Current Line, Positioning

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Current Line, Positioning

As you may have noticed in the previous lesson How to Quit exaEdit, the three lines in your file have changed their position after you have changed your text. Before your changes, there was the top line (that is the line with `MAIN exaEdit...') emphasized (white letters on black background) and positioned in the middle of the data zone. Now, after your changes, the third line of your text takes this highlighted position.

The emphasized line in the data zone is called

current line

In exaEdit it has two special features:

it is the starting point of commands which need the indication of a certain line,
it is automatically readjusted.

Because of the first characteristic of the current line, it has to be possible to move it by giving commands. The next thing I would like you to do is to exercise the so-called positioning of the current line (please, try everything I suggest below).

With the command

top

the top line becomes the current line. With the command

bottom

the last line becomes the current line. Since they are both frequently used commands, they have the minimal abbreviations T and B.

With the commands

+ n

down n

next n

- where you have to insert a number for `n' - the current line is moved downward by n lines, i.e. closer to the end of the file. With the commands

- n

up n

back n

the current line is moved upward, i.e. closer to the top of your file. If you specify more lines than there are in your file, the current line > remains unchanged and exaEdit gives the message End of data or Begin of data.

But if you like to move the current line only by one line, you can leave out the line number n and only enter +, for example.

In many cases you will wish that the current line exactly moves by the whole window height or only by the half of one page on your window. There are special keys for this case:

F7

F8

F10

F11

Instead of F7 and F8 you can use the keys PgUp up arrow and PgDn down arrow , as well, prerequisite they are on your keyboard. Since your file exafil1 does not contain enough lines, you will no really see the effect of those keys if you try them now. But you will see how these special keys are translated into exaEdit commands, e.g.

-14

+14

-7

+7

if your window has 24 lines.

When you jump one page forward, exaEdit works in such a way that the last line of the previous window becomes the first line of the next display. This is meant to provide a certain coherence when you move down a text.

Now, in this context, it only remains to explain how the automatic positioning of the current line works.

When you make your changes directly, in the data zone (compare section Changing Data Directly), the lowest line of those you have changed will become the current line - after you have pressed the return key. The reason for this behaviour is that exaEdit assumes that the change in the lowest line is the last change you have done and that the last change should be placed in the middle of the window (in the centre of your interest).

The current line can also move as a result of certain commands. There are predefined rules for this and these rules can differ from command to command. This is the reason why these rules are explained in detail together with the explanation of each command in the next chapter.

Next: Inserting Lines Previous: How to Quit exaEdit Up: First Steps