(You will see an error message on the screen if you press piiiJJ now, after typing “NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR PARTY.” Here’s why: Pressing m tells the HX-20 that you have just completed a logical line. The HX-20 is in “BASIC,“ so it examines your line to see if it is a legitimate BASIC command. Since it can’t figure out what you’re asking it to do, it displays an error message. You’ll learn more about such error messages in the BASIC Tutorial and Reference Manual. But for now, ignore any BASIC error messages you encounter, because you’re still trying to learn how to use the screen editor.)

When you work with BASIC or with an application program, the HX-20 only pays attention to logical lines; it doesn’t care about physical lines. Therefore, the screen editor makes it easy for you to insert and delete characters within a logical line, but has no such features for inserting and deleting within a physical line.

Retyping

To change something you’ve typed, just move the cursor to the place where you want to make a change, and type the text you desire. When you type over existing text in this way, you replace the old text with the new text.

For example, let’s say you want to change the expression you had typed, from “NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR PARTY” to “NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR FRIENDS.‘*

To make this change, use the cursor keys to locate the cursor on the “P” in “PARTY.” Then type “FRIENDS.” With those few keystrokes, you have changed the logical line.

Deleting text

To delete some characters altogether, place the cursor to the right of the character you wish to delete. Then press this key:

The character to the left of the cursor disappears, and the rest of the logical line moves one space to the left, to close up the gap.

To delete a group of characters, place the cursor to the right of the last character in the group, and press the m key repeatedly (or hold it down, thus making it repeat automatically). This will delete the characters in the group, one at a time, from right to left. When you’ve deleted the leftmost character, release the Ikey.

What could be easier? The characters you wished to delete will be gone, and there won’t be any gap in the logical line.

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