4 Editing text

This chapter provides a detailed reference to the text editing facilities you started to learn in the Getting Started Guide.

It covers:

• Positioning the caret
• Moving around documents
• Typing text
• Selecting areas of text
• Copying text
• Entering special characters
• Checking spelling and using the dictionary
• Counting words
• Finding and replacing words in your text

Positioning the caret

To type text on to the page, first you need to position the caret in the document. The caret is the flashing line which appears on the page; it is the point at which any characters you type will be inserted into the document.

• In a new document, the caret will automatically appear at the top left of the page, ready for you to start typing.
• When you reopen a document for further editing, you will need to place the caret in the place you want.

To position the caret in a document which already contains text, simply point to the place where you want it and click once with the left mouse button. When you start typing, the characters will appear at the point you clicked, wherever it is in the document. In a new document, the caret can only go at the start of the document unless you add text or returns and spaces to position it.

Moving around the document

As you edit your document you will want to move the caret around so that you can change text in different parts of the document.

• Point and click, just as you did when you reopened the document.
• Double-click on a word, if you know you want to replace it. The caret will not appear immediately, but the word will be selected and you can overtype it with your replacement.
• Use the arrow keys to move the caret one character or line at a time.
• Use Page Up to move up towards the top of the document and Page Down to move down towards the bottom.

Typing text

You type text into Fireworkz just as you would into any word processor.

• When you reach the right hand margin the caret will automatically move to the left margin and begin a new line. If a word you were typing at the end of one line proved to be too long to fit, it is automatically carried over to the next line. This is known as word wrap or auto wrap.

Starting a new paragraph

To start a new paragraph, press Return↵. The caret will move to the paragraph margin position; if the current style specifies a large gap between paragraphs or an indent at the start of the paragraph, the caret will automatically move to the correct place on the page.

Paragraphs and rows

If you turn Row borders on (from the View control dialogue box) you will see that each paragraph is a separate row. Whenever you press Return↵, a new row/paragraph is started, contained in its own cell and with the additional paragraph spacing rather than just the line spacing.

Starting a new line without starting a new paragraph

Press Ctrl-Return to begin a new line without beginning a new paragraph or row. This will leave a line space (i.e. a small vertical gap) rather than a paragraph space between the two lines.

• This is useful for typing addresses without large spaces between the lines
• In tables and spreadsheet documents, it is the only way to add a return within a cell.

Overtyping existing text

Most of the time, when you type new characters, they are added to the document at the caret.

• If any text is selected, new characters that you type, or paste from the clipboard, replace the existing selected characters, effectively overtyping them.

Line spaces and paragraph spaces

There are two settings which affect the vertical space between lines of text. Spaces between paragraphs and spaces between lines can be different.

• For further details on setting up line and paragraph spacing, see the Style editor section. The section on Spacing discusses in detail ways in which you can set spacing and use this facility.

Hints and tips

• Don't use spaces to indent paragraphs; use the margin markers instead. This makes it much easier to align several paragraphs accurately.
• Don't use extra Returns to add space between paragraphs. Use the Style editor to add extra space between paragraphs (Paragraph in the spacing section), or to adjust a single paragraph space, turn on the row border and drag extra space using the markers.
• Set up Fireworkz to suit your way of working. Experiment with features such as Auto save and Check as you type.
• When you have text selected, be careful about typing any new text as the selected text will be replaced with what you type. Pressing the delete or backspace keys will also delete all selected text.
• Some options, such as justification, can only be applied to whole paragraphs. If you want to justify a single line, you must make sure that it is in a paragraph of its own. Alter the row height to change the paragraph spacing if required.
• Add internal returns to paragraphs and table and spreadsheet cells by pressing Ctrl-Return↵.

Preventing line breaks - entering hard spaces

Sometimes you will want to keep two words together and ensure that they are never split by a line break. For example, a name such as RISC OS, or a telephone number, may not make as much sense to readers if it is broken up over two lines.

The way to do this is to enter a hard space between the words.

• To enter a hard space, in RISC OS simply type Alt-space (ASCII character 160) where you would normally hit the space bar. In Windows, either type Alt-0160 (using the numeric keypad) or Alt Gr-space.
• A hard space is treated like an ordinary character and so is always the same width. If your text is fully justified, the space between the hard-spaced words will not be stretched to fill the line out but will remain the standard space.
• Hard spaces are underlined; ordinary spaces are not.

Starting a new page

When you have entered enough text to fill the page a new page will automatically be generated. All you need do is keep typing.

Forcing a page break

You may want to start a new page at a particular point in your document.

To force a page break and start a new page:

1. Put the caret at the start of the text you want to move on to the new page.
2. Choose Pages from the Page menu.
3. The Pages dialogue box will appear. Click the New button.
4. The Page dialogue box for that page will appear.
5. Set the Page break option button.
6. If you want the new page to have a number different from that which would appear automatically, set the Page number option button and then enter the page number you want in the adjacent writable field.
7. Click Apply in the dialogue box.
8. The caret will move to the top of a new page.

Preventing page breaks within paragraphs

If the reason you want to force a page break is to prevent a paragraph from splitting over a page break, a better way to do this is to go the Rows section of the Changing style dialogue box for the base style of your document, and to select the Unbreakable rows option. This will prevent any paragraph in the style from being broken over a page break.

If you just want to keep a single paragraph unbroken, apply Unbreakable rows as an effect to it.

Upper-case and lower-case

There are several ways to change the case of selected text. You may change text to upper-case, lower-case, to initial capitals, or simply swap case.

• Use the appropriate Case option from the Edit menu.
• On RISC OS there is a key short-cut for swapping case. Select the words whose case you want to change and press Ctrl-S. If you only want to change a single letter, place the caret before the letter and press Ctrl-S (RISC OS).

Correcting typing errors

Deleting text

Simply select the text you need to delete and press the key or the Backspace key, or type in the text with which you want to replace the selected text.

Deleting text in tables

In tables you often want to delete text without deleting the cell containing it. However if you select a group of cells and press Delete, both cells and contents are removed. To delete just the text leaving the table intact, select the cells and display the Make menu from the Edit menu, and choose Make Blank.

If you only want to remove the content of a single cell, you can use Delete as normal.

Selecting areas of text

Many commands work on a selection. For example you need to select an area of text before you can move it around the document by cutting and pasting.

To select an arbitrary area of text, either:

1. Position the caret at the start of the area you need to select by moving the pointer there and click Select (the left mouse button).
2. Hold the mouse button down and drag the pointer down until the black area covers all the text you want to select.
3. Release the mouse button; your chosen area is selected.

or

1. Place the caret where you want the selection to start.
2. Move the pointer to where you want the selection to finish.
3. Control-click Select (the left mouse button) or click Adjust (RISC OS).

• Select a single word by double-clicking on it
• Select a whole paragraph by triple-clicking on it.
• Ctrl-W selects the word the caret is currently in.
• Ctrl-P selects the paragraph containing the caret (RISC OS).

Adjusting a selection

You can extend selections in the following ways:

• To change the size of a selection, point at the new place you want the selection to end and Ctrl-click Select (the left mouse button) or click Adjust (RISC OS).
• Type Ctrl-W to extend the selection a word at a time.

Clearing a selected area

If you select an area of text by mistake, or change your mind about a selection you have made, clear the selection in one of the following ways:

• Click Select (the left mouse button) wherever you want the caret to be — this can even be in the middle of the selected text.
• Select another area of text.
• Click the Selection tool button on the toolbar.
• Type Ctrl-Z.

Moving text around documents

You will often find that you want to move sections of text around your document or from one document to another. You may decide that you want to move a paragraph from the middle to the end, for example.

When you move text, it disappears from your document and is stored in an internal document called the clipboard. It is kept there until you try to store a different piece of text there; only one selection can be dealt with at once. When you copy a piece of text the original text remains in the document, as well as being stored in the clipboard.

To move a section of text from one place to another, follow the following procedure:

1. Select the area of text you want to move.
2. Click the Cut tool button on the toolbar. This will cut the text from the document to the clipboard and close up the space where it was cut from.
3. Move the pointer to the place where you want your text to go and click once, so that the caret is placed there.
4. Click the Paste tool button on the toolbar.
5. Text will be copied from the clipboard and appear in the new position.

You can paste as many copies of the contents of the clipboard into the document as you like.

Instead of clicking on the toolbar buttons to cut and paste, you may use the following menu commands and short-cut key combinations:

1. Select the area of text to move.
2. Choose Cut from the Edit menu, or enter Ctrl-X from the keyboard.
3. Place the insertion point where you want the text to go.
4. Choose Paste fromthe Edit menu, or enter Ctrl-V from the keyboard.
5. Your text will appear in the new position.

The text you cut or copied will stay on the clipboard until next time you do a cut or copy. Note that the Paste button will become highlighted and remain highlighted once you have done a cut or copy operation within the document.

Copying text within and between documents

Sometimes you may wish to make an extra copy of part of your text. For example, you may want to copy a paragraph into a second document without deleting it from the first.

You can also copy text between open documents, so that you paste the text you have copied from one document into another document

The procedure for doing this is as follows:

1. Select the area of text you want to copy.
2. Click the Copy tool button on the toolbar (or choose Copy from the Edit menu, or enter Ctrl-C from the keyboard).
3. Move the pointer to the place where you want your text to go and click so that the caret is placed there. This can be within the same document or within another open document.
4. Click the Paste tool button on the toolbar (or choose Paste from the Edit menu, or enter Ctrl-V from the keyboard).
5. Your second copy of the text will appear in the new position or the other document.

You may paste as many copies of your text into documents as you wish.

Entering text effects

Two simple text effects are available from the toolbar. They allow you to embolden and italicise selected text. They are the Bold and Italic buttons

For details of other text effects, and more sophisticated ways to apply bold and italic effects to text, see the section on Styles and Effects.

Bold

Bold text is used for emphasis, and to make areas of text stand out from the page. It is also used to provide weightier-looking type for headlines.

To embolden text:

1. Select the area of text you wish to embolden.
2. Click the Bold tool button on the toolbar (or press Ctrl-B).
3. The selected text will appear in boldface.

To enter text directly in bold, click the Bold tool button while no text is selected. When you have finished with bold, click the button again to deselect it.

Italic

Italic text is also used for emphasis, and is conventionally used for the names of works of art, books, and other creations rather than enclosing them in inverted commas.

To italicise text follow the process described above for Bold, but use the Italic button (or press Ctrl-I).

To revert to normal text from bold or italic, select the text you want to change. The bold or italic button will be selected: click on it to turn the setting off and the selected text will revert to being plain text.

Entering special text and characters

Fireworkz enables you to automate some parts of the editing process, such as adding page numbers and today's date to documents.

Dates

You can add two kinds of dates to your text.

• Live dates are automatically updated, so that whenever you open the document today's date is automatically displayed. This is useful for templates such as letters where you need not remember to add the correct date.
• Fixed dates are never updated. The date which appears when you first enter it is never changed. This is useful for documents you intend to return to where you need a fixed timestamp.

To add today's date to a document:

1. Place the caret where you want the date to be added.
2. Display the Inserts sub-menu from the Extra menu and choose Date.
3. The Insert date dialogue box will be displayed.
4. Choose the date format you want to use. If the Live option is selected, a live date will be entered. Click the button for the setting you want.
5. The date will be entered in the format you want. If you have chosen the Live option, the date will be updated to the current date whenever you open the document. Turn the Live option off to enter a fixed date in your document as a permanent record of the date of creation of the document.

Page numbers

Page numbers work best if they are added to running text, that is headers and footers. If you do this, the correct page number will be displayed on each page of your document.

To add page numbers to a document:

1. Put the caret in the place where you want the page number.
2. Display the Inserts sub-menu from the Extra menu. Choose Page #.
3. The Page number dialogue box will appear. Select the page number format you want and click Insert.
4. The correct page number will be displayed automatically. If you added the page number to a header or footer, the correct page number will appear on every page.

Restarting page numbers

To restart page numbering:

1. Enter a page break as described above.
2. While in the Page dialogue box set the Page number option button.
3. Type the number you want to start from in the adjacent writable field and then click Apply.

x-Page numbers

In documents which have multiple across pages as well as down pages (x-pages), such as wide spreadsheets whose columns run across more than one page, you may want to number these pages. To number across pages, choose X page # from the Inserts menu.

Special characters

There are characters not directly available from the keyboard which you may want to appear in your document. Characters you may want to use include typographical quote marks, dashes longer than the standard hyphen, diphthongs and accented or foreign language characters.

Entering special characters in RISC OS

• Select the desired character(s) using the !Chars application — they will be entered directly into your document.
• Whilst holding down the Alt key, type the ASCII code for the character you want using the numeric keypad. See the online documentation.

Entering special characters in Windows

• Select the desired character(s) from the Character Map application and paste them into your document.
• Whilst holding down the Alt key, type the ASCII code (preceded by a zero) for the character you want using the numeric keypad.

Displaying the filename within documents

You may find it useful to insert the filename or pathname on your document, to remind you where it is stored when looking at a printed copy.

Two options are available, both from the Inserts menu:

• Pathname shows the full pathname of the file, showing the route to it from the filing system through any directories to the file itself, such as:

RISC OS: ADFS::HardDisc.$.SKS.Documents.July.Letter

Windows: C:\Users\SKS\Documents\July\Letter.fwk

• Filename shows just the last part of the file's name, the name you typed in when you saved it. So the file above would appear simply as:

Letter

To use these options:

1. Place the caret where you want to insert the name into your document.
2. Display the Inserts menu from the Extra menu.
3. Choose Filename or Pathname.
4. The filename or pathname will be added to your document.

Find and replace

Find and replace enables you to replace all occurrences of a word in a document with a different word.

To replace a word:

1. Choose Find from the Edit menu, or press F4.
2. The Find and replace dialogue box is displayed.
3. Type the word you want to find into the top writable field. If you have a selection less than a paragraph it will appear in the box automatically.
4. Choose the options you want in the dialogue box, if you want to alter the default settings, e.g. to search for parts of words.
5. Click the Replace option button, if you want to replace the word you are looking for. Type the word you want to replace it with into the adjacent writable field. Select the Copy capitals option button if you want to replace like with like, so that occurrences of the word at the start of sentences will keep their initial capitalisation.
6. Click the From top or From caret button. The next occurrence of the word will be found after the chosen point and, if you selected the Replace with option, a further dialogue box will appear.
7. Choose one of the options to continue.
   • Next skips this occurrence of the word and looks for the next one;
   • Replace replaces the current instance of the word and looks for the next one;
   • Replace all finds and replaces all occurrences of the word in the document or selected part of it.

If you are simply finding a word, rather than replacing it, you will see the word highlighted in the text when it is found. To continue looking for further occurrences of the word, press Ctrl-N (RISC OS) or F3 (Windows).

To hunt for several occurrences of a word even if you don't actually want to replace it, select the Replace with option. This will display the Found dialogue box whenever the word is found, enabling you to hunt for the next occurrence. Remember to press Next rather than Replace, unless you type the word in as the word to replace as well as the word to find.

Finding special characters

There are some special characters which you can search for with Find and Replace.

• ^T will find any tabs in a document.
• ^R will find any internal returns (line breaks) within paragraphs.
• ^^ will find the ^ character.

You can use these character combinations in both the Find and Replace writable fields of the dialogue box.

Checking spellings

There are three options for checking your spelling in Fireworkz documents. You may either check as you type, check your whole document in one go when you have finished editing, or select part of your document and check that.

Check as you type

To check your spelling as you type, you will need to select the Auto check option in the Choices dialogue box, accessed through the icon bar menu (RISC OS) or the File menu (Windows).

As you type, each word is checked against the built-in dictionary. When you make a spelling mistake or enter a word which the dictionary does not know your computer will alert you to the mistake by beeping.

You can either:

• Ignore the beep and continue.
• Choose Dictionary from the Extra – Text – Spell menu to help find the correct spelling.

Checking spelling

You may prefer to check spelling at the end of an editing session:

• If your document contains many proper names or highly technical vocabulary which is unlikely to be in the standard Fireworkz dictionary.
• If you don't want your writing or train of thoughts to be interrupted by the spelling checker.

To check the spelling in your whole document:

1. Choose Check from the Extra – Text – Spell menu. The spelling checker dialogue box will appear if there are any mistakes.
2. Any mistakes picked up by the spelling checker will appear in the box at the top of the Spelling dialogue box. Fireworkz will try to guess the correct word and the guesses will appear in the box.
3. You can replace the mistake with a word Fireworkz suggests by clicking on the Replace button. There may be more than one suggested replacement, so you should pick the appropriate one.
4. If you see that the mistake is a typing error and Fireworkz' suggested replacement is plainly wrong, delete the mistake in the dialogue box, type in the replacement and click the Replace button.
5. If the word flagged was not incorrectly spelt, but a word unknown to the dictionary, either click the Add button to add it to the user dictionary, or the Next button to skip the word and search for the next incorrect or unknown word.

You don't have to check your whole document; you can check a selected area, by selecting it and then choosing Check from the Spell sub-menu.

Adding words to the dictionary

The dictionaries held inside Fireworkz are divided into four separate sub-dictionaries. They are stored as the following:

Master and User contain words which can be spelt in upper-case or lower-case;
MasterC and UserC contain words which must have an initial capital.

The dictionaries Master and MasterC are Fireworkz' own dictionary and will not be changed.

Any words you add will be added to User (or to UserC if the word has an initial capital).

You can add words to the user dictionary using either of the spelling dialogue boxes. To add words using the Dictionary dialogue box:

1. Type the word you want to add into the space in the Dictionary dialogue box
2. Click the Add button in the dialogue box.
3. The word will be added to the dictionary.

Browsing through the dictionary

You can browse through the dictionary without using it to check spelling. To do this:

1. Choose Dictionary from the Extra – Text – Spell menu.
2. Click in the Word box.
3. Type in the word you want to find.
4. If it is included in the dictionary, it will appear in the list box. You can use the arrows to scroll through the dictionary to look at similarly spelled words.
5. If your word is not found and you want to add it to your personal dictionary, click the Add button.

Counting words

If you want to count the words in the whole document, make sure that no text is selected. If you want to count a selected area of the text, select it.

1. Choose Count words from the Extra – Text menu.
2. The number of words counted is shown in the status line. When you move the pointer, the text will disappear.