Usage of the manual
Although MetaEdit+ is easy to use, the large number of
features may appear overwhelming to new users. This section provides some
guidance on how to go about learning MetaEdit+, and how best to use this
manual.
In this HTML manual, you can use the arrow buttons at the
top and bottom of the page to move to the next section, previous section, or
parent section. The up arrow with a line above it will take you to the very
first page. The last button takes you to the frame version of the manual, which
has the contents list in the left frame.
Guidance for learning
To become familiar with MetaEdit+:
1) | Read
Chapter 1
to get an overview of the
environment. |
2) | Walk
through the tutorial (Chapter 6).
Especially for new users, the tutorial is the most efficient way to get to grips
with MetaEdit+. It introduces and familiarises the user to MetaEdit+, its
concepts, tools and capabilities. This part of the manual is best read while
sitting at your computer so that you can experiment with the features of
MetaEdit+ as they are described in the
text. |
3) | Skim
the components chapters (Chapters 2,
3 and
4), once you have completed the tutorial
and gained some experience with MetaEdit+. These chapters contain in-depth
information about each of the tools that you used in the tutorial: you do not
need to know everything here, but it is useful to have a basic idea of what
information is covered
where. |
4) | Read
Chapter 5, repository and graph
structures to get an understanding about the Object Repository of MetaEdit+.
This chapter describes how design information is structured and how you can link
and reuse information you have already stored in the MetaEdit+ repository. You
will meet the concepts described here throughout MetaEdit+, and an understanding
of them will help you take full advantage of the power of
MetaEdit+. |
5) | Use
the menu reference (Chapter 7). In
modern graphical user-interfaces, pop-up and pull-down menus play a central role
for accessing functionality. MetaEdit+ is no exception. The menu reference
chapter forms a quick source of information about MetaEdit+ functionality, thus
serving both experienced users and novices. Similarly, you can refer back to the
tools chapters (2,
3 and
4) to learn in more detail what each tool
is capable of. |
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 which 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 and mouse buttons
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
pull-down menus and choose items with their accessor key (underlined letter),
and some menu items 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.