Apple 2 manual Selecting Text and Shapes

C H A P T E R 6

Data Input

■Remove extra space from paragraphs

■Duplicate text or shapes

■Change shapes

■Move objects

The techniques people use for these editing actions are described in the next 12 sections (ending with “Moving Objects” on page 6-32).

To make these editing actions available in your application, you don’t have to do anything at all as long as you use standard input elements based on Newton prototypes. Although you can make some of the editing actions available in custom input areas, you can’t make them all available. In particular, it’s impossible to implement the customary techniques for selecting multiple objects, moving objects, changing paragraph margins, and more.

Selecting Text and Shapes

Users must select text or shapes before copying, moving, or otherwise manipulating them. To select an object, a user holds down the pen on or near the object until a heavy mark appears under the pen and the Newton device makes a high-pitched sound. Then the user draws the highlighting mark over or around the object. (The sound does not happen if the “Pen sound effects” option is turned off in the Sound section of the built-in Preferences application.) Figure 6-17 shows how selection works.

To select words, a user draws the highlighting mark across them. To select text that’s on more than one line, a user draws the highlighting mark from the beginning of the first word to the end of the last word. To select several whole lines of text, a user draws the highlighting mark vertically through the lines of text.

To select lines in a shape, a user draws the highlighting mark along the lines.

To select whole paragraphs, shapes, or a combination of text and shapes, a user circles them with the highlighting mark. The highlighting mark doesn’t need to be close to the items, as long as it encloses them completely and doesn’t enclose anything else. The Newton system puts a gray selection box around the object or objects the user circled.

6-22 Writing, Drawing, and Editing