Copyright 1991 Sudden Incorporated, Rod Coleman Sudden Tour As noted in the introduction (not everyone reads introductions), Sudden View is an attempt to achieve what I refer to as "Live Editing". This means that the user should be able to directly position, edit and arrange his text without noticing how he does it. The process should be implicit and respond to the subtle but natural actions of the user. Live Editing does not just happen. It is a combination of having the right tools and a little practice. Below I will describe what I believe are the right tools; you'll have to provide the practice. First the tour will take you around the screen so you will know what the parts are. We will then dive in and learn how some of the more important features work. This should give you at least a hint of what Live Editing is all about. After the tour, you can go on to explore the other features at your own pace. You'll need to create some documents and arrange some text in order to get a real feel for the process; but before you notice it, you won't be noticing it anymore. A Trip Around the Screen If you haven't already done it, boot a disk containing SV_DEMO.ACC, and then select "Sudden View" under the "Desk" menu. Using a left mouse click, select "Filer" and then "Open File" at the bottom-right of the screen. This will give you the normal GEM Item Selector. Select "C_TOUR.TXT", and when the file's loaded, do a left button mouse drag (left drag) upward in the text window until you are reading these words. If you were reading this file from a paper copy, you can now put it away. We'll continue the tour in a "Live" fashion using the program itself. But, before we go any farther, we should turn off the AutoSave feature so that Sudden View won't automatically save an altered or garbage version of this file. Select Filer like before; and then select Filer Options. Now select AutoSave: it will toggle the feature on or off. Escape (Esc) will get you back to the Root menu. Let's get on with the tour. Most of the screen (22 by 78) is dedicated to the text window. This is where all the editing action occurs. It may look like normal text, but it's actually a free-form data base. You see, Sudden View has no explicit formatting; the "text" is its own format. A text file is made up of "lines" which contain text "fields". A field not only contains text; it also has information pertaining to size, location and other characteristics. They sound complicated, but mostly you can ignore Fields. It might help to think of Fields as Tab stops. Actually the Tab key stops at the beginning and end of each field; but you get the idea. You can create a field by simply dropping the cursor and typing some text. You can change its margins and position by using the right mouse button to drag it around (you'll see that in a minute). Fields can be word-wrapped or not; the cursor is blue if they are, gold if they're not. You can have nearly as many fields as you like on any line; well as many as you can get into about 32000 spaces (that should be wide enough for most jobs). Since the text "is" the format, you can have as many different formats as you have lines in a file (a couple hundred thousand?). If you like the format of a line, you can duplicate it simply by doing a Carriage Return. You also can adopt the format of another line from somewhere else in the file as described under Formatting Text. The way to deal with Implicit Formatting is, don't worry about it. It will generally worry about what you are doing and not the other way around. Just make the line look like you want it to, then hit Return and it will follow your example. You'll see in a minute; for now, let's get on with the tour. The blue scroll bar to the right might look like a GEM scroll bar; but again, looks can be deceiving. The black box in the Scroll Bar is the window position indicator, but you don't have to drag it around. Just do a left click anywhere in the blue part of the scroll bar, and the text from that point in the file will be displayed in the window. If you do a left click on the gold arrows at the top or bottom of the scroll bar, the window will move up or down one screen at a time; not just one line at a time. The two gold lines at the bottom of the screen make up the Power Menu. It's how you opened this file and changed AutoSave. It is a multiple-level menu system that can be activated using the mouse or keyboard... but wait; I'll explain the power behind the Power Menu and Power Keys in a later section. Just above the Power Menu is the Status Line in black. The first number on the left is either the current process, if it's active, or the number of Kbytes of free RAM in the workspace, if it's idle. This is followed to the right with the X and Y coordinates of the text cursor. The Y coordinate, sometimes known as the current line number, is also displayed in gold during file Opens and Saves. If it's displayed in blue, it's either doing a Find operation or returning the line index during a File Clear. In either case, you don't have to worry about it; it's just there to keep you informed. Next in the Status Line, is a blank area followed by the current file name. If the current file name is in blue, the file has been changed and you may want to save it. This middle section of the Status Line also may contain various error messages and search patterns when required by different functions. The numbers on the right can be ignored for now. They make up the Field Profile that defines the structure of text in Sudden View. If you are interested, they are fully described in the Formatting Text section. If you are using Sudden View to "Move one screen" Activator -----> read this file, move the text up until this paragraph is at the very top of the screen. The chart will then present a review of the Status Line Scroll Bar -----> and Scroll Bar. | Vertical Position Indicator -----| | Sudden Tour Chart Process/Workspace Size | | X Cursor Position | | | | Y Cursor Position File Name Field Profile | | | | | | | | | | If you can see this line, you have move the text too far up for proper viewing Let's Do Something! OK, if you can't stand it anymore, let's go Live! Use Instant Access to go to any point in the file. You remember, just do a left click anywhere on the Scroll Bar; but before you do, check the current line number so you can find your way back. Once you are in the general area, use Dynamic Scrolling to position the text on the screen. As noted earlier, this is done using a left mouse drag. It also works sideways. Now that the text that you want to edit is in view, you need to place the text cursor using a left click of the mouse; but before you make that click, let's talk about Implied Editing Action a little. Sudden View has no Insert or Replace mode. If the text cursor is over the space immediately to the left of any text, keyboard data entry will be inserted. If the text cursor is anywhere else, data entry will replace the existing text or spaces. Editing action is therefore implied by cursor placement. This approach does what you need about 98% of the time; for exceptions use the Insert and Delete keys or see the Editing Text section for other methods. OK, now you can place the cursor using a left mouse click. Try putting it on the word "left" on the line above. Next just type in the word "right". If you watch closely, you'll notice that the editing action changes as you type. Try it again; you'll see what I mean. There are also lots of other delete, insert and editing features as you will discover later in the Editing Text section. For now, let's try some simple text entry and define its format. The trick to formatting is simply make it look like you want it to be. Sudden View will then follow that format. For instance, place the text cursor in the blank area below about where you want an indented paragraph to start. Now type in a line about as wide as you want it and hit Return. If you don't want the left margin for the body of the paragraph at the same place as the indented margin, again, just put the text cursor where you want it using the mouse or cursor keys. Now type in a second line of text to complete your example paragraph. OK, great!; let's word wrap it. Place the text cursor on the first line of the paragraph and select the Word Wrap menu. The paragraph is highlighted in gold, indicating that it is not yet wrapped. Select "Set Word Wrap" to do the deed. The paragraph should now be highlighted in blue to indicate it's new wrapped status. At this point, you can adjust the right margin using the mouse or Power Menu. Hit the appropriate Adjust menu or do a right drag with the mouse cursor in the highlighted area. When you have the shape you want, hit Esc or do a right click in a blank area. You can now finish your paragraph or hit Return once or twice to start a new one. This format will be used until you define or adopt a different format. See Formatting Text for more flexibility. Dynamic Arrangement Copy, Cut, Paste and Move are so critical to Live Editing that Sudden View treats them as editing primitives. This means that you can activate these features without needing to use any menus or secret keys. All that is required are mouse drags and clicks. That's what makes it fast and direct. Here, we'll try some examples and you'll see what I mean. Do a right click on "Test Field" below, and the Field block becomes highlighted in gold. Do another right click without moving the mouse, and the block will be de-selected. Multiple right clicks will toggle the block on and off so if you ever hit the right click by accident, just click it again. If you do a left click when the block is highlighted, it will be cut from the file, but don't worry; no matter which mouse button you click when the block is highlighted, a copy of the block will be put into the Paste Buffer so you can always get it back if you want. Let's try that next. Test Field Place the text cursor to the left in the blank area above using a left mouse click. Next with the mouse cursor still over the text cursor, do another left click. You will notice the Paste Buffer displayed in blue. It contains the text you just copied. Yet one more left click will hide the Paste Buffer again. It toggles too. If you actually want to paste the buffer, just do a right click when the buffer is highlighted, and the text will become part of the file. Now you know the trick to Copy, Cut and Paste. Right clicks toggle the block select. Left clicks toggle the Paste Buffer. If you do one and then the other, you will either cut or paste; the color will tell you which. If you get confused, just hit Esc (escape). The only part of Text Arrangement we haven't tried is the Move. I saved the easiest for last. Select "More Block Types" below with a right click, and with the mouse cursor in the highlighted area, do a right drag. When you're done moving, just do a right click in any blank area (it does the same thing as the Esc key). Now you know how to Move a block. More Block Types There, you're a dynamic text arranger. Well, at least for Field blocks. You also can do the same things with Lines, Characters, Sentences and multiple Field blocks. Let's try some Lines next. This time to select the block, we'll use the right drag. Pick a point in the center of the screen with some text in it. Now do a right drag up and to the right of where you started. You will see whole Lines being selected. If you drag to the right or down, you will select a Character or Sentence block. If you drag up and to the left, you will select a Literal Field block. Right drag in a circle around the point. You can see that direction of drag determines block type. Let's go back to the Line block (up and to the right), and let up on the right button. Now place the mouse cursor in the block and do a right drag up or down. This is how you move lines. Cut and Paste work the same way here as they did for the Field block. Try it if you like. Next, let's try Character blocks. Place the text cursor in a word-wrapped paragraph (the cursor should be blue). Now do a right drag to the right along the line and then release the button. You have just selected a Character block. It will also Move using a right drag. Notice that as you move it up and down in the paragraph, the paragraph dynamically re-wraps. A Character block also can be moved into non-wrapped text such as "ungrateful" below. Just one more type of block and we will go on to other things. Actually we're going to do the Field block again (or more precisely a multiple Field block), but this time we will use a literal cut (up and to the left). With the mouse cursor on the first "n" in "unthankful", do a right drag up and to the "u" in "ungrateful" but don't get the quote mark. Let up on the right button and then do a left click with the mouse cursor still in the highlighted area. There!, you just made everything a lot more positive. "ungrateful" "unhelpful" "unhappy" "unthankful" Next, we're going to take it apart and put it back the way it was. First, place the text cursor to the left and do a second left click. A right click will now paste the group of "un"s. With the mouse cursor over the right quote mark of "thankful", again drag up to the "g" in "grateful" (remember, don't get the left quote mark). Now, with the mouse cursor in the block, do a right drag to the right and drop it off using a right click in any blank area or the Esc key. OK, you can drag it around some more if you want, but leave it out of the way to the right. Now, back to the "un"s. Do a right drag from the top to the bottom of the "un"s. Let the right mouse button up and then drag this multiple Field just to the right of the lonely quote marks. Make sure that they are touching and then drop it off by doing a right click anywhere that is blank (Esc). Returning to "grateful" and friends, do a right drag from grateful to thankful and then drag it back over against the "un"s and drop it off. There, that should give you some idea of what literal cuts and multiple fields are all about. As you can see, there are lots of ways to arrange these different types of text blocks. It may take a while to explore them all, but they are very flexible and direct. For more fun, see Arranging Text. It all may seem pretty strange about now, but once you explore some of the features and get used to the way they work, the "feel" you get may be for the text, and not the program. If so, you will have achieved Live Editing.