The Text Area and Gutter

Text editing takes place in the text area. It behaves in a similar manner to many Windows and MacOS editors; the few unique features will be described in this section.

The text area will automatically scroll up or down if text editing is performed closer than three lines from the top or bottom of the text area. This feature is called electric scrolling.

To aid in locating the caret, the current line is drawn with a different background color. To make it clear which lines end w,ith white space, end of line markers are drawn at the end of each line.

The strip on the left of the text area is called a gutter. The gutter displays marker and register locations; it will also display line numbers if the View>Line Numbers (shortcut: C+e C+t) command is invoked.

Many text area and gutter settings can be customized to suit your taste in the Text Area and Gutter panes of the Utilities>Global Options dialog box; see the section called “The Text Area Pane” and the section called “The Gutter Pane”.