Moving around in LPEX

So I originally intended to keep blogging as I was working on the RSE book, but as it turns out, writing a book is a lot of work (who knew?) So things like blogging, exercise, and other hobbies got put on hold for awhile. The manuscript is due to MC Press next week so hopefully blogging and exercise can make a come back.

I’m currently reviewing Nazmin’s editor chapters and came across a section called “Moving the Curosr”. My initial thought was “this seems kind of obvious, perhaps we should just delete this section”. But to my surprise I learned three new ways to navigate around LPEX from reading it and I added one that Nazmin didn’t know about.
I suspect that a lot of users don’t know all of the ways, or perhaps they use them in a Web browser but don’t realize they can also be used in LPEX. So we decided to leave this section :) It’s pretty short anyways. And don’t worry, there are lots more exciting sections with cool stuff like the outline view, content assist, and of course keyboard shortcuts in LPEX.

And just so you don’t have to wait, here is the list:

• Press the Up, Down, Left, or Right arrows.
• Press Home to move the cursor to the beginning of a line and End to move it to the end of a line.
• Press Ctrl + Left arrow to move the cursor one word left, or Ctrl + Right ar-row to move it one word right.
• Press Page Up or Page Down to move the cursor up or down one window at a time.
• Press Ctrl + Up arrow to scroll the editor up one line without changing the current line, or Ctrl + Down arrow to scroll the editor down one line.
• Press Ctrl + Home to move the cursor to the beginning of the document, or Ctrl + End to move it to the end of the document.
• Press Ctrl + J to return the cursor to the place in the editor where you last entered text.
• Press Home and then Shift + Tab to position the cursor in the Prefix area.

For those existing RSE users out there, I’d be interested if any of these are new to you. I wasn’t aware of the Ctrl + J shortcut, Ctrl + Left | Right arrows, or Shift + Tab to jump into the prefix area. Good thing Nazmin wrote this chapter!