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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.

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