Indenting Paragraphs

In PipeDream you can indent paragraphs in one of two ways:

Indenting Just the First Line

To indent a paragraph by a few spaces, simply type the spaces on the first line of the paragraph. Note that you cannot press the Tab key to do this as moves the caret into the next column which results in the whole paragraph being typed into the new column.

To be able to create an indent by pressing one key, you can redefine a key to insert any number of spaces.

As an example, in the directory !PipeDream.Resources.CmdFiles, there is a command file called Indent5 which redefines Shift-F1 to insert five spaces. If you double-click Select on this file, the key will be defined; you can now press Shift-F1 to give you an indent of five spaces at the start of each paragraph If you always want Shift-F1 to do this, copy the file so that it is called <Choices$Write>.PipeDream.key. This is a special command file which PipeDream always attempts to run when it starts up.

If you want to change the number of spaces that pressing Shift-F1 gives, you can edit the command file by dragging it to the PipeDream icon on the icon bar. The five spaces are between the second pair of double quotation marks. You can add any text to this string and it will be defined onto Shift-F1 when PipeDream starts up.

Indenting the Whole Paragraph

To indent a new paragraph, move to the beginning of column A, press Tab and start typing. Tab moves the caret into the next column and the paragraph that you type will all go into column B. Note that when the caret wraps from the first line of the paragraph to the second, the caret stays within column B.

To vary the indent before your paragraph in column B, you need to change the width of column A. You can do this before or after you have typed the paragraph. The easiest way to vary the width of a column is to move the pointer into the column border at the top of the window and drag the column border to the left or right.

After varying the indent, you will need to reformat your text to a new right margin. You can drag the right margin to the new position that you want. To reformat a single paragraph put the caret on the top line of the paragraph and give the Reformat Paragraph command (Ctrl-R). To reformat a lot of text mark the text as a block and give the Format Block command (Ctrl-EFB).

PipeDream also enables you to move paragraphs of text which you have already typed. For example to move a paragraph of text from column A to column B, first mark the paragraph as a block. Then place the caret on the first line of the paragraph and press the Tab key to move the caret into column B. You will notice that the text which was previously to the right of the caret has temporarily disappeared. Do not worry about this; Pipedream is simply showing you that you are in column B. Now give the Move Block command (Ctrl-BM). The text will move from column A to column B. If you wish, you can put the caret back in column A and move the block back again.

If you get the error message Overlap when trying to move paragraphs in this way, it is because the caret is between the top and bottom lines of the block. Move the caret to the top line of the block or to a line which does not run through the block.

For information on See
Redefining your keyboard Command Files
Copying, moving and deleting blocks Block Operations
Reformatting text Reformatting Text