=================== Chapter 3 Getting Started =================== 3.1 Starting CygnusEd Professional from the WorkBench To start CED from the WorkBench, double click on the CED icon to load the editor from disk. The editor will present an empty document ready for your commands. To edit an existing document from the WorkBench, click on its icon, then hold the SHIFT Key down while clicking on the CED icon twice. When CED is started from the WorkBench, it will automatically create an icon for any document you save, unless you override this explicitly by resetting the option ICON CREATION in the GLOBAL SETTINGS menu (see description under MENU COMMANDS). 3.2 Starting CygnusEd Professional from the CLI To start CED from the CLI, just use: 1> CED myfile.txt Use the filename you wish in place of "myfile.txt". If you omit the filename and just enter "CED", it will start up the editor with an empty document. For more advanced ways of initiating CygnusEd Professional, with multiple files or initial dormancy, see ADVANCED TOPICS. Page 15 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.3 A First Look When CygnusEd Professional appears, you will notice that a new screen (i.e., not the WorkBench screen) is created for CygnusEd Professional to use. This screen has a title bar containing the name of the file you are editing (no name, if you are creating a new file) as well as line and column number indicators. If you specified a file to load, the text that you see will comprise the initial part of the specified file. CygnusEd Professional has many commands and options, most of which are accessed via pull down menus or keyboard shortcuts. To look at these commands and options, hold down the right mouse button (the MENU button) and move the pointer to the top of the screen. You will see a list of several categories. When you move the pointer on top of a category name, a menu of command and/or options will appear. Still holding the MENU button down, you can move the pointer down the list of items in the menu and some will have submenus of more options and commands. Some of the commands and options are familiar and straightforward and some are more advanced and complex. All the commands and options listed in the menus are fully described in the MENU COMMANDS section of this manual. 3.4 Moving Around You are now in the editor proper and can begin editing. The easiest way to move around a document is with the cursor keys. These keys will move the cursor one character in the specified direction. If you look in the MOVE menu, you will see a list of cursor movement commands accessible by typing a cursor key when another key is already pressed. Commands can be selected from this list or you can use the menu as a "cheat sheet" to remind you of the keyboard commands. For example, to move to the end of your file, press CTRL and the DOWN ARROW key. To move to the beginning of the line, press SHIFT and the LEFT ARROW key. In the MOVE menu, you will see a list of variants of the arrow keys described under each of the headings of SHIFT, ALT, and CTRL. Most of these will quickly become second-nature. The SHIFT key can be found on either side of your keyboard. The ALT can be found near either AMIGA key (near the space bar). The CTRL key can be found on the left side of the keyboard near the CAPS LOCK key. Page 16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another way of moving within the file is with the "Jump to Line" command in the MOVE menu. When you select this command either through the menu or by holding an AMIGA key and pressing the letter "j" (this is an example of a keyboard shortcut), a little requester will appear and ask you to enter the line number to which you wish to go. Note that when using keyboard short cuts for menu commands, the case of the key depressed is significant. For example, pressing AMIGA and "o" will open a new file while AMIGA and "O" will include (insert) a new file. You can also move through the file using the mouse. Pressing the SELECT button (the left mouse button) will move the cursor to the character under the pointer (or as close as possible). If you hold down the SELECT button and move the mouse around, you will notice that the cursor will follow the pointer. Now, continuing to hold the button, move the pointer to the top or bottom edge of the view. The text in the window will scroll. If you experiment with this, you will notice that the further from the center of the view you hold the pointer, the faster the text will scroll! CygnusEd Professional also has an optional scroll bar that makes moving through the file intuitive and easy. If the scroll bar is not already displayed, go the the SCROLL BAR item in the VIEW SETTINGS menu and select either "scroll bar on left" or "scroll bar on right", depending on which side you want it to appear on. (Note that if your screen is wider than the standard WorkBench screen you may not be able to move the mouse over a scroll bar on the right side of the screen. This is an operating system problem which Commodore will address in future revisions of the operating system. For now, we have provided you with the option of placing the scroll bar on the left hand side of the screen which is always accessible). The scroll bar can be used with the mouse to slide through your file. Simply grab the knob (when using standard WorkBench colors, the "knob" is the small black inner box in the scroll bar) by depressing the SELECT button of your mouse over it and drag the mouse up and down. If the file is small enough to fit completely on the screen the scroll bar won't do anything. The size of the knob shows the size of the current display area compared to the whole file. The position of the knob shows you which area of the file is being displayed. You will notice that as you move the knob around, the text scrolls along, trying to keep up with you. When you release the knob the screen will show the text corresponding to the relative position of the knob within the scroll bar. The scroll bar is normally displayed, but can be switched off. The option for this is in the VIEW SETTINGS portion of the ENVIRONMENT menu. Page 17 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.5 Editing an Existing File You can specify the file you want to edit by clicking on its icon and CED's (via the WorkBench), or by specifying the file name in the command line (via the CLI). You can also specify the file to edit once you are inside CygnusEd Professional. To do this, you select OPEN... from the PROJECT menu or hold an AMIGA key down and press "o". This will display the CygnusEd Professional file requester. It is used to specify a filename for opening files, storing files, printing, etc. For a full description of the different file requester gadgets§, see USE OF THE FILE REQUESTER. For now though, just enter the directory and file names in their string gadgets. 3.6 Simple Editing 3.6.1 Adding Text Adding text in CygnusEd Professional is easy. Simply move the cursor to the location where you want to add text and start typing! The words you type are automatically inserted at the cursor location while the text following the cursor continues to move over and out of the way. Notice that as you depress a key on the keyboard your mouse cursor seems to disappear. We've provided this feature to help you concentrate on editing rather than upon constantly moving your mouse out of the way. To make the mouse visible again, simply move it. The mode you are using is called "Insert" mode. "Overstrike" mode will overwrite the text the cursor is covering. By default, CygnusEd Professional is in Insert mode. To change to Overstrike mode, you can de-select the option "Insert" in the ENVIRONMENT - File Settings Menu. ------------------- §The term "gadget" will be used extensively in this manual. Gadgets, which are an integral part of the Amiga user environment, can be thought of as buttons which can be depressed or selected with the use of the mouse. One type of gadget used in CygnusEd Professional is called the "string gadget". A string gadget is used to supply a textual answer to a request for information by CygnusEd Professional. For example, when CygnusEd Professional solicits a line number to jump to (using the JUMP TO command or AMIGA-j) you will type in the line number using a string gadget. Page 18 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- You will notice that as you type and the cursor reaches the right side of the screen that the line is not broken (or "wrapped") to the next line, but instead the whole view scrolls horizontally. This way you can type in lines as long as you like (up to 1024 characters per line) and still be able to see the text on the right edge. To start a new line, just press RETURN. Another option in the FILE SETTINGS - Environment menu is "Word Wrap", which will automatically press RETURN for You when you near the edge of the view by looking at the right margin you have set (another option in the same menu). When you have this option enabled, CygnusEd Professional will let you type until a word extends beyond the right border, then that word will be moved down to the next line. 3.6.2 Deleting Text The DELETE key will remove the character under the cursor. The BACKSPACE key will remove the character to the left of the cursor. By holding the CTRL key and pressing either of these, the character that was deleted can be inserted in the current location. You can use this as an "Undo" or use it to delete a character from one location and inserting it in another. These are the delete/undelete and backspace/unbackspace character commands. To delete a word at a time, you use the same keys you use for deleting characters, but also hold down the ALT key. For example, when you press ALT and BACKSPACE, the previous word is deleted. When you later press CTRL and ALT and BACKSPACE that same word is inserted. The line delete/undelete commands are listed in the CUT/PASTE menu. They are: Delete line, Delete to End-of-Line, and Undelete Line. The command can also be accessed from the menu by pressing an AMIGA key and the letter k, y, or l, respectively. When you select Delete Line, the line the cursor is on is deleted, but is remembered, so you can later select Undelete Line to insert the line elsewhere. The Delete to End-of-Line will delete from the current cursor location to the end of the current line. The text to the left of the cursor will not be deleted. The Undelete Line will insert the text removed using this command as well. Page 19 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.7 Saving Your Work When you are editing a file, a little asterisk (*) will appear next to the line and column number indicator in the view title. This asterisk indicates that you have changed the file since the last time you saved it. If the asterisk is displayed in the title bar (i.e., if changes have been made to the file) then CygnusEd Professional will warn you if you try to exit without saving. CygnusEd Professional will also warn you if you try to do a CLEAR on a changed file or if you try to OPEN a new file in the same view as the changed file. Now that you have made some changes you are ready to save the changed file. You can either select the SAVE command or the SAVE AS... command from the PROJECT menu. The SAVE command will store your file under the same name it was opened as. If you didn't specify a file when you started or if you created a new file, you will have to specify the file name to store under. The SAVE AS... command will always ask you to specify a name. You specify the name of the file in the CygnusEd Professional file requester, which is displayed anytime the editor needs a file name. For detailed information on using the file requester, see USE OF THE FILE REQUESTER. When you have specified the file name, the file will be stored and the asterisk will disappear, meaning that no unsaved changes have been made to the file in the editor. 3.8 Exiting CygnusEd Professional When you are finished with an editing session, you can exit CygnusEd Professional by selecting QUIT from the PROJECT menu. The keyboard shortcut, AMIGA-q, will do the same thing. If you try to quit before saving the changes you have made to the file since last saving it, CygnusEd Professional will warn you of how many changes have been made since the file was last saved and ask you whether to continue quitting or abort the quit. Page 20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------