Although Thot is not a word processing system, it contains the basic functions of a text editor. Most functions can be applied to a character string as well as to elements of the document logical structure. However, this section only considers the processing of character strings. The logical structure editing is dealt with in section 4.
The scroll bar located on the right hand side of the window provides a simple way to move through a document. If you click with the left mouse button on the arrow placed at the bottom of the scroll bar, the document moves a single line up; the arrow located at the top of the scroll bar produces the opposite effect. Hold down on these buttons to scroll the document continuously.
To move to the beginning or end of the document, click on these arrows while depressing the Control key on the keyboard.
The position of the slider in the scroll bar corresponds to the position of the part displayed in the whole document. The height of the slider compared to that of the scroll bar represents the size of the part displayed compared to the full size of the document.
To move forward or back by the height of a window, just click in the scroll bar with the left mouse button above or below the slider.
You can also click on the slider with the left mouse button and hold it down to move it vertically. When you release the button, the document is positioned in the window according to the new position of the slider. The same result can be obtained by clicking with the middle mouse button on the desired position in the scroll bar.
It is also possible to move through the document view just using keys on the keyboard:
For scrolling horizontally, you can use the scroll bar along the bottom of the window: it works according to the same principles.
There are other ways to move throughout the document, as shown in sections 3.8 or 9.2, but scroll bars constitute an easy and direct way.
All word processing operations are based on selection: first you have to select the portion of text on which you want to work before modifying it.
The most direct way of selecting text is by highlighting it with the mouse. You select one character by clicking on it with the left mouse button: it appears in a colored background. Then, by clicking with the middle mouse button on another character, you extend the selection to this other character. As soon as you click on a character with the left button, you delete the previous selection and a new one is created.
To select a character string, drag the mouse pointer across the string while holding down the left mouse button.
When one or several characters are selected within a paragraph, you can modify the selection by using the following combination of keys:
When at least one character is selected, the text typed on the keyboard is automatically inserted before the first selected character. To do this, the mouse cursor must be located in a window controlled by Thot.
To add text at the end of a paragraph, click with the left mouse button just after the last character. A small vertical bar indicates the position in which the characters typed on the keyboard will be placed. You can also use the Control E command to place the text at the end of the line (see 3.3).
While typing the text or later, you can remove the character preceding the cursor with the Back Space key on the keyboard. The preceding characters are removed by pressing this key several times.
Certain characters are not represented on the keyboard, in particular the accented letters, Greek characters or mathematical symbols. However, these characters can be entered by using the ``Palettes'' command at the top of the Thot window. This command displays a menu whose two last entries (``Latin alphabet'' and ``Greek alphabet'') display a window presenting additional characters. To enter these characters within the document, click on the desired character or use the keyboard as indicated under the character image. For example, to obtain a `é' first type a `e' while holding the Compose key and then a '. This principle also applies to capital letters: a `É' is obtained by typing a `e' with both Compose and Shift pressed, and then pressing the ' key.
To enter these compound characters, it is not necessary to display the corresponding character set.
These typing conventions apply to the text of documents as well as to the dialogue boxes through which the command parameters are entered. They can be modified by editing a specific file (see section 23.4).
There are two particular types of characters in Thot:
The mode for entering and displaying these characters is determined by the ``Spaces'' command from the ``Environment'' menu. This command displays a menu which allows you to indicate whether the spaces (the three special spaces listed above and the normal word space) represented in the text must be displayed as spaces or under the form of characters that allow you to differentiate them:
Line break: ¶
Standard word space: ·
Non breaking word space: 1
Hair space: `
En-space: ¦
When a character string is selected (see 3.2), it can be deleted in several ways:
In all such cases, the deleted text is definitely lost (note that there is no ``Undo'' command in this version). If the selected text is to be deleted and used again, the ``Cut'' command should be used (see 3.7).
When a character string (or a single character) is selected, the preceding character can be removed by pressing the Back Space key on the keyboard.
Thot manages two clipboards. The internal clipboard enables to transfer text (and more complex elements as shown in 4.5) between Thot documents. The X clipboard allows you to transfer text, and only text, between the documents processed by Thot and the other applications working with the same X server.
The ``Text and structure'' entry from the ``Search'' sub-menu from the ``Edit'' menu (in the menu bar, at the top of each document window) displays a form which allows the user to move throughout a document according to the content and/or the structure. The right-hand half of this form deals with the search operation carried out according to the structure and is described later (see section 4.2). The left-hand half can be used as follows:
To initiate the search operation, click on the ``Confirm'' button at the bottom of the form. If the string searched for is found, it is selected and the document is positioned so as to make this string visible; you can then search for the next instance of this string by selecting the ``Confirm'' button again. If the string is not found, the ``Not found'' message appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the form.
Strings can also be replaced using the same operation. The replacement text is entered in the ``Replace by'' input area and a replacement mode is selected from the ``Replace'' menu. The replacement modes are as follows:
Search or replace can be abandoned at any moment by clicking on the ``Done'' button.
Note: the replacement operations cannot be undone (there is no ``Undo'' command in this version).