Message Compose Field

The message compose field is a multiple-line text field in which you enter the text of your mail message. Click inside the message compose field to enter the text of your message.

The Ishmail text editor uses enhanced Motif text editing functions in all text fields, including the message compose field. The editor operates in insert mode. That is, new text is always inserted to the left of the cursor, expanding the text field and any existing text to the right.

Here are the essential functions of Ishmail's text editor:

• To enter text in a blank text field, click the pointer at the beginning of the field to activate the cursor, then start typing.

  The field expands to the right as you enter text. If you have text-wrapping set to ON, the text wraps as you reach the right margin. However, you can use the Return key at the end of each line to limit line width if you like.

• To enter new text into an existing line of text, click the pointer at the desired location (or use the arrow keys to position the cursor) and start typing. Text to the right of the cursor is pushed to the right as you type.

To scroll through existing text:

• Press the Up arrow or Down arrow keys to scroll up or down a line at a time.

• Press Control-Up arrow or Control-Down arrow to scroll up or down a paragraph at a time.

• Press Left arrow or Right arrow to scroll left or right a character at a time.

• Press Control-Right arrow to scroll a single word and space to the right.

• Press Control-Left arrow to scroll a space and a word to the left.

The Back Space key and the Delete key perform similar functions:

There are several ways to select text. Selected text is highlighted to indicate the range of the selection. You can perform a number of different functions on selected text, including cut, copy, and paste functions.

• Drag-select the character(s), word(s), or line(s) you want to select.

• Double-click a word to select it.

  You can expand the selection horizontally a word at a time by holding the left mouse button down on the second click, then moving the mouse pointer in the direction that you want the selection to expand.

• Triple-click anywhere on a line to select a line. (A line is defined as the text between the beginning of the line and the next carriage return character.)

  You can expand your selection by holding the left mouse button down on the third click, then moving the mouse pointer up or down to expand the selection a line at a time.

• Quadruple-click to select all of the text in the field.

• Click, then release, the left mouse button to place the cursor at the start of your selection. Then shift-click the left mouse button at the end of your intended selection.

• Shift-Right arrow or Shift-Left arrow to highlight text a character at a time to the right or left of the initial cursor position.

• Control-Shift-Right arrow or Control-Shift-Left arrow to highlight a word (and space) at a time to the right or left of the initial cursor position.

• Shift-Up arrow or Shift-Down arrow to highlight text a line at a time above or below the initial cursor position.

• Control-Shift-Up arrow or Control-Shift-Down arrow to highlight a paragraph at a time above or below the initial cursor position.

Selected text is automatically copied to either a temporary mouse buffer storage area or a temporary keyboard buffer storage area depending on the selection method you use.

• To place text into the temporary mouse buffer area, simply select it using any of the mouse selection methods described above. The selected text is automatically placed in the mouse buffer. The text remains in the buffer until you either delete it or perform another selection function.

  Once text has been selected, you can:

  • Paste the selected text to another location by positioning the mouse pointer at the new location and clicking the middle mouse button.

  • Delete the selected text by pressing the Delete key or the Back Space key. (This operation removes the text from the temporary mouse buffer storage area.)

  • Type over the selected text. (This operation also removes the text from the temporary mouse buffer storage area.)

• To place selected text into the temporary keyboard buffer storage area, you must explicitly press either the Copy key or the Cut key. Once the text is in the keyboard buffer, it remains the buffer until you either copy or cut a different text selection into the buffer.

• Once you have placed selected text into the keyboard buffer storage, you can paste it to another location by positioning the cursor at the desired location and pressing the Paste key.

Drag-and-drop differs from cut-and-paste in that you can use the drag-and-drop method to copy whole objects. For example, you can click on a message from the message list and, by pressing and holding the middle mouse button as you move the mouse, you can drag the selected message(s) into the Composition window. When you drop the message(s), by releasing the middle mouse button, they are dropped into the text of the Composition window at the spot where the mouse cursor is located. A message you put into the Composition window this way appears as an icon. The operation is similar to using the Forward (encapsulate) ... option in the Main Window Message menu. You can click on the icon and a separate Edit window will be opened so you can modify the included message.

You can also use the drag-and-drop function to move attachments around inside the Composition window.

You can add containers to your message, which allow you to define structure, or hierarchy, for your message. MIME messages can be defined recursively; they can contain components which contain other components, which can be MIME messages themselves.

You can add four kinds of containers:

• Mixed

• Message Digest

• Alternative

• Parallel

You can attach external data files to your message. This is one of the most powerful features of a MIME message. The data in the attachments can be plain text or various kinds of multimedia data. The attachments can be included in the message or they can be attached to the message with a pointer to their location. Data included in the message can be represented with an icon or expanded in-line.

You can use an external spelling checker command to verify the spelling of your message. The default command used is ispell.