Comments
in Manifold provide a primitive text window for making notes or as a storage
location for pasting text for later re-use. No word wrap,
no fonts manipulation... almost nothing but the simplest possible window
for entering, editing and saving text.
Create a new Comments component by right-clicking into the Project pane and choosing Create - New Comments.
Open a Comments component by double-clicking it in the Project pane. A new Comments window opens with <comments> as the filler text.
If we paste a long line of text the Comments window will not word wrap. We must enter end-of-line characters manually.
For all the limitations of the Comments window it nonetheless provides a useful place to park text temporarily. For example, if we want to copy the FieldCoordSystem.Geom property value for a table before later pasting it into a different table's properties, a Comments window is a good place to store the text.
We simply copy the text from the table's properties and then paste into the Comments window.
Later on, we can highlight the text and do a Ctrl-C to copy it, allowing us to then paste it whenever we like. We could, of course, keep an open Notepad session to do exactly the same thing. But the advantage of the Comments window is that it is a part of the project and will stay with that project.
For tips on editing text in comments, see the Editing Queries, Scripts and Comments topic.
Click and drag |
Clicking and dragging over text highlights that text. |
Ctrl-A |
Highlight all. |
Ctrl-C |
Copy to the clipboard. |
Ctrl-X |
Cut to the clipboard. |
Ctrl-V |
Paste from the clipboard. |
Ctrl-T |
Increase line indent. Edit - Advanced - Increase Line Indent |
Shift-Ctrl-T |
Decrease line indent. Edit - Advanced - Decrease Line Indent |
Ctrl-U |
Make highlighted text lower case. Edit - Advanced - Make Lower Case |
Shift-Ctrl-U |
Make highlighted text upper case. Edit - Advanced - Make Upper Case |
Arrow keys |
Move the cursor in the direction of the arrow. |
Page Up / Down |
Move the cursor one window up or down. |
Home |
Move the cursor to the left-most character of the current line. |
End |
Move the cursor to the right-most character of the current line. |
Ctrl-Home |
Move the cursor to the first line. |
Ctrl-End |
Move the cursor to the last line. |
Ctrl-F |
Edit - Find |
Shift-F3 |
Edit - Find Previous |
F3 |
Edit - Find Next |
Ctrl-H |
Edit - Replace |
Ctrl-] |
Move cursor to matching bracket. Available when cursor is next to a bracket. <>, [], (), {} match across lines. #, ' and " match within same line only. |
Shift-Ctrl-] |
Move cursor to matching bracket and select all in between, inclusive. Available when cursor is next to a bracket. <>, [], (), {} match across lines. #, ' and " match within same line only. |
Why does a new Comments component contain <comments> as starter text? - Besides showing us where to write the text, the <comments> starter text provides filler for the value of the Text property for the component in the mfd_meta System Data table. Given Manifold's "everything is a table" orientation even the text that is saved in a Comments component is exposed as a value in a record.
Credits - The text in the example above is taken from the How to Use This Book section of the now ancient, but still very funny, Mr. Bunny's Guide to ActiveX, by Carlton Egremont III, ISBN 0-201-48536-2. One of the funniest programming texts ever written, this slim volume presents ActiveX concepts in the form of conversations between a cartoon rabbit and farmer. Carlton Egremont III also wrote a similar volume for Java, Mr. Bunny's Big Cup o' Java.
Editing Queries, Scripts and Comments
Keyboard and Mouse Quick Reference