Editing in ebe

Editing in ebe uses the mouse and keyboard in mostly normal ways for editors. Special keys like Delete and Enter work as expected. For many of these normal keys an additional action is invoked using the Control key and the normal key.

Navigation

Scrollbars: There are vertical and horizontal scrollbars which can scroll through the file. Scrolling can also be done using the mouse wheel.

Arrow keys: Moving 1 character at a time is done using the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Control + Arrow keys: Control-Right moves 1 word to the right. Control-Left moves 1 word to the left. Control-Up moves 1 paragraph up. Control-Down moves 1 paragraph down.

Home/End: Home moves to column 1 on the current line. End moves to the end of the current line.

Control + Home/End: Control-Home moves to column 1 of line 1. Control-End moves to the end of the file.

PageUp/PageDown: These keys move up/down one screenful at a time.

Control-T/Control-B: Control-T moves to column 1 of the top line currently on the screen. Control-B moves to column 1 of the last line currently on the screen.

Control-M: Control-M scrolls the screen until the current line is at the middle of the screen.

Control-L: Control-L will pop up a dialog where you can enter a line number to go to. The dialog is designed so that you can simple press Control-L, type in the line number and press Enter without having to use the mouse.

Editing

Left mouse: Dragging with the left mouse button help down can be used to mark a section of text. Double clicking with the left mouse button will select a "word" of text.

Select all: You can select all of the text using Control-A or the Edit menu option.

Select none: The best way to select none is to click with the mouse in the edit window which cancels the selection. You can also cancel any select using Control-0 or the Edit menu option, but this option moves you back to line 1.

Cut/Copy/Paste: Selected text can be cut, copied and pasted using either options in the Edit menu or Control-X for cut, Control-C for copy, or Control-V for paste.

Undo/Redo: Control-Z will undo an edit operation. Insertions will be undone line at a time. Control-Y will redo an edit operation. The editor maintains a stack of edit operations which is probably plenty.

Find/Replace: Use Control-F to pop up the Find/Replace dialog. There is a text entry box there for entering a string to find. The focus is ready for you to type the search string when the dialog starts. If you simply want to find, then enter either Enter or Control-F as many times as you wish. If you wish to change the string, then use Tab to move to the text entry box for the replacement field and enter a string. To replace the string, use Control-R. You can end the Find/Replace dialog using Control-D.

Backspace/Delete: Backspace will delete the character to the left of the cursor while Delete will delete the character to the right of the cursor. Control-Backspace will delete the "word" to the left of the cursor and Control-Delete will delete the "word" to the right of the cursor.

Tab: Entering a tab character will enter enough spaces to move to the next tab stop. By default tabs are at columns 5, 9, 13, ... - indenting 4 characters for each tab. Control-Tab will delete characters to the left of the cursor to position to the previous tab column. The tab width can be changed by changing the "tab_width" parameter is the file ".ebe.ini".

Auto-indent: The editor will automatically enter spaces so that a new line will be indented just the same as the previous line. Ebe will indent the next line after a line ending in "{". Likewise it will de-indent when a line begins with "}". Adjusting indentation for a new line can be done using Tab or Control-Tab. Auto-indent can be turned off by setting "auto_indent" to false in ".ebe.ini".

Commenting: Control-K will comment out the current line or a range of lines if some text is selected. Control-U will uncomment either the current line or a range of lines.

Word/number completion: Ebe keeps track of words and numbers longer than three characters to simplify entering/re-entering longer words. It starts with the a collection of keywords and adds words and numbers as you edit. When you enter some text ebe will present a list of possible completions to select from. Press enter after moving up or down in the list to enter the selection completion. You can also type more text or press Escape to cancel the completion. You can change the minimum by changing the "minimum" value of the "complete" section of ".ebe.ini".