Miscellaneous

Search/Replace/Update

Spell Check

2- or 3-Button Mouse

Wheel Mouse

Mouse Function Indicator

Keyboard Coordinate Entry

Search and Replace Text

The Search/Replace entry in the Edit menu will popup the Search & Replace Panel. The keyboard accelerator Meta-I will do the same. Using the Search & Replace Panel, users can search and optionally replace text in the figure. It is also possible to apply UPDATE to searched texts.

Search for: Specify the string to be searched. Pressing Return in this window or pressing the Search button will start the search.
Search: Pressing this button will start the search for the text in the Search for entry. The results of the search will be displayed in the bottom window, with the coordinates of each text object containing the word or words.
Case Sensitive: If this box is checked, upper-case and lower-case letters will be considered significant when searching.
Replace with: Specify the string to replace the string entered in the Search field.
Replace: If this button is clicked after the search, the string specified in Search for field will be replaced with the string specified in the Replace with field. Search must be clicked once before clicking this button.
UPDATE Settings: If this button is clicked after the search, the UPDATE function will be performed on the matching texts, applying settings in the Attribute Panel to the matched text objects.

N.B.: The Undo function is not available for this feature.

Spell Check

Spell Check... in the Edit menu or keyboard accelerator Meta-K will popup the Spell Check Panel. Xfig will run the external spelling checker (resource Fig.spellcheckcommand) on text in the figure, and shows any misspelled words in the text.

[Spell Check Panel]

Status window: This window shows the status of the spelling checker, and how many words (if any) are misspelled.
Misspelled words: This listbox shows the misspelled words, with a scrollbar if necessary If you click on a word it is copied to the Correction window where you may edit it to correct it. Pressing Return in this window or the Correct button will replace all occurrances of this word in all text objects in the figure.
Recheck: Pressing this button will do a re-check of spelling. This is useful after correcting words to verify the corrections.

N.B.: The Undo function is not available for this feature.

2- or 3-Button Mouse

Use of a three-button mouse is recommended, but it is also possible to use a two-button mouse (if you have a two-button mouse and your X server doesn't emulate a three-button mouse, press the Meta (or Alt) key and right mouse button together to simulate mouse button 2). Normally, mouse buttons 1 to 3 are assigned to the left, middle, and right buttons respectively.

However, be warned that some window managers may use the Meta-Right button combination to do window operations (e.g. resize). If this is the case you will have to change the setting in the window manager.

Wheel Mouse

If you use a wheel-mouse, then the following functions are available:

Attribute Buttons: Rotating the wheel on attribute buttons will increase/decrease setting of the button as if mouse button 2 or 3 is clicked. This can be useful to alter parameters such as Line Width.
Spinners: Rotating the wheel on a spinner will increase/decrease the value.
Rulers and Canvas: Rotating the wheel on the rulers or canvas will scroll the canvas.
Zooming: Rotating the wheel on the canvas while the Control key is pressed will zoom/unzoom the canvas around the pointer.
Changing Modes: Rotating the wheel on the canvas while the Shift key is pressed will popup a panel to select drawing modes (upward) and editing modes (downward). The panel will close when any item is selected, or when the wheel is rotated in the reverse direction.

Mouse Function Indicator

Mouse Function Indicator shows which functions are assigned to each mouse button.

Although the function of each mouse button changes depending on the state (selected mode, position of the mouse cursor, state of SHIFT key or CONTROL key, etc) at the time, the mouse function indicator shows the current function at all times.

If the TEXT mode is selected and it is ready to enter text from keyboard, the mouse function indicator shows that as a keyboard icon.

If left and right mouse button are switched, message on the mouse function indicator can be switched with -flipvisualhints option or Fig.flipvisualhints resource.

Information Balloons

If this mode is ON (see Global Settings Panel), `balloon' messages corresponding to the object the mouse is positioned over will popup after a predetermined time (in milliseconds; resource Fig.balloon_delay). Here is an example:

Keyboard Coordinate Entry

In any drawing or edit mode, the location of the next point may be specified from the keyboard rather from the pointer. Pressing Ctrl-k while the pointer is in the canvas will pop up a dialog that allows a coordinate to be entered.

The coordinates may be specified in either rectangular or polar form, either absolutely or realative to the current point, and in either decimal or fractional notation. Rectangular coordinates are specified as

x-coord, y-coord

r x-coord, y-coord

where the comma is optional and a leading 'r' (or 'R') indicates that the point specified is relative to the current point. Coordinates may be entered either in decimal form or fraction form like, for example "2-7/8" and are in the currently selected units.

Polar coordinates are entered as:

distance < angle

where the distance is always relative to the current point and, like rectangular coordinates, may be expresed as a decimal or a fraction.

The angle may be suffixed with any of the three letters "d", "r", or "p", in either upper or lower case. A "d" suffix indicates that the angle is in degrees, an "r" suffix indicates radians, and a "p" suffix indicates pi-radians. (Pi-radians are a multipler of π; ".5p" would represent the angle π/2.) The default if no suffix is specified is degrees.

Keyboard entry is completed by pressing the Enter key. An unshifted Enter is equivalent to a left-button pointer click at the entered location; Shift-Enter is the equivalent of a middle-button (Button2) click and Ctrl-Enter is the equivalent of a right-button (Button3) click.

Keyboard entry may be cancelled by pressing Escape.

The keyboard entry mechanism maintains a stack of recently entered coordinates. While the text cursor is in the keyboard entry text field, the Ctrl-P, Ctrl-N, Up-arrow, and Down-arrow keys navigate up and down in the stack.

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