In Text mode you can enter text directly into a frame, you can change or delete the text which is already there, and you can mark text as a block for another function. To enter Text mode, simply change to the Text module. Now, when you select a frame (or move the mouse pointer over a frame which is already selected), you will see the mouse pointer turn into a text cursor (I-beam). If it appears as a cross, the Ruler mode has been selected previously. Click once on the right mouse button and the text cursor will appear.
You can set the text cursor anywhere in the text frame by clicking the left mouse button once at the desired location. If there is no text where you clicked, the cursor will appear after the last character in the frame. If the text frame is empty, the cursor will appear in the top left corner of the frame, of course.
The I-beam now works like a normal text cursor that shows where
the next character will be inserted. You can enter text using the
keyboard as in a text editor or word processor. Calamus will handle
carriage returns automatically. If a word is too long to fit on a
line, Calamus will send the entire word to the next line. During text
input, please note the difference between a hyphen, which is achieved
by the [–] key at the top of the main keyboard, and the somewhat
longer dash or minus
character obtained by presing the
[–] key on the numerical keypad at far right.
The [Backspace] key will delete the last character entered, and it can backspace over line ends. You may also delete the control codes (described below) using the [Backspace] key, but in this case it is possible that more than one character will be deleted, say a place holder control code for time and date.
The arrow keys move the cursor one character to the left or right, or one line up or down in the text respectively. If you press one of the [Shift] keys together with [Left arrow] or [Right arrow], the text cursor will jump to the start or the end of the line. In a similar way you can reach the start or end of a text frame respectively with [Shift] and [Up arrow] or [Down arrow]. The [Control] key together with [Left arrow] or [Right arrow] moves the text cursor to the start of the current or the next word respectively. The combination of [Shift]+[Control]+[Left arrow] or [Right arrow] move you to the start or end of the complete text respectively. [Shift]+[Control]+[Up arrow] or [Down arrow] set the text cursor at the start or end of a currently selected text block respectively (see below).
To end a paragraph, use the [Return] key. Special key functions
can be created by using the Key bindings
function (see Tools
function group).
As a text frame (and with piped frames all following ones too)
must be reformatted each time you enter or delete text (line breaks,
text flow to other frames, possibly also justification) the frame will
not be redrawn immediately you press a key, but only if you pause for
a short while between two keypresses. This allows you to work in a
reasonably fluid fashion without having to wait for the frame to be
redrawn after each letter on the one hand, while on the other it
offers the possibility to check your work at any time simply by a
short pause while entering text. Nevertheless, the built-in text
editor would be more efficient (see Tools
function group in the
Text module) for entering or editing large amounts of text.
In the Text module, you can also select blocks of text in the current text frame in the same way that you can select frames in the Frame editing module. Just run the mouse over the text to be marked while holding down the left mouse button. This works not just from left to right but also in the opposite direction and even vertically, in which case complete lines will be marked, of course. Marked text is displayed as selected (inverse video).
