Software of the Month Club 1996 June

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Miscellaneous Aurora User Tips ────────────────────────────── This file contains a few miscellaneous Aurora user tips which you may wish to review. For complete documentation on how to install and use Aurora, see the Aurora Editor Users Guide (USER.DOX). Note that any key definitions shown here are the Aurora-style defaults. Basic Configuration ─────────────────── ∙ The editor should always be installed in an empty directory. Never mix files from different editor versions. ∙ Whenever you make a change to any of the editor configuration files (such as CONFIG.AML, KBD.AML, MENU.AML, etc.), you must enter the 'recompile' command ('Recompile the editor' <alt f2> on the Set menu) for your changes to take effect. ∙ If you prefer to start Aurora by another name, you can simply rename the file A.EXE to whatever you wish (such as E.EXE). Do not rename any other files distributed with the editor. ∙ You can re-install Aurora by selecting 'Run installation' from the Sample Utilities Macros menu (on the Macro menu). The Keyboard ──────────── ∙ When adding new key definitions to KBD.AML, be sure to place each definition in the appropriate 'object' for the window in which you would like the key to be active. ∙ If you have added or changed keyboard definitions, you will probably also want to change any Menu definitions which show the old keys. ∙ To prevent the editor from using the keypad <grey />, <grey *>, <grey ->, and <grey +> keys as function keys, simply remove these function key definitions from KBD.AML. Be sure to remove them from within both the 'prompt' and 'edit' objects. ∙ To execute a key or macro function from the DOS command line, use the '-e' command line option. Key or event names must be enclosed in double quotes. For example: C>a -emymacro // executes the function 'mymacro' after the editor is started C>a -e"<shift f1>" -e"<alt =>" // simulates <shift f1>, <alt => after the editor is started ∙ New keyboard layouts for other editors/word processors may be added periodically to the Aurora Support BBS (see READ.ME for access details). Check the BBS if your favorite layout is not included in the distributed version of Aurora. The Mouse ───────── ∙ If windows scroll too fast when using the mouse, change the 'MouDelay' setting in CONFIG.AML to a higher value. ∙ To hide the mouse pointer whenever a key pressed, change the 'MouseOpt' setting in CONFIG.AML to 'd'. The Menus ───────── ∙ If part of a pull-down menu is displayed off the edge of the screen, you can use the mouse to grab the menu border and drag the menu to a better position. ∙ To hide the menu bar so that it is only displayed when <esc> or the right mouse button is pressed, remove 'm' from the 'EditStyle' setting in CONFIG.AML. ∙ To jump quickly to a file within a file picklist or the file manager, enter the first letter of the desired filename repeatedly until the cursor is positioned at the file. Prompts ─────── ∙ The ASCII Chart <alt => can be displayed from within a prompt and used to enter any character. The 'literal' <ctrl [> command can also be used to enter any character in a prompt. ∙ Use <pgup> or <pgdn> within a prompt, or press the left mouse button on the retrieve tab () to display a popup menu of all prompt history. You can enter a history string into the prompt by pressing the <enter> key or the left mouse button. ∙ Use the 'Prompt Style' command on the Window menu to sample the four editor prompt styles. To change the default prompt style when the editor is started, see the 'PromptStyle' configuration setting in CONFIG.AML. ∙ To move the cursor a relative number of lines away from the current position in the 'goto line' <ctrl j> prompt, specify '+' or '-' before the line number. ∙ The 'Macro Expression' prompt <ctrl v> on the Macro menu can be used as a command line calculator, since the macro language compiler and interpreter are available at this prompt. For example: Macro Expression> say 1 + 2 + 30 - 40 <enter> // displays -7 Macro Expression> msgbox (4 * 15) mod 7 <enter> // displays 4 Macro Expression> write 1 + 2 * 3 + 4 <enter> // enters the string '11' at the cursor The Desktop ─────────── ∙ You can prevent windows from remembering their sizes, cursor positions, and settings by changing the 'SavePosition' setting in CONFIG.AML to 'n'. ∙ To use the existing DOS screen as the editor background when the editor is started, change the 'VidStr' setting in CONFIG.AML to '' (null). ∙ If your video card supports special video modes such as 132 x 43, you can use these video modes within the editor by setting the 'VidCols' and 'VidRows' in CONFIG.AML to zero. Then set the desired video mode in DOS before starting the editor. ∙ Use the 'showentry' command to display the screen as it appeared in DOS before the editor was started. Syntax Highlighting ─────────────────── ∙ To conserve editor resources, include only the syntax highlighting definitions in SYNTAX.AML that you actually use. ∙ Additional syntax highlighting definitions are containing in the file SYNTAX2.AML. ∙ If you are using syntax highlighting with multi-line comments in your program source code, you may wish to increase the number of lines to scan backward in SYNTAX.AML, for the file extension you are editing. Note however, that this will decrease scrolling performance for highlighted files. ∙ The 'hiliteword' <ctrl \> command highlights all occurrences of the word at the cursor. This can be very useful for finding instances of a word in a document, or marking occurrences of variables, functions, or other identifiers in your program source code. ∙ Individual keywords can be highlighted in colors different from the default keyword color by treating the keyword as an object variable and assigning it the desired color attribute. For example, in SYNTAX.AML: keyword . . // end of keyword list _if = color brightred on blue _else = color yellow on blue History ─────── ∙ To erase all of your existing prompt history, window positions, etc., simply delete HISTORY.DAT after you have exited the editor. ∙ Do not attempt to manually update the history file HISTORY.DAT. This file is automatically updated by the editor during normal usage. Opening Files ───────────── ∙ To open a file manager window for the current directory from the DOS command line, enter "a .". ∙ To open a file from the DOS command line and place the cursor on a specific line, enter the option 'l' followed by the line number. For example: C>a myfile.txt/l253 // opens 'myfile.txt' and places the cursor on line 253 ∙ To open a binary file from the DOS command line or the Open prompt ('askopen' <alt e> on the File menu) using a specific line length, enter the option 'b' followed by the line length. For example: C>a myfile.txt/b240 // opens 'myfile.txt' in binary mode with a fixed line length // of 240 ∙ To configure the editor so that tab characters (ASCII 9) are automatically expanded when files are opened, see example 21 of EXAMPLE.AML in the MACRO subdirectory. ∙ If you are using Aurora in an MS Windows 3.x DOS box running in enhanced mode, you can transfer up to 16k of text data to and from the Windows clipboard. This is done by loading from or saving to a file with the special drive name: ^. For example, from the Open and Insert and Save block prompts: File to insert in MYFILE.TXT> ^:c // insert the contents of the Windows clipboard after the cursor Save block as> ^:c // copy marked text to the Windows clipboard Searching ───────── ∙ Frequently-used search strings can be saved in a separate file and copied to a find prompt as needed by using the 'copyblock2' <alt c> or 'paste' <grey*> commands. This can be especially convenient for long or complex regular expression patterns. ∙ To count the occurrences of a search string, use the 'a' search option. For example: Find> gizmo/a <enter> // displays the number of occurrences of the word 'gizmo' // from the cursor to the end of the file ∙ Use regular expression searching to search for the beginning and/or end of lines. Do not attempt to search for line delimiter characters (such as carriage returns and linefeeds) in non-binary files. In the normal, non-binary editing mode, line delimiter characters are removed from the end of each line when the file is loaded and re-appended to the end of each line when the file is saved. ∙ The 'Find Occurrences' <ctrl h> command can be useful for extracting lines from a flat database file that match search criteria. For example: Find Occurrences of> Joe/b // extract all lines where 'Joe' is found within a column mark ∙ The 'Find Occurrences' <ctrl h> command can be used together with regular expression searching to display a list of function headers in your program source code. For example: Find Occurrences of> ^[a-zA-Z_].*\(.*[~;]$/x // finds C/C++ function definitions beginning in column 1 Find Occurrences of> ^ *{function}|{key}.*$/x // finds AML function and key definitions ∙ Selecting a file from a file manager scan window (generated by the 'askscan' <ctrl s> command) will position the cursor to the first occurrence of the scan search string. Use the 'findlast' <ctrl l> command to find other occurrences. Manipulating Text ───────────────── ∙ The 'quote' <shift f9> and 'commentline' <alt f1> commands can both be used for simple text quoting. <shift f9> performs block quoting, while <alt f1> quotes and unquotes text on a line-by-line basis. ∙ The editor is configured at installation to use 'live word wrap' when <ctrl w> is pressed. If you prefer the standard old-style word wrap, change the definition of <ctrl w> in KBD.AML to: key <ctrl w> setting 'W' TOGGLE // toggle standard word wrap ∙ To reformat all of the text in a file, mark the entire file using the 'markline' <alt l> command, and then enter the 'Reformat' command <alt r> on the Block menu. ∙ The 'fillblock2' <ctrl k><f> command can be used to fill a marked block with a repeating character or string. For example: to fill columns 40-47 of a data file with the date 12/25/96, mark the desired columns by using the 'markcolumn' command <ctrl b>, and then enter the date at the 'fillblock2' prompt. ∙ The clipboard Cut Append <ctrl grey-> and Copy Append <ctrl grey+> commands can be very useful for gathering separate blocks of text and grouping them together in the clipboard. ∙ To expand tab characters (ASCII 9) in the current file, use the 'tabfile' <ctrl k><x> command. ∙ To ignore case when sorting marked text with the 'sortblock2' <ctrl k><o> command, turn insert mode ON. To sort in descending order, turn scroll lock ON. ∙ Have you ever been prompted to save changes in a file, and you forgot what changes you just made? Try using the undo/redo feature to review your changes. Just cancel the 'save' prompt and use the undo <ctrl u> and redo <ctrl y> commands to backtrack and retrace your changes before exiting. ∙ To the change the line delimiter that a file is saved with, load the file into the editor, change the current 'Line Delimiter' setting (on the Set menu) to the new line delimiter, and save the file. ∙ To disable CUA-style <shift> key marking, remove the 'smark' command from all key definitions in KBD.AML. ∙ Use the 'markpara' <alt 3> command to quickly mark the paragraph at the cursor. ∙ To rearrange all the words in a paragraph in sorted order: 1. Use the 'markcolumn' <alt b> command to mark column 1 of the entire paragraph. 2. Enter the 'formatblock2' command <alt r> to place each word on separate line. 3. Enter the 'markpara' <alt 3> command to re-mark the separated paragraph with a line mark. 4. Set Insert mode ON to ignore case during the sort. 5. Enter the 'sortblock2' <ctrl k><o> command to sort the words. 6. Enter the 'formatblock2' command <alt r> to re-join all separated lines back together into a paragraph. Working with very large files ───────────────────────────── ∙ If you are performing extensive 'search and replace all' operations in a very large file, or you are making other large-scale modifications to the file, you will get better performance if 'Undo' is disabled on the Set menu. ∙ Aurora can be useful for editing very large files when running under OS/2 or Windows. Although other editors may exploit the virtual memory capabilities of these environments, Aurora uses its own virtual memory (optimized for text editing), and will not force other OS/2 or Windows applications to be swapped out or discarded when very large files are loaded and edited. The 'memoptions' setting in SYSTEM.AML should be set to 'o' for the best performance. ∙ Setting 'memoptions' to 'o' in SYSTEM.AML allows large files to be kept open (in DOS) while they are being edited. This feature can greatly increase the loading performance for very large files. However, in some cases there may be conflicts with other programs trying to access the open file. If this is a problem for you, set 'memoptions' to '' (null). ∙ Before saving changes to very large files, you may wish to conserve disk space by disabling file 'Backup' on the Set menu. Obviously, this should only be done if you have backup files elsewhere. ∙ If you only need to browse the first part of a very large file, or if you have started loading a very large file by mistake, you can press <ctrl break> to interrupt the loading process at any point. Note that the loaded file will be truncated, and you will be prompted with "Truncated file - are you sure?" whenever you try to save the file. AML Macros ────────── ∙ To obtain context-sensitive help on a macro language statement or function at the cursor, press <shift f1> for a brief description, or press <shift f2> for extended help. Note that most extension functions (EXT.AML source code) are not documented. For these functions, the cursor is moved to the function definition in EXT.AML. ∙ To compile and run an external macro in the current edit window, just enter the 'compilemacro2' <shift f10> and 'runmacro2' <shift f11> commands. These commands help to simplify macro development and testing. ∙ You can use the 'pickmacro' <shift f12> command to obtain a picklist of macros in the MACRO subdirectory. To run a macro from the picklist, move the cursor to the desired macro and press the <enter> key or click the left mouse button. ∙ Before modifying any internal macro code (EXT.AML, KBD.AML, etc.), be sure to make backup copies of your AML files. You should be reasonably familiar with the macro language before attempting these types of modifications. ∙ AML has a simpler function call syntax than most programming languages. Here are a few things to keep in mind when calling AML functions: If function calls with arguments are used in expressions, the entire function call should be enclosed with parentheses, not just the arguments. For example: x = fun1 (1) + fun2 (2, 3, 4); // BASIC, Pascal, C x = (fun1 1) + (fun2 2 3 4) // AML Function calls which have no arguments, and which are preceded or followed by operators, do not need parentheses: x = fun1 () + fun2 (); // BASIC, Pascal, C x = fun1 + fun2 // AML If a single function call is an argument to another function, and is not preceded or followed by an operator, then it must be enclosed in parentheses. For example: x = fun1 (1, fun2 (), fun3 (2, 3, 4)); // BASIC, Pascal, C x = fun1 1 (fun2) (fun3 2 3 4) // AML ∙ The 'key' statement is terminated by the keywords 'end', 'key', or 'function', but not by the keyword 'object'. For example: key <alt c> copy // key definition for <alt c> key <alt d> deleteline // key definition for <alt d> end // end is required here object fmgr // change the current object . . ∙ New macros and AML configuration files will continue to be posted on the Aurora Support BBS (see READ.ME for access details). Many of these macros may only be available to licensed users. You may wish to check the BBS periodically for new macros.