Moving around in LPEX
March 24, 2008
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!
March 25, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Ctrl+Up/Down is new to me. I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be revising the wiki http://wiki.midrange.com/index.php/WDSC_shortcuts when the book comes out! :-)
March 26, 2008 at 8:10 am
Most of those can be used with the Shift key to highlight text, too. Sometimes it’s easier with the mouse and sometimes the keyboard is quicker. Also, most of these are usable in any windowing environment so learn them for one application and use them anywhere.
March 26, 2008 at 8:24 am
Don,
You can use CTRL+T and it will set the current line at the top of the page.
March 26, 2008 at 8:36 am
Additionally, there is always the option of working with “quick” markers (CTRL+Q Sets a marker and ALT+Q jumps right back to the marker).
March 26, 2008 at 11:45 am
Yes, the selection with the Shift key is another good thing to point out. These are a couple great examples of things that makes the Workbench so powerful; the ability to combine actions together and the fact that the Workbench behaves like any other regular Windows application.
It also makes it difficult to cover all the possible combinations in a book. One of those things that just comes with experience using the RSE.
There are a few rough edges. I ALWAYS use Ctrl + Backspace Windows to delete the word preceding the cursor. But in LPEX this deletes the whole line (good thing there is Ctrl + Z)! I’m sure there is a way to configure this in LPEX but I haven’t taken the time to do that [yet].
We cover marks in another section of the book, but good point to bring up here!
Thanks all for the comments.
Don.
March 27, 2008 at 11:45 am
One that I use a lot is place the cursor before/after a variable and select Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right Arrow. This will select that entire variable or string of text up to the next non-alphabet character. I used to always hit the arrow key really fast before I found this one :-)
March 28, 2008 at 9:09 am
Aaron, this is a good point, and I believe it is covered in the editor chapter.
Please post them as you discover new ones so that we can add them in the book.