Text Editors

The builtin MATLAB editor

Other editors

If you are using a PC or a Mac, it is important to remember that a word processing program is not the same as an editor. A word processor, such as Microsoft Word, can be used as a text editor if you remember to systematically save the files as text files. There are a wide variety of text editors available for both the PC and the Mac. Many of these are free, most notably gnuemacs. Others are available at a small cost as shareware.

aXe

At the top there will be a relatively large square with the word Edit over a field of axes. You should click the mouse on this square to start an editing session. When you do, an edit window will appear. There are five parts to this window. The first is the Filename line, which will contain the name of the file you are working on. At first, when the file has not been assigned a name, the words No name appear on this line. The second is called the Information Bar. Here will be displayed various items of interest to the user. The third is the Menu Bar, which contains 13 menus. The options that are available in these menus give aXe a lot of flexibility. However, it is possible to use aXe effectively only knowing the options in the File menu.

The next, relatively large area of the aXe window is the Editing Buffer, and it is here that you enter the text you want in your file. You have to have the mouse pointer located in this buffer in order to enter text. This buffer is not quite like a word processor, but there are similarities.

• You can move around a document using the cursor keys on the right hand side of your keyboard.

• You can place the cursor by moving the mouse and clicking the left button.

• You can delete the character to the left of the cursor using the delete key.

Once you have entered some text in the Editing Buffer, you will want to save it in a file. To do this go to the File menu and hold down the left mouse button. The entire menu will appear. You want the Save or the Save As options. Simply move the mouse down until the option you want is highlighted, and then release the mouse button. A new window will appear entitled file save. You will be interested in the text entry window which has a caret (^) in it. Here you type the name you want to give the file. Finally click the button labeled select. You will notice that the name now appears in the Filename line. There will be some other information in front of the name you chose. What aXe gives you here is the entire directory information for the file.

Once you have saved a couple of files, you will want to edit them from time to time. To open a file, use the Load option from the File menu. You will be presented with the same window you saw when you saved the file, except that now it has the title file load. You should be able to find the name of your file in the top portion of this window. To load it into aXe, you double click the left mouse button after moving the mouse to the required file.

Finally to quit aXe, simply click the Quit button on the small aXe window.

More information on aXe is available.

GNU Emacs

• To open a file (whether it is a new file or one that already exists), enter C-x C-f and then type the filename. This will be entered on what is called the command line at the very bottom of the GNU Emacs window so you can check that it is correct. If the file is a new one, a new, blank window will be opened. If a file with that name already exists, then that file will be opened and presented in the window for you, ready for you to begin editing it.

• To save a file to the filename on the command line, simply type C-x C-s. To save a file to a different filename type C-x C-w, and then type the new filename.

• To exit GNU Emacs, type C-x C-c.

More information on GNU Emacs is available. The Gnu Emacs Reference Card provides a listing of the most common emacs commands. You might print this in order to refer to it often.