THE

GLOSSARY


block
A portion of the file being edited; usually highlighted. A block can be one of line block , box block , word block , column block , or stream block .

Bottom-of-File line
A line marker, identifying the end of the file.

box block
A type of block . It is a rectangular portion of the filearea .

column block
A type of block . It is similar to a box block except that a columnar portion of every line in the file is included.

column target
A method of referring to some part of a line being edited.

command line
The area of the display, usually identified by an arrow prompt, "====>", where THE commands are entered.

current column
The column in the filearea , marked by the "|" character on the scale line .

current line
The line in the filearea , normally highlighted, from which commands entered on the command line take effect.

cursor field
The "field" in which the cursor is currently located. This can be the prefix area , command line or filearea .

filearea
That part of the screen display where the contents of the file being edited are displayed.

focus column
The column in the filearea which currently has the focus. If the cursor is in the filearea , it is the column on which the cursor is displayed. If the cursor is in the command line or prefix area , the focus column is the current column .

focus line
The line in the filearea which currently has the focus. If the cursor is in the filearea or prefix area , it is the line on which the cursor is displayed. If the cursor is on the command line , the focus line is the current line . All THE commands operate relative to the focus line.

idline
That part of the screen display which shows details about the file being edited.

line block
A type of block . It consists of consecutive lines within the filearea .

macro
A file containing a sequence of THE commands. Macros can be written in Rexx if a supported REXX interpreter is available.

*** NOTE ***

If REXX support is NOT enabled in THE, the first line of the THE macro file MUST contain the comment:

/*NOREXX*/

magic number
A magic number is used on Un*x systems to identify the type of a file. It was originally used in binary files to identify the file, but the concept was also extended to text files; particularly shell scripts; to enable to shell to determine which interpreter should be used to execute the contents of a file. These magic numbers in text files are really magic "strings" and it is these strings that are used by the THE syntax highlighting feature to automatically determine the parser to be used to highlight a file.

message line
That portion of the screen used to display messages.

prefix area
That part of the screen display where prefix commands can be entered. It also displays the line number of each line in the file if SET NUMBER is ON.

parser
A mechanism that translates text strings into identifiable tokens.

profile
A macro file that is executed at the start of an editing session.

relative target
A subset of target , but only supports targets that are relative to the focus line , like 3, -5, *.

reserved line
A line within the filearea that contains user text that the user can define with the SET RESERVED command.

REXX
A powerful, easy-to-learn macro language available on most platforms. THE uses REXX as its macro language.

ring
The set of files currently being edited are arranged in a ring formation.

scale line
A line in the filearea showing column positions.

shadow line
A line which signifies how many lines have been excluded from display. See SET SHADOW , SET SELECT .

status line
That part of the screen display showing details about the entire THE session.

stream block
A type of block . It is a stream of characters that span one or more consecutive lines in the filearea .

string target
A subset of target that refers to a string of characters enclosed between string target delimiter s.

string target delimiter
The character that determines the start and optional ending of a string target . A delimiter can consist of one of the following characters: /\@`#$%(){}[]"\

tab line
A line in the filearea which displays the currently set TAB stops.

target
A method of referring to some part of the file being edited.

Top-of-File line
A line marker, identifying the beginning of the file.

vershift
An internal number which defines the number of columns the displayed text is offset from the verify setting as a result of automatically scrolling horizontally, or by the use of the LEFT , RIGHT , or RGTLEFT commands.

word block
A type of block . It consists of a contiguous series of characters that comprise a word. A word is defined by the current setting of SET WORD .


The Hessling Editor is Copyright © Mark Hessling, 1990-2006 <mark@rexx.org>
Generated on: 30 Jan 2006

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