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Text File | 1994-08-15 | 17.6 KB | 373 lines

******************************* * * * CMEditor -- Version 3.18c * * * ******************************* CMEditor USER'S MANUAL: Background: CMEditor was originally written as the editor module for CMFiler, my multipurpose disk/file manager designed to bring together and simplify 99% of the file management functions you would ever need. I eventually broke out a standalone version at the urging of several users. If you find CMEditor useful and continue to use it beyond a 60-day evaluation period, I require that you register your copy for $10. Please read the section on registration, and note the benefit of receiving on-disk a registered copy of the current version of CMEditor, a copy of the shareware version of CMFiler for your evaluation, and, by permission of the author, a copy of the shareware version of Integrity Master, the outstanding anti-virus and system integrity program by Wolfgang Stiller. Note that the versions of CMFiler and Integrity Master provided in this offer are for your evaluation and MUST be registered for the fee required by the author if you continue to use them beyond a fixed evaluation period. Running CMEditor. . . First, you may rename CMEDITOR.COM to CE.COM, to reduce the number of keystrokes required to run it. For convenience, I will refer to CMEditor as CE from here on. Execute CE from the DOS prompt with the following command line (brackets indicated optional parameters):: CE FILESPEC [@Monitor[Screenlines][:Palette[Border]]] [-View] where: FILESPEC is the specification of the file to be edited, CMEditor - 1 Monitor is the letter V,C,M,E,T or L, where: V=VGA, C=CGA/EGA, M=Monochrome, E=Epson LCD or equivalent, T=Tandy LCD or equivalent, and L=generic LCD display, ScreenLines=25, 43 or 50 (supported if monitor is VGA-capable), Palette=1,2,3 or 4, where: 1=white on blue, 2=cyan on black, 3=blue on white, 4=white on black, Border is the letter b if screen border is to be painted (VGAs only), View is the letter v if file is to be viewed only, not edited. CE automatically saves the monitor information for reuse the next time it is run, in an internal configuration area, so once you get the video display the way you like it, you need never again include the video display parameters. The following command lines are examples of legal syntax: ce letter.txt CE LETTER.TXT @V43:2 ce c:\letters\my-ltr.doc @v50:1b -v CE my-ltr.doc @c:3 Record Delimiters. . . The default color display mode for "record delimiters" [carriage return (CR), line feed (LF), and the combinations CR+LF and LF+CR] is to show their color values, which are cued in the legend at the bottom (blue=CR, green=LF, cyan=CR+LF, magenta=LF+CR). In addition, the end of the file is denoted with a red End-of-File (EOF) mark. Sometimes it is very useful to know exactly what delimiter combination your word processors use, so you can duplicate it when you edit with CE. You can toggle the colored delimiter symbols off and on with Alt-Minus or the gray minus key. (This is also covered in a help screen you can get by pressing Alt-H or F1.) Information Area. . . The name of the file being viewed is shown in the lower left prompt area. The lower right prompt area shows the ASCII value of the character at the cursor (decimal and hex), the position of that character in the file (starting with 1), the line (called "record") the cursor is on, and the position of the cursor CMEditor - 2 within the line (called "Column", which for a long record is not necessarily the same as the screen column). This information display may be toggled off and on with Alt-Plus or the gray plus key. When the modifier key Alt- or Ctrl- is pressed, this information area displays the block, navigation and special editing commands enabled by the modifier key. Line Wrapping. . . The default display mode is line wrapping, where any line longer than 80 characters is wrapped to the next screen line, so that all text is visible. This mode can be toggled between "Wrap" and "No Wrap" (see the Wr/NW at upper right for current status) with Alt-W. In the NoWrap mode, each line longer than 80 characters simply extends off the screen to the right, but is accessible for viewing by putting the cursor on it and [Ctrl- or Shift-] Rt Arrow-ing (see below) to any place on the line. Cursor Movement. . . The arrow keys, either on the cursor keypad or numeric keypad, move the cursor one line up or down and one character left or right. Ctrl-Left/Rt Arrow move left or right one word at a time, and Shift-Left/Rt Arrow and Home/End move to the beginning or end of the line, as in PCWrite. A second press of the Home/End key moves to the top/bottom of the page, and a third press moves to the beginning/end of the file contents in memory. PgDn/PgUp moves the display up or down one page frame (20, 38 or 45 lines), and leaves the cursor on the same relative video line. Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn moves the display by 10 page frames for fast paging through a file. Shift-Up/Down Arrow moves to the top/bottom of the current page. Alt-B/E moves to the Beginning/End of the file contents in memory. The mouse moves the cursor similar to the arrow keys. A special mouse feature allows variable speed scrolling as well. Hold the right button down and move the cursor down a little bit. The file begins to scroll slowly up the screen. Move the mouse down a little more and the scroll rate increases, through a total of four speeds. Moving the mouse up reverses the direction. For very long files, exceeding available memory, the editor loads only as much as fits. When you get to the end of that section (i.e., the current "file contents in memory" referred to above), the next operation that asks for another page or line causes the editor to load in the CMEditor - 3 next section, remembering the file position of the start of the previous section so it can backtrack if you want. (It actually loads the next section with some overlap to the previous section, so that a little bit of backtracking does not result in reloading the whole previous section.) This "heel-and-toe" sequential loading is limited to 50 sections. Find a String. . . Want to look for a particular word or string of characters? The key combination Alt-F (for "Find") opens up a data window at the bottom for you to enter a short string. After you press Enter, CE will find the first appearance of the string from the current cursor position, and put the cursor on it. Alt-X (for "neXt") finds the next appearance, and can be used repeatedly until the string no longer appears, which is signalled at the bottom of the screen. The search process starts at the cursor location and goes, if necessary, to the end of the current file contents in memory. If the file is long and is being viewed by the editor module in sections as discussed above, only the current section in memory is available to the Find operator. The search is case-insensitive. Leading and Trailing Blanks in the Data Window. . . The data entry routine truncates leading and trailing blanks, but blanks may be included as leading or trailing characters by enclosing the string at either or both ends with quotes (") Suppose, for example, you wanted to find all of the appearances in a file of the word "mark", but not "remark". Press Alt-F and, in the data entry window enter: Find string: >"mark <. This works for the replace string as well. Editing a File. . . Exit view mode with either Esc or Enter. The mouse left button is the same as Enter. (Note that any tags in the source panel are still there.) Now you are ready to edit! Position the cursor on a file that you have an extra copy of somewhere, and press E (for Edit). CE again loads the selected file, but this time with an internal "switch" set which tells the editor module to support editing. (Or, in View mode, press Alt-S, for "Switch to edit".) CMEditor - 4 Edit Mode Limitations. . . CE permits edit mode only if the file fits all at once into available memory, has fewer than 16,380 records, and (in NoWrap mode) has no record longer than 8190 bytes. CE will revert to view mode if these conditions are not all satisfied. If you have a lot of memory tied up in resident programs or RAM disk/cache, then you may not be able to edit extremely large files. Chances are, however, that this will never be a practical limitation. Typeover vs Insert. . . Look at the small reverse video box in the upper right corner of the screen. "T/O" or "Ins", then CE is in edit mode. Toggle between typeover (T/O) and insert (Ins) modes with the Insert key. Typing action is just like any word processor. In typeover mode, the Bksp key does not pull the text left. This is to avoid unintentionally shortening the file when editing length-sensitive files, such as .COM and .EXE files. Editing a Line. . . You operate on a line at a time, and the "normal" editing keys work - i.e. Bksp, Del, Tab, Shift-Tab, the unmodified and modified arrow keys discussed above, and any ASCII-code keys. To create a new line, just Shift-Arrow to the beginning or end of the current line, depending on whether you want the new line above or below the current one, and hit Enter. This inserts the default delimiter combination, CR+LF, into the text to set up a new line void of text, but ready for you to start typing. The combination Ctrl-Enter gives you a menu screen from which you may select a different record delimiter. Join two lines by deleting the record delimiter at the end of the first line to be joined. Delete a line with Ctrl-Y ("Yank"). Delete from the cursor to the end of the line with Ctrl-D. Delete a word and its associated whitespace with Ctrl-T. More on Record Delimiters. . . On CGA/EGA/VGA monitors, the record delimiter appears as a single colored "blank" character at the end of the line, whether it is actually two characters (e.g., CR+LF) or one (e.g., LF). It may be deleted to join two lines, but not over-struck - it always pushes right, even when you are in typeover mode. The red "End-of-File" (EOF) marker is not actually part of your file, but rather is only a visual aid for you to see where the CMEditor - 5 text ends. When the cursor is on the EOF marker, the "byte number" in the legend corresponds to the number of the next character, if you were to type one. The EOF marker also always pushes right, and cannot be deleted. The height of the cursor shows the status of the "Caps Lock" switch. Alt- Keypad and Alt-N. . . Any ASCII code from 1 through 255 can be entered from the numeric keypad using the Alt- key modifier. A special combination is provided for ASCII zero ("NULL"), since Alt-Zero is not recognized by any keyboard drivers I have seen. It is Alt-N (for "Null"). Changing Case . . . Pressing Ctrl-U/L/I on a letter forces it into upper or lower case, or inverts the case. Block Operations. . . or the REAL Power of CE's Editor. . . All the block operations - there are six - are keyed to Alt-key combinations, and they are all intuitive (sort of). They are: Alt-{ Mark, Yank (delete), moVe, Copy, Print and Output }. Marking a Block, and the Copy Buffer. . . You may also manipulate blocks of lines. First mark a block by putting the cursor on the first (or last) line of the block you want to do something with, press Alt-M (for "Mark"), move down (or up) with arrows, PgDn/Up, etc., and mark the last (or first) line of the block, again with Alt-M. The marked text is written into a dedicated internal copy buffer for later use. If you made a mistake, a third press of Alt-M clears the marks, but leaves the copy buffer intact. The contents of this copy buffer remain available for multiple use until a new block is marked. You may exit the editor back to the main module, and edit another file, and because the editor copy buffer is a dedicated chunk of RAM in the main and editor modules, the buffer is still intact. Just copy it into the next file with Alt-C. When you are marking a block, note that the information box at the bottom left of the screen expands to show you the attributes of the marked block - the number of the first and last records marked, and the CMEditor - 6 number of bytes in the painted area. There is an arbitrary 32 KB limit on the copy buffer. The upper right-hand information box shows "Blk" (for "blocked") instead of "T/O" or "Ins", meaning that normal editing is not permitted while you have a block marked. Delete, Copy, Move. . . Delete the block with Alt-Y ("Yank"). Or put the cursor in an unpainted area of the file, and copy the block into that area, just ahead of the line where you put the cursor, by pressing Alt-C ("Copy"). Or move it with Alt-V ("moVe"). As noted above, the block previously "marked" into the copy buffer is available for multiple use. Just put the cursor where you want the block to be copied and hit Alt-C again. Restoring from Inadvertent Block Deletion. . . If you just deleted a block in error, put the cursor where you want to restore it, and press Alt-C to copy the buffer back into the file. Sending a Block of Text to the Printer. . . Print the copy buffer to the parallel printer with Alt-P ("Print"). After printing, if you want a form feed, press Ctrl-F ("Form feed" - note the use of Ctrl- vice Alt- as the modifier key, since Alt-F was already used for "Find"). . . . or to a File. . . Finally, output the copy buffer to a file in the same path as the file being edited by pressing Alt-O (letter "O" for "Output"). A window opens at the bottom for typing the name of the file for CE to create (if it doesn't already exist) or append to if it does. (The file will be created or opened in the current directory on the default drive. Therefore the characters ":" and "\" will not be recognized.) Replace and Global replace. . . In addition to the Alt-F "find" feature, there is an Alt-R "replace" and an Alt-G "global replace" feature. Just press Alt-R or Alt-G and enter the find and replace strings when prompted. (If you see a mistake in the find string while you are typing the replace string, just arrow back up a line and reedit it.) For Alt-R, CE will find the first match and ask you to confirm the replacement. It continues finding and requesting CMEditor - 7 confirmation until you press Q (for "Quit replacing") or Esc. Alt-X reactivates either the find or replace routine, whichever was used last. Alt-G replaces all appearances of the find string with no confirmation. It may be terminated with any key press. When global replace is thus terminated, Alt-X reactivates the confirmatory replace, not the global replace. Leaving Edit Mode. . . After editing is complete, press Esc. When leaving the editor after editing an existing file, there are several decisions you have to make: 1) under what name to save the edited file; 2) whether to use the current date/time or the original date/time of the edited file as the save-file's date/time stamp; 3) whether to rename the original file so it is also saved; and 4) whether to return to the editor after the save operation. The default selections for these options - the ones most often used - are: 1) save the edited file under the original file's name; 2) do not reuse the original date/time stamp; 3) do not rename and save the original file; and 4) do not return to the editor. You can accept these default options by pressing Enter, or Y, or if you had hit Esc by mistake, you can press Esc again to return where you were in the editor. If the defaults are not acceptable, press N, and CE will take you through each option. In the first option, CE offers the original file name as the save-file name, but you can edit it, including adding a path to have it saved in a different directory. If you do not want to save the edited file at all, press Esc. In the second option, you may press Y to reuse the original date/time stamp of the file that was edited. In the third option, CE offers a default name to rename the original file, replacing the last character of the extension with an exclamation point. You can edit the name, or press Esc to avoid renaming the original file. In the fourth option, you may press Y to return to the editor. Saving File in Mid-Session . . . The command Ctrl-S lets you save a file in mid-session while editing. This is prudent during a long session just to make sure you don't lose the CMEditor - 8 edit to a power failure. Ctrl-S provides a sequence and defaults similar to the exit sequence above except that you return to the editor instead of leaving. Creating a New File with the Editor. . . A new file may be created from the main module by pressing the letter F ("new File") and entering a name for the new file in the data entry line. The new file will appear in the directory from which the F command was issued. Help. . . A one-page help screen may be summoned on-line at any time in the editor with the command F1 or Alt-H, and exited with any keystroke. CMEditor - 9