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Advanced editing techniques

Advanced editing techniques

We now discuss a number of special features of Edith Pro that contribute essentially to the added editing value of the package, and shouldn't go unnoticed.

CREATIVE USE OF ARBITRARILY SHAPED SELECTIONS

The fragmented selection system allows you to mark any selection of the text in a window, and all operations (except external commands) will operate sensibly on such selections. For example, you can enter a table of numbers, select a column, and use Shift right (Text menu, Ctrl K) to just that column to the right. You can cut away column 3 using Cut (Edit menu, Alt X), and use Overlay (Edit menu, Alt Shift V) to paste it back as column 5. You can align text with Indent to column... (Text menu, Alt Shift D). You can format non-continuous text as a paragraph using Format paragraph (Text menu, Alt Shift P). After switching on Replace mode (Mark menu, Insert), you can erase columns using Delete (Edit menu, Alt Shift X), and overwrite columns using Overlay (Edit menu, Alt Shift V) (instead of inserting them line by line).

REPEATING DRIBBLES ON MULTIPLE LINES

Repeat dribble (Edit menu, Ctrl R) (see Undo & Repeat), when performed on a selection consisting of two or more lines, will repeat the recorded dribble to each line in the selection. It takes some time to understand the details of how the dribble recorder works, but especially when editing computer code or tables of numbers, multiple repeat is a valuable tool.

USING SHORTCUTS

For computer languages with rather long and tedious command sequences, such as LaTeX and HTML, text shortcuts can improve your editing convenience and speed considerably. A shortcut is an abbreviation (typically less than 6 letters). You type the abbreviation, then hit Escape, and it is replaced with a longer text. These shortcuts can freely position the cursor inside the replaced text and can ask for parameters---strings to be substituted in the replacement. Shortcuts can be defined in the shortcut panel.

TEXT MARKERS

Each editor window has a set of four text markers available. A position in the text is marked with Put marker (Mark menu, Alt P). New markers appear on the scroll bar as small black triangles. The markers are traversed using Back (Browse menu, Alt Left) and Forward (Browse menu, Alt Right). Some functions (text home, text end, Goto line... (Browse menu, Alt G)) create markers automatically. When all four markes are set and an additional one is requested, the one set longest ago is deleted first. The text marker system is also used when line numbers are specified for a file on the command line.

SOURCE TAGS

Tags are known from the vi editor. A file tags in the directory of the file you are editing contains a number of keywords, each with a way for the editor to find information linked to that keyword. In a sense, tags are to collections of plain text files what links are in sets of HTML documents on the web (or the Edith on-line manual). They are most frequently used by programmers who mark the definition of a function, so they can go back to its definition later just by selecting the function name where it's used in other files. There are programs that create tags files for you automatically. Edith also offers Create source tag (Mark menu, Alt Shift H) to allow you to enter arbitrary tags. Once a tag has been created for a keyword, you can jump back to it by selecting the keyword (or usually just putting the cursor inside it) and choosing Edit source... (Browse menu, Ctrl E). 
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