Watching and walking codes - The View Editor
For the user who wants to watch into the codes, for quickly change or update them, this Editor window was built. Here you can optimize certain areas of an existing page especially as regards the fonts and text layout, browsing the whole code or taking any text selection to fit a properly resized frame, and try or apply other special options with ease, like run the test from editing an external Script or Style Sheet, or through frameset documents. You can even test code changes in real time by the hyphenator-Pro internal browser, getting automatic windows setup and text positioning. Although not assuming to be a complete editor, this tool holds very sophisticated features, conceived to support the webmaster as well as the writer's task with the most handy and interactive features; by the way, it was used to build this site. In fact the best way for enhancing the efficiency of a program is to drill it.
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The Hyphenation symbol display
The normal Font/Color mode
The Track-Bar Font resizing
As you can see on the image, when the window is reduced in size, a cascade menu replaces all the buttons.
Syntax fading mode and the Light hyphenation symbol
See the Editor Facilities page for more aided setting of extended characters and special symbols.
The text bookmarks and their buttons

The text selection by "jumpers".
Tha anchor property of these pointers let them to be used like jumpers, where the Shift_Ctrl·J will connect two contiguous pointers, highlighting the text area between the current one - or the caret itself, if moved - and the last or the next one, depending on the Left or Right Ctrl key stroked. Wider selections can be taken Shift_clicking any button, for will it be selected the text area included by the two matching indexes: the highlighted button (or the default bookmark) as well as any start position and the Shift_clicked one, whether they are contiguous or freestanding; hence the pointer will be set to the beginning of the selection, which can still be adjusted to match others.
Not only these Bookmarks can be added and removed in any order; the buttons in view can even be suitably replaced with the current caret index by a Ctrl+ click, and they can be sorted to obtain a regular, easier progress, removing duplicates if any, and those closer than ±10 bytes (or other custom-defined value).
This process evenly applies to that special Find&Replace option, for the automatic markup of the occurrences of a string into one or more documents at a time (see details). Such buttons are colored in alternate warmer nuance. In this case a 2nd area is provided to store the current sequence before sorting, that can be recalled by the || command. Once this area for store is in use it will not be overwritten unless its content is recovered, keeping safe any manual sequence set before, and leaving the basic area to be replaced anyway by other searches or changes.
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The hyphenation Symbols.
First of all being dedicated to the hyphenation process, the choice is given by the between the true hyphenation symbols |True Hyphen|, as the |­| is for HTML .(1), or the or the |\-| is for RTF and the fast hyphenation symbols |Light Hyphen| , as the |·| .(2) used by default to assure the best readability to any hyphenated text.
The hyphen itself |-| can be used in some cases, especially for not completely encoded strings or unidentified excerpt of any kind, as they could be copied from outside and pasted in a new page just to hyphenate them.
While the first case toggles between the two simbols in use, the second will show the |·| it the light mode, whilst in the "true" mode nothing but the effective hyphenation of the text into the Editor's frame.
The Font and Colors of the code.
The font handling was prioritized, for viewing as well as browsing the code. There are three modes to display a document:
- normal mode: one single text font/color can be selected for the whole page. It be resized in real time by one point step (5pt to 54pt) with the Track Bar .(3) and the page browsed hyphenated into a window with the same shape of the editor's frame, to allow a quick evaluation of the effect; you can browse the encoded page as is - |Browse code| button - or the clean text or a selected portion of it stripped by the most Tags but,with the font sie and type set herewith - |Browse text| button - in order to evaluate the arrangement of that text format into one defined area.(5), all without changing the state of the source into the frame.
- syntax fading mode: that help to the visual selection of the different areas of an HTML or other Web document. Once more this does not match the usual editors' syntax coloring, in that it does not separate every syntax Tag or Reserved word from the Tag's parameters, content and so on, but rather it highlights the four main true areas like any whole HTML Tags, distinguished from the Script and Meta instruction (custom definable), all separated from the output Text and, last, the included Mime encoded and embedded objects from the HTML Body of the mail messages.
- selective custom mode:
what might appear a limitation, in our case holds several advantages: the default Font + Color setting of any defined area may be changed when the caret is on that area through the main command buttons [upper right toolbar of the Main window] and any Font Size by the lower Track-Bar with an immediate view; furthermore both text and any kind of code can be temporarily customized according to our visual needs (see also the The Quick Editor Popup menu description) while the Ctrl+V) command will paste any string fitting the local Font format then, using the || command from the popup menu or the Shift_INS instead, any string that is being pasted in whatever position will maintain its original font/color (e.g. coming from a RichEdit source), allowing to check at first if different code areas are being mixed, while keeping somehow a visible trace of that portion of code and its recent changes until they are approved, switching the syntax color button to refresh the whole page;

webmasters who like manual framing of pages should know how often this might help. However any [new] text selection can be normalized in any moment, i.e. converted to the font that starts the selection, just opening the Font and Color dialogs and closing them to confirm the displayed parameters for the whole string.
When it deals with locating whole areas to be copied from one file to another, like it often occurs creating HTML pages - just one more example of our field - this dynamic technique serves much better than a syntactic distinction between single words and parameters. After many years over the keyboards, it is revealing to be a great help in creating this site.
Moreover, the text Font/Color can be resized with the Track Bar, leaving the other settings unchanged: in this case too whatever text selection may be browsed into the currently visible format and style. The syntax fade choice may be set by the toggle button .(4), with its opened/closed book icon.
As a distinctive option, any paragraphs or selection of code can be right-aligned (Ctrl-R) as well as center (Ctrl-E) and left-aligned (Ctrl-L), one more mode to keep under sight certain blocks of code and text outside any indentation: this will have no effect over the HTML page, but can help to temporarily localize e.g. paragraphs in word-wrap mode or other details.
Both the described modes above can show either the True or the Light hyphenation symbol: when it deals with RTF files (Rich Text Format), where the hyphenation is integrated, the True mode does not show any character but the normal syllabified text.
Besides, specific Font parameters and Colors can be independently assigned to any portion of a document, thus allowing to visually separate diverse areas (e.g. one complex TABLE inside other TABLEs, or blocks of code to be moved), paragraphs, routines etc., either for a quick recognition of some points like with the alignment, or the advantage to save every personal layout as is, like a snapshot of a defined development degree or the scheme of a strategy, without affecting the code's efficiency when reloaded by the hyphenator-Pro. These local setting will be applied to all the changes done or the new text entered inside the defined area, while different formats can be introduced and evenly mantained as long as one of the two modes described above is invoked to reset everything. See also the V/Editor's advanced Options.
The integrated text bookmarks and Buttons.
For each of these 4 view modes a fixed number of 10 [updating] bookmarks to caret positions can be set, to be circularly walked backward or forward by Left_Ctrl·J and Right_Ctrl·J.
Two main options strongly enhance the usual functionality of these indexes:
- 10 push buttons corresponding to the active indexes can be shown/hidden (the last used is highlighted)in the Status Bar to the place of the font description: they can be clicked hence to jump to any recorded point, even in a discontinuous way; and will be saved and reloaded as part of the current project.
While the Right_Ctrl·K command keys in a pointer and the Left_Ctrl·K deletes the current one, the Shift_Ctrl·K is a toggle to show/hide the buttons at the Status Bar, to the window's footer.
- At any point of the document the last or next bookmark can be asked, to know about the current area or where to move: if at least one anchor is set, as long as the Left_Ctrl or the Right_Ctrl key are pressed they will turn the caret to a transparent (red-green) icon showing the nearest last or the next bookmark's number. The same becomes visible when the Editor is focused from outside clicking the Status Bar, but in full red color, helping to the immediate view of the tight caret position.
The visible bookmark buttons can be provided with each own special hints, according to the user's preferences, that can be related to and show:
- the pointers, i.e. the byte number of the caret position,
- the text, captured nearby the index and extended for a number of bytes before and a number of bytes after that the user can set, and it can be large enough to allow the unequivocal recognition of the text involved.
This may be meaningful when it deals of updating old documents, of which the mental trace is far at present.
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