Text editing

Much of your work with VA Smalltalk involves editing text. Many browsers in the development environment use text panes. Text panes are typically large panes where you edit Smalltalk code. The text panes in the browsers offer consistent editing tools across the Smalltalk development environment.

Text panes have two editing modes: insert and delete. When a browser first opens the text pane is in insert mode, which is indicated by the cursor displayed as a vertical bar. You can add new text without overwriting existing text. The delete mode is indicated by the cursor being a block. In delete mode, new text will overwrite existing text. The Insert key toggles between these modes.

You can select text to be used for a later operation. Selecting text is sometimes called highlighting or marking text. Selected text will be highlighted when displayed. You can select text either by dragging the mouse across the selection, or by holding down the Shift key and moving the cursor with the Home, End, or arrow keys.

In general, there are multiple ways to accomplish a given editing task. The table below describes text editing operations. You can practice these operations in the Transcript or in a Workspace.

In order to	You can
Move the cursor	• Point to the new place with the mouse cursor and click on mouse button 1. • Use the arrow keys. • Use the Page Up or Page Down key to move up or down by one page. • Use the Home key to move the cursor to the beginning of a line. • Use the End key to move the cursor to the end of a line. • Press the Ctrl key and use the left and right arrow keys to skip forward or back by one word. • Press the Ctrl key and use the Home and End keys to skip to the beginning or end of the text.
Toggle between insert and delete modes	Press the Insert key.
Select any amount of text	• Point to one end of the text with the mouse. Press and hold the left mouse button and drag the mouse pointer to the other end of the text. • Hold down the Shift key, and use the Home, End, or arrow keys to select the desired amount of text.
Select a word	Double-click on the word with mouse button 1.
Deselect any text	Move the cursor within the same text pane (you can use the mouse or the keyboard to move the cursor).
Delete a character	• Use the Backspace key to delete the character to the left of the cursor. • Use the Delete key to delete the character to the right of the insert cursor, or to delete the highlighted character in delete mode.
Delete text	First select the text; then press the Backspace or Delete key.
Copy text to the clipboard	First select the text, then select Copy from the Edit menu, or press Ctrl + Insert.
Cut text to the clipboard	First select the text; then either select Cut from the Edit menu, or press Shift + Delete. The text is deleted and copied to the clipboard.
Paste text from the clipboard	Select Paste from the Edit menu, or press the Shift + Insert keys. The text from the clipboard is pasted at the cursor. If any text is selected, it is replaced with the pasted text.