shows the status of the "Caps Lock" switch.

Alt- Keypad and Alt-N. . .

    Any ASCII code from 1 through 255 can be entered from the numeric
keypad using the Alt- key modifier. A special combination is provided for
ASCII zero ("NULL"), since Alt-Zero is not recognized by any keyboard drivers
I have seen.  It is Alt-N (for "Null").

Changing Case . . .

   Pressing Ctrl-U/L/I on a letter forces it into upper or lower case,
or inverts the case.

Block Operations. . . or the REAL Power of CE's Editor. . .

   All the block operations - there are six - are keyed to
Alt-key combinations, and they are all intuitive (sort of). They are:
Alt-{ Mark, Yank (delete), moVe, Copy, Print and Output }.


Popup ASCII Table. . .

   The command Ctrl-A pops up an ASCII table for
reference while editing or viewing a document.  Navigate through the
table with the Arrow keys or mouse, select the character desired, and
press Enter or the left mouse button to type it at the current cursor
position in the text.  Or press Esc or the right mouse button to leave
without typing.

Marking a Block, and the Copy Buffer. . .

   You may also manipulate blocks of lines. First mark a block by putting
the cursor on the first (or last) line of the block you want to do
something with, press Alt-M (for "Mark"), move down (or up) with
arrows, PgDn/Up, etc., and mark the last (or first) line of the block,
again with Alt-M. The marked text is written into a dedicated internal
copy buffer for later use. If you made a mistake, a third press of Alt-M
clears the marks, but leaves the copy buffer intact. The contents of this
copy buffer remain available for multiple use until a new block is marked.
You may exit the editor back to the main module, and edit another file,
and because the editor copy buffer is a dedicated chunk of RAM in the main
and editor modules, the buffer is still intact.  Just copy it into the
next file with Alt-C.


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   When you are marking a block, note that the information box at the
bottom left of the screen expands to show you the attributes of the
marked block - the number of the first and last records marked, and the
number of bytes in the painted area. There is an arbitrary 32 KB limit on
the copy buffer. The upper right-hand information box shows "Blk"
(for "blocked") instead of "T/O" or "Ins", meaning that normal editing is
not permitted while you have a block marked.

Delete, Copy, Move. . .

   Delete the block with Alt-Y ("Yank"). Or put the cursor in an unpainted
area of the file, and copy the block into that area, just ahead of the
line where you put the cursor, by pressing Alt-C ("Copy"). Or move it
with Alt-V ("moVe"). As noted above, the block previously "marked" into
the copy buffer is available for multiple use.  Just put the cursor where
you want the block to be copied and hit Alt-C again.

Restoring from Inadvertent Block Deletion. . .

   If you just deleted a block in error, put the cursor where you want
to restore it, and press Alt-C to copy the buffer back into the file.

Sending a Block of Text to the Printer. . .

   Print the copy buffer to the parallel printer with Alt-P ("Print").
After printing, if you want a form feed, press Ctrl-F ("Form feed" - note
the use of Ctrl- vice Alt- as the modifier key, since Alt-F was already
used for "Find").

. . . or to a File. . .

   Finally, output the copy buffer to a file in the same path as the file
being edited by pressing Alt-O (letter "O" for "Output"). A window opens at
the bottom for typing the name of the file for CE to create (if it
doesn't already exist) or append to if it does.

Replace and Global replace. . .

   In addition to the Alt-F "find" feature, there is an Alt-R "replace" and
an Alt-G "global replace" feature. Just press Alt-R or Alt-G and enter the
find and replace strings when prompted. (If you see a mistake in the
find string while you are typing the replace string, just arrow back up a
line and reedit it.) For Alt-R, CE will find the first match and ask you
to confirm the replacement. It continues finding and requesting
confirmation until you press Q (for "Quit replacing") or Esc. Alt-X
reactivates either the find or replace routine, whichever was used last.
Alt-G replaces all appearances of the find string with no confirmation. It
may be terminated with any key press. When global replace is thus
terminated, Alt-X reactivates the confirmatory replace, not the global replace.


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Importing a File. . .

   Import another file into the file being edited by placing the cursor on the
line just below the desired insertion point, and pressing Alt-T (for imporT).
Then enter the filespec to the file to be imported.

Leaving Edit Mode. . .

   After editing is complete, press Esc. When leaving the editor after
editing an existing file, there are several decisions you have to make:
1) under what name to save the edited file; 2) whether to use the
current date/time or the original date/time of the edited file as
the save-file's date/time stamp; 3) whether to rename the original file so
it is also saved; and 4) whether to return to the editor after the
save operation.

   The default selections for these options - the ones most often used -
are: 1) save the edited file under the original file's name; 2) do not
reuse the original date/time stamp; 3) do not rename and save the
original file; and 4) do not return to the editor. You can accept these
default options by pressing Enter, or Y, or if you had hit Esc by mistake,
you can press Esc again to return where you were in the editor. If the
defaults are not acceptable, press N, and CE will take you through each option.

   In the first option, CE offers the original file name as the save-file
name, but you can edit it, including adding a path to have it saved in
a different directory. If you do not want to save the edited file at all,
press Esc.

   In the second option, you may press Y to reuse the original date/time
stamp of the file that was edited.

   In the third option, CE offers a default name to rename the original
file, replacing the last character of the extension with an exclamation
point. You can edit the name, or press Esc to avoid renaming the original file.

   In the fourth option, you may press Y to return to the editor.


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Saving File in Mid-Session . . .

   The command Ctrl-S lets you save a file in mid-session while editing.
This is prudent during a long session just to make sure you don't lose the
edit to a power failure. Ctrl-S provides a sequence and defaults similar to
the exit sequence above except that you return to the editor instead
of leaving.

Creating a New File with the Editor. . .

   A new file may be created from the main module by pressing the letter
F ("new File") and entering a name for the new file in the data entry line.
The new file will appear in the directory from which the F command was issued.

Splitting a Files. . .

   You may split a file being viewed or edited into up to 20 smaller files,
at dividers you insert where you want.  Alt-I inserts a divider at the location
of the cursor, and Alt-S splits the file at the dividers. The beginning and
end of the file have pre-placed, implicit dividers. In edit mode, this splitter
may be used only if you have not yet edited the file, or if you have saved the
file in mid-session.

Help. . .

   A help facility may be summoned on-line at any time in the
editor with the command F1 or Alt-H.  Help keywords are listed alphabetically,
and you can navigate quickly to the section you want by pressing the first
letter of the keyword you are looking for.



                           CMEditor - 8