=================== Chapter 10 ADVANCED TOPICS =================== 10.1 HOT Keys And Dormancy When you are using CygnusEd Professional you may find that you are constantly entering and exiting out of the editor, only to start it up again moments later. If you have CygnusEd Professional on a floppy drive then this is inefficient because it takes a while to load CygnusEd Professional from floppy. If you have CygnusEd Professional on a ram disk then this is inefficient because when you are using CygnusEd Professional there are actually two copies in memory, one in the ram disk and the other being executed. The HOT-START function of CygnusEd Professional is designed to fix this problem. With this feature of CygnusEd Professional enabled you can make CygnusEd Professional stay in memory when you exit so that it can be revived with a hot key, a CLI program or a WorkBench program. CygnusEd Professional provides two "NOT KEYS" that CygnusEd Professional will hear from anywhere on the Amiga (CygnusEd Professional doesn't have to be the active window to hear them!). These two commands will tell a CygnusEd Professional that is already running somewhere on the system to become active or to kill itself off. The HOT-Start Enabled mode (set in the GLOBAL SETTINGS menu) will cause CygnusEd Professional to become dormant when you quit out of the last view CygnusEd Professional is displaying. This dormancy is a state where CygnusEd Professional is still in memory, but is waiting for one of the HOT keys or the ED activator program (provided with CygnusEd Professional, see also ED - THE CygnusEd Professional ACTIVATOR) to be executed. Page 75 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The reason you would want to leave CygnusEd Professional dormant in memory is because then you don't have to load it from the disk the next time you use it. In fact, you don't even have to type the command line, or click on any icons, if you don't want to. To allow CygnusEd Professional to become dormant after you are finished editing, you must first activate the HOT-Start Enabled option, otherwise CygnusEd Professional will exit completely. If the option is activated, then when you quit the last view, CygnusEd Professional will become dormant and wait for one of the following: 1. HOT-START Pressing RIGHT-ALT + RIGHT-SHIFT + RETURN together will cause CygnusEd Professional to start up with a clear file instantly. You can use this while CygnusEd Professional is open already; the CygnusEd Professional screen will pop to the front and become the active window. When CygnusEd Professional is dormant it does its best to reduce the amount of memory it consumes. 2. HOT-KILL RIGHT-ALT + RIGHT-SHIFT + CONTROL + RETURN together will cause a dormant CygnusEd Professional to kill itself off completely. This will free up the memory that a dormant CygnusEd Professional takes up (because a dormant CygnusEd Professional is still in memory). If CygnusEd Professional is open already then the CygnusEd Professional screen will pop to the front and become the active window (and NOT be killed off). 3. ED ACTIVATOR The ED program provided on the CygnusEd Professional distribution disk will pass file name(s) to CygnusEd Professional to edit. If CygnusEd Professional is dormant at the time, it will activate CygnusEd Professional much the same as HOT-START does. See Section 13 - ED - THE CygnusEd Professional ACTIVATOR for more information on ED. CygnusEd Professional can be started up initially in a dormant state without displaying a screen at all. Many people will find this very useful as they can then start up CygnusEd Professional in their S:Startup-Sequence script and then have CygnusEd Professional available on call with the HOT-START sequence. Page 76 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To start CygnusEd Professional up as dormant, you must use the CLI or modify your Startup-Sequence to contain the line: CED -r CygnusEd Professional will then load into memory and will become dormant, waiting for a signal via the HOT keys or ED. CygnusEd Professional is designed to detach itself from the invoking CLI so that the invoking CLI can itself be closed without waiting for CygnusEd Professional to terminate. Thus "CED -r" in a startup-sequence will not interfere with the initial CLI closing at the end of the startup-sequence with an "EndCLI". However, if CygnusEd Professional has been disconnected from its invoking CLI, then it will no longer be able to execute DOS commands (ARexx commands will still function however). To keep CygnusEd Professional from disconnecting itself from the invoking CLI, use the "-keepio" command line option. This will allow DOS commands to be launched from within CygnusEd Professional. If you elect to use -keepio then you should "run" CygnusEd Professional so that your CLI will continue to be available for your use while CygnusEd Professional is running. More information on this can be found in the "Executing DOS commands" section. 10.2 Starting CygnusEd Professional With Multiple Files When you start up CygnusEd Professional, you can specify more than one file (up to 10, in fact). When you do, all the files you have specified will be loaded in and displayed in seperate views. From the CLI, just enter: CED file1 file2 file3 From the WorkBench, you can use the extended-select feature of the WorkBench. This is done by clicking on the first file once with your left mouse button, then hold the SHIFT key down while clicking once on the next file(s). When you have selected all the files you want to edit, click twice on the CED icon - while still holding the SHIFT key down. If one of the files you want to edit has CygnusEd Professional as its "default tool" (program that gets run when you double click on it) then you can double click last on this file instead of on the CED icon. Page 77 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.3 Using the Columnar Block Effectively A feature which sets CygnusEd Professional apart from most editors is CygnusEd Professional's ability to operate on vertical as well as horizontal blocks. The common MARK BLOCK method (for horizontal blocks) is used most often, but a second method COLUMNAR BLOCK (for vertical blocks) is also supported. With this alternate method, you can select any rectangular area in the document to copy or cut, and then paste. You can use it to shift text horizontally, format your text into multiple columns, move diagrams around, etc. 10.3.1 Shifting Text Horizontally It is often helpful to move a piece of text to a different horizontal or vertical position. For example, say we want to move a diagram or a table to a different area on the screen. We would select one corner of the area to be moved (the diagram) using MARK COLUMNAR BLOCK and then move the cursor to the opposite corner of the rectangular section to be moved. We then CUT BLOCK to remove the area from its original location into the block buffer. Then we position our cursor to the corner of the area where we want to insert the area and use INSERT BLOCK to move it into place there. Note that vertical block operations are normally done with LAYOUT mode ON in the FILE SETTINGS menu. LAYOUT mode means that you can move the cursor anywhere on the screen, even beyond the EOL character (beyond the physical ends of lines). This allows you to go far enough over to the right to mark the columnar block, even though the line you are on may not extend that far. Having CygnusEd Professional in LAYOUT mode also ensures that the diagram will be padded on the left with spaces where necessary to keep all the lines of the block neatly lined up. If you are not in LAYOUT mode when you insert a columnar block then the individual lines will be tacked onto the ends of the lines already there. 10.3.2 Making Multi-Column Text Files You might want to format some text into multiple columns. This format, used in newspapers and most other printed media, is available in limited form in CygnusEd Professional by using the COLUMNAR BLOCK commands. Page 78 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- For example, let us say that we have two paragraphs which we want side by side in columns, format-filled (left- and right- justified) to 36 characters wide each, with a four character space between the two columns. Here is the method to do this: First, make sure LAYOUT mode is on, then set the right border to column 36. Then use the FORMAT WITH FILL (AMIGA-f) command to reformat each paragraph. Now you have both paragraphs format-filled as 36 character-wide columns - but they are still end-to-end in the same column. Next, use the MARK COLUMNAR BLOCK to mark the beginning of the second paragraph and go to the end of the paragraph and select CUT BLOCK. Be sure that you go far enough to the right to mark the entire paragraph. This will move the block out of the document and into CygnusEd Professional's buffer. Lastly, move the cursor to the first line of the first paragraph, but go to column 40. This is the corner at which you want to paste the other column, so select PASTE BLOCK. You now have two paragraphs side by side in 36 character columns, format-filled with a four character gap between them! Note: As you can see, this method is useful only when the text you have written is not likely to require changing later, since CygnusEd Professional does not think of columnar text as such. Moving the text this way should be the last change you make to your document. 10.4 Converting Tabs And Spaces With Print Functions CygnusEd Professional provides the ability to convert tabs to spaces and vice versa. To convert a file or a paste block, you use the Print commands in the PROJECT menu. When you have specified where the output will go (i.e., the printer PRT: device, or a file name), CygnusEd Professional will ask you if you want to convert from TABS to SPACES or from SPACES to TABS. For example, you are working on an assembly language program and use irregular tabs stops ( a tab stop for instruction, parameter, comments). If you "type" this file to the printer device then it will not be printed properly, since the printer device and your printer think of tabstops as being placed at regular intervals. If you want to print this file out to your printer, select TABS to SPACES after selecting print file an deselecting the output file (or PRT:). This will automatically replace all existing tab characters with the appropriate number of spaces - so your printer doesn't need to be programmed with your peculiar tab settings. Page 79 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another important use of this function is if you have a file with tabs of one size or setting and want to convert it to tabs of another size or setting, without affecting the position of the text, you can use the TABS to SPACES output with the old format in effect, then read in the output file (containing now tabs) and change to the new TAB settings. YOU can then PRINT the file again with the SPACES to TABS option - your file looks the same as it did before, but has the new tab sizes or settings. For another example, a use who has written a document with the ED screen editor (provided with WorkBench) wants to convert to actual tabs of length 3. He would use the SPACES to TABS setting on the PRINT options to automatically entab the file. Page 80 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------