Much of your work with VisualAge involves editing text. Many browsers in the development environment use text panes. Text panes are typically large panes where you edit Smalltalk code. The text panes in the browsers offer consistent editing tools across the Smalltalk development environment.
Text panes have two editing modes: insert and delete. When a browser first opens the text pane is in insert mode, which is indicated by the cursor displayed as a vertical bar. You can add new text without overwriting existing text. The delete mode is indicated by the cursor being a block. In delete mode, new text will overwrite existing text. The Insert key toggles between these modes.
You can select text to be used for a later operation. Selecting text is sometimes called highlighting or marking text. Selected text will be highlighted when displayed. You can select text either by dragging the mouse across the selection, or by holding down the Shift key and moving the cursor with the Home, End, or arrow keys.
In general, there are multiple ways to accomplish a given editing
task. The table below describes text editing operations. You can
practice these operations in the Transcript or in a Workspace.
In order to | You can |
---|---|
Move the cursor |
|
Toggle between insert and delete modes | Press the Insert key. |
Select any amount of text |
|
Select a word | Double-click on the word with mouse button 1. |
Deselect any text | Move the cursor within the same text pane (you can use the mouse or the keyboard to move the cursor). |
Delete a character |
|
Delete text | First select the text; then press the Backspace or Delete key. |
Copy text to the clipboard | First select the text, then select Copy from the Edit menu, or press Ctrl + Insert. |
Cut text to the clipboard | First select the text; then either select Cut from the Edit menu, or press Shift + Delete. The text is deleted and copied to the clipboard. |
Paste text from the clipboard | Select Paste from the Edit menu, or press the Shift + Insert keys. The text from the clipboard is pasted at the cursor. If any text is selected, it is replaced with the pasted text. |