Text Process
The Text Process page can be found within the Tools area, and can be accessed by clicking the 'Text Process' tab. It enables you to process the text within the current Workspace page in a variety of different ways. it might look rather complicated, but if you use it in a logical manner, reading left to right, it is actually quite straightforward.
Lets start with the 'Selection' panel on the left. This starts to define which lines are to be worked on, by specifying ways that the text is selected:
All Text - Selects all text on the current Workspace page.
Selected Text - Selects all text that has already been selected. You might have done this by clicking-and-dragging over some text with your mouse, or by clicking-and-dragging down the third 'Error Margin'.
Branch from Caret Position - Selects all text within a branch to your tab-indented list, that begins at the position of your caret (cursor) on the Workspace page.
Lines xx to xx - Selects a range of text within the line-numbers that you type in to the 'From' and 'To' line-number boxes, to the right of the 'Lines' label.
Within the above 4 choices, you can select only those lines that have a specified number of indents, by typing number-values in the 'From' and 'To' indent-value boxes, to the right of the 'Indent Level' label, and then checking the 'Indent Level' box.
Next, we come to the 'Contained Within' panel. This takes note of the selections that you have already made in the 'Selection' panel, and further refines the selection by allowing you to choose to only lines that contain text that is currently enclosed within a certain type of brackets: square, curly, round, or diamond. If you are not interested in this selection-refinement, leave the radio buttons set to 'None'.
We can further refine the selection with the 'Text to Change' panel. Taking into account the selection already made in the previous panels, we can refine it still further by choosing only lines that contain text with a specified case: UPPER CASE, lower case, Initial Capitals, or Scientific nomenclature, where the first word of a two-word phrase is in Initial Capitals and the next word is in lower case.
OK, so we have now defined which lines we want to change. The next thing to do is to define how we want to change the text within that selection. We specify this in the 'Change Method' panel, where you can see the following methods:
No Changes - No changes will be made, though we can adjust the indents in the next panel.
Lower Case - The selected text will be changed to all lower case.
Upper Case - The selected text will be changed to all upper case.
Initial Cap - The selected text will be changed to initial capitals.
Scientific - The selected text will be changed to scientific nomenclature.
Add Chrs - We will add any characters that we enter in the box, either at the start of the existing text, or at the end.
Delete These Chrs - We will delete a group of one or more characters that we type into the adjacent box.
Delete Chrs - We will delete a specified number of characters from the start or the end of the existing text.
Replace Chrs - We will replace a group of one or more characters that we type into the first box with others typed into the second box.
Swap Position - For a given line, this swaps the text that is contained within brackets with the text that is not contained within brackets. You must also choose a bracket-type in 'Contained Within'. Test with the 'Reptiles' test-list.
Finally, taking all the above into account, we can also add or remove a number of indents to the line, or leave the indent-quantity the same as it already is. As you have probably guessed, you choose from these final options in the 'Indents' panel. If you wish to add or remove indents, you set the quantity with the bottom 'Level' control.
So, you can see that there is quite a bit of versatility in the Text Process page! To check that we have the selection set correctly using the stages listed above, click the 'Preview Select button. This will highlight the background of every line that will be selected, and display a total count of the selected lines in the label at the bottom of the 'Process' panel. You can hide the selection again, if you wish, by clicking the 'Hide Preview' button.
To actually process the lines that we have selected, using the wanted change-methods, click the 'Process' button. This will open a new Workspace page, and copy the entire list to it, with the requested changes made to the specified lines. The original page will not be changed in any way.
Hint: did you notice that the default settings on each panel actually select everything and do nothing ?! Left like that, you can ignore those panels and just choose one or two to process your text.