Audience
This user’s guide is intended as a reference for
MetaEdit+ system administrators. For installation you should have an additional
set of instructions. It is assumed that the system administrator is familiar
with the concepts and basic usage described in the other MetaEdit+
manuals.
Please note that in this manual it is assumed that you
have a working knowledge of the operating system you use. Whilst it is not
necessary to be a system administrator for your operating system to be a
MetaEdit+ system administrator, such knowledge would be useful. For an
introduction and guidance about your platform and operating system, please see
the manuals that came with your system.
MetaEdit+ is a dynamic product under continual
improvement, and there may occasionally be some differences between what is
described in the printed manual and what is found in the current version. The
HTML-based manual, however, is updated for any new changes or improvements as it
comes together with the software installation package and patch files.
Therefore, you are strongly advised to use the HTML-based version of the
manual.
Conventions
Throughout the manual, you will find special notes and
comments that point out important features and characteristics of the MetaEdit+
environment. These notes are printed in
italics and are marked by an
arrow (

) in the left margin. The steps required for performing
MetaEdit+’s various functions are indented and numbered: 1), 2), 3)
etc.
Menus, mouse buttons and dialogs
Tools in MetaEdit+ have two kinds of menus: pull-down and
pop-up. Pull-down menus
are found in the menu bar under the
window title bar, and pop-up menus are related to elements of the models. To use
a pull down menu, select its label from the menu bar with the left mouse button
and choose the desired function from the menu that appears. You may also open
and choose items from pull-down menus with their accessor keys (underlined).
Some items in pull-down menus also have direct keyboard shortcuts. (Throughout
this manual we assume a right-handed mouse, i.e. one where the left mouse button
is used for most operations.)
To use pop-up menus
, first select the
element to be operated on (e.g. with the left mouse button), and then use the
right mouse button to open the pop-up menu for further action. In all tools of
MetaEdit+ the pop-up menu contains the specific functionality appropriate to the
selected element.
List dialogs
MetaEdit+ makes extensive use of list dialogs for selecting
among elements. To quickly select a known element in the list, simply type the
first few letters of that element’s name when the dialog opens. This moves
the cursor to the first element whose name begins with those letters. Pressing
enter will choose the framed element, closing the dialog. Pressing space selects
the framed element, and resets the typed buffer, so you can start typing a
different name. You can also double click an element to choose it and close the
dialog.
Some dialogs allow multiple selections: use shift-click or
shift-space to select a contiguous section of the list, and control-click or
control-space to select individual elements. Again, a double click first
performs the selection operation (modified by shift or control keys), and then
closes the dialog.
The Windows user interface standard prevents resizing of
modal dialogs, which can make life difficult if not everything is visible in the
default size. To help in such situations, MetaEdit+ includes a triangular resize
corner at the bottom right of most dialogs. By clicking and dragging the resize
corner, you can resize the dialog window to be larger.