User's Guide to the Editor
How to open new editor?
The editor can be opened either for already existing source or for new
class.
The list of existing classes can be shown in the
browser window and that is why the browser is the right place for opening
editor on exisiting source. For more info refer to the
browser documentation.
To open new class you have to open the
New class dialog and create new source.
The editor window with the source will be
displayed.
Useful Editing Commands
Because the keys and commands has been designed to be as close as
posible to existing standards it is probably not as necessary to waste our
words ourn help how to move cursor and enter characters. Everything works
as it should. Left arrow moves one character to the left, with the
CTRL key held down
one word to left. Moving with SHIFT down selects text.
To manipulate with text commands in
editor menu can be used.
To delete selection
CTRL+DEL (or Ctrl+X) and SHIFT+DEL keys can also be
found useful. The first one only deletes the text but the latter one moves
int to clipboard. To copy selected block to the clipboard
Ctrl+C can be used. Inverse process can be activated by pressing
Ctrl+V that pastes text from the clipboard to the cursor position.
Warning: Please also notice that it is not posible to share the
clipboard with other programs in your system. The clipboard is private
for Xelfi. It is caused by the absence of clipboard handling methods in
the JDK 1.0.2.
Searching in the Editor
For searching the Find and replace dialog is used.
It can be opened by command in the
editor menu.
As can be seen
from previous picture there are several fields there. The Text to find
must be filled with the searched text.
Then the searching can start by pressing the Find button.
The finded text is shown and marked as selected in the editor. The
dialog window remains still on the screen and that is why searching for
next occurence can be activated by simple clicking the
Find button again.
Replacing of text is also very easy. When first occurence of Text
to find has been found it is possible to press the Replace and
find button. Then the text in Replace with
field is substituted instead of the found one and new occurence of
Text to find is found.
The dialog can be closed by click to Cancel but it
need not be. Because in spite of its appearance the editing of text in
the editor is unaffected.
Finding Line
It is possible to find a line in the editor window even only if its
line number is known. For these purposes the Go To Line
dialog can be used.
It is required to specify line number in the input line and then
to press OK button to use this dialog. It can
remain shown without restricting the behaviour of the editor but also
can be closed by Close.
Nonallowed operations
Because we use the editor to browse text that is automaticly generated
by the visual designer and we do not want to solve problems that could
arrive when the user would modify this code we decided not to allow
changes in the generated text.
This may be seen as a strong restriction but it saves users a lot of
troubles that could result in unexpected code lost.
When an insert or delete is initiated in the text that is
"Xelfi generated" the operation is canceled
and a warning message in the status line is shown.
Saving of files
The sources of edited classes are kept in the memory and to disk are
flushed (this process is called synchronization)
only at one of user requests:
- Command save can be choosen
from System menu and affects only the current editor file. Its content
is saved to the file on disk.
- Related command save all saves
all files in the system.
- Any request
for compilation behaves like save all. All files are flushed to the
disk.
- At the exit the user is asked about files he wishes to save.
Warning: Closing an editor window does not caused the source
to be saved. It is because it can be used by another part of the system (visual one,
browseser, debbuger, etc.). That is why the file will be saved only when an
explicit request listed above occures.