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Editing

Sue Center unfortunately does not have complete editing facilities to enable easy revisions of the text you have entered. Such generalized editing is actually a complex task and would require a sophisticated interface. Remember that the aim here is basic communication not syntactic perfection. Sue Center is optimized for PRODUCING text not for modifying it.

Text in Sue Center is mostly entered in a running stream as if we were speaking. We can't retrieve spoken words from the air to change them. If we speak in error our listeners do usually adapt and communication does happen.

It IS annoying, however, to know that you have made an error that you can't fix. If you see that you have entered something in the message area that you wish were different there are two ways to remedy it.

The first is to simply delete characters and words until you get to the place you want to change. This is rather unsatisfying because you may be deleting words you actually did want.

The other way to do an edit is tricky to explain but quite powerful. Let's say you have entered this in the message area:

NOW IS THE TIMF FOR ALL GOOD PEOPLE TO

and you realize that TIMF should be TIME. You can enter the following 5 characters at the end of the text:

NOW IS THE TIMF FOR ALL GOOD PEOPLE TO /F/E/

When the final slash is chosen the program will:

- search the text for the F

- replace it with the E

- remove the /F/E/

and Voila! you have performed the desired edit. You can continue entering text at the end of the phrase.

Another example:

NOW IS THE TIMEFOR ALL GOOD PEOPLE TO /EF/E_F/

This will insert a space between the E and the F to give 'TIME FOR'. Note that the underscore above (and below) is used to represent a space in a more visible way. You actually enter a space not an underscore.

You also could have done the above edit in the following ways to achieve the same result:

/TIME/TIME_/

/ME/ME_/

/F/_F/

Another way to accomplish the same edit is this:

/E/E_/

Because there are FOUR E's on the line a different interactive mechanism is invoked to allow you to choose which E's to replace with 'E_'. As each E is highlighted in turn you choose Yes to replace, Skip to move on to the next, and Done to say that you are finished.

Two more examples:

NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD PEOPLE /THE_/THE BEST_/

NOW IS THE TIMGE FOR ALL GOOD PEOPLE /G//

You can use the * character as a wildcard to match several letters:

NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD PEOPLE /_I*D//

to produce

NOW PEOPLE

Since making such 'search and replace' edits is sometimes difficult to get right, you can UNDO an edit by entering an apostrophe (' - also known as a single quote) immediately after seeing the faulty edit.

If the string you are searching for is not found you will be notified of this and nothing further will be done.

If the line you are editing contains a slash you can use an alternative editing delimiter of percent.

http://www.helo.com/greet/hi/howdy.html %l%ll%

If the line contains both a slash and a percent you are out of luck.