This document is a short introduction to the user interface of Amaya. It is not a complete user manual. Its purpose is only to help users to discover the main features of the software.
Many commands in Amaya are the same as those provided by word processors and editors. They are not presented here. Only Amaya specific aspects are described.
Table of contents:
To start Amaya type:
amaya [document]
Parameter [document]
is optional. It is the file name or the
URL of the first document Amaya should display when starting.
If no parameter is given, a default document is presented.
Amaya behaves like many other Web browsers, except for activating links and displaying anchors.
Links are usually displayed in blue (or underlined on monochrome displays and on paper). As Amaya is an editor, a single click just moves the insertion point. Thus, to activate a link, you must double click on it.
The document retrieved by this operation normally replaces the current document in the same window. However, if the current document has been modified and has not been saved yet, another window is created for the new document, to avoid the loss of the last changes.
Some pieces of text are displayed in green, even if no particular style is
specified. These elements are target anchors, i.e. anchors with an
attribute name
that identifies the element as a possible target
for a link. The color green is intended to make the creation of links easier.
As you can quickly recognize the possible target of a link, you can create links faster.
You can open local or remote documents in several different ways:
When the document is correctly specified, click on the OK button.
Two buttons: and
allow you to go back to the previous page or forward to the
next one.
Amaya not only allows you to browse documents on the Web, but you can also edit them and save them either locally or on remote Web servers.
Amaya can present different views of a document simultaneously. Each view is displayed in a different window. This allows you to clearly see what is happening when you edit complex documents. Three views are available:
Parts displayed in black can be edited directly, by clicking and typing. Parts displayed in blue can be changed only by editing commands.
You can open and close any view at any time.
To open a view, choose the corresponding Show command in the Views menu (only available in the WYSIWYG view). In this menu, a checkbox indicates for each entry if the corresponding view is open or not. If the view is already open, re-selecting the corresponding entry closes the view.
You can close a view with the Views menu from the WYSIWYG view by selecting the corresponding item when the view is open (otherwise, you actually open the view).
You can also close a view by choosing the Close view command from the File menu of that view.
Views are synchronized: whenever you select some character or element in one view, the other views of the same document are automatically scrolled to show the same part of the document.
You can edit the document in any view. For optimum responsiveness when typing, the entered characters are displayed only in the view where you have clicked. As soon as you activate a command or click somewhere, these characters are also displayed in the other views.
Many commands in Amaya act on the current selection. The current selection can be changed in different ways.
To select some text, drag a region - move the mouse with the left button pressed down and release it when the desired part is selected.
You can also extend the selection by clicking with the middle button.
You can select a whole element, such as a list item by clicking on its bullet or its number.
Whatever the way you change the current selection, the type of the first selected element is displayed at the bottom of the window. It is followed by the types of the enclosing elements in the structure. This may be helpful when the document structure is complex.
The structure view is especially convenient for quickly selecting large elements. Just click on the blue label that represents the element, or on the name of any of its attributes, or even on its blue vertical line. A large element like a complex table or a long list can be selected with a single click.
Clicking on a black character in the Structure view selects only that character.
A bold text in the structure view represents the value of an attribute that can be edited directly from the keyboard. A selection in such an attribute value cannot be extended outside the attribute.
If you click on the left hand side of an image, the insertion point is moved to the left edge of that image. This allows you to type text before the image.
If you click on the the right hand side of an image, the insertion point is moved to the right side of that image. This allows you to type text after the image.
If you want to select the whole image, click anywhere within the image and move a bit with the button pressed down. Do not leave the image before releasing the button. The whole image is then selected. You can use the copy, cut and paste commands to move or duplicate the image element along with all it's attributes.
A target anchor is a piece of text that is referred to by a link (a source anchor). Before creating a link to such a piece of text, you must first turn it into a target anchor.
Just select a character string with the mouse and choose Create target from the Links menu. The selected text is now displayed in green, which identifies it as a target anchor.
To create an anchor that is a link to another document:
If the target document is not displayed
To create a link to a particular anchor in the same document or in another, replace step 3 above by:
The Links menu contains a command that reverses the two commands above: Delete anchor. Put the selection or the insertion point anywhere within the anchor to be removed (you do not need to select the whole anchor) and activate the Delete anchor command. The anchor is removed, but its content remains.
If you want to keep an anchor but to change the target of the corresponding link, select any part of that anchor or just put the insertion point within the anchor, and choose Change link from the Links menu. Then designate the new target of the anchor as above (step 3 in the creation of a link).
To change the target of a link, you can also edit the href
attribute, either directly in the Structure view or using the Attributes menu.
The simplest way to create new elements in a document is to move the insertion point to the desired position and to use the Types menu or the buttons corresponding to the most common elements of that menu. The item selected in the menu or the button clicked creates the corresponding element at the current position.
In some cases, the desired element cannot be created exactly at the position chosen, because of the constraints imposed by the HTML DTD. Amaya then tries to create the element at the closest position where it is allowed. For instance, if the insertion point is at the end of the last line of a paragraph when you click on the H2 button, Amaya does not create the new heading at that particular position (which would be invalid), but after the paragraph (which is probably what you intended).
In some other cases, Amaya changes the existing structure
for creating the desired element. If the insertion point is somewhere within a
list item (LI
) when you click on the H2 button, the
list item and its enclosing list are automatically split, in order to create
the requested heading at the chosen position and to comply with the HTML
DTD.
When creating new elements, it is important to select an insertion point, not some text nor a single character: if the current selection is not empty, Amaya tries to transform the selected part into the element type chosen.
Some HTML elements are constituted by several other elements of different
types. For instance, a definition list (DL
), contains several
items, and each item contains usually a term (DT
) and its
definition (DD
). A table contains usually a caption
(CAPTION
) and several rows (TR
).
When Amaya creates such elements, it also creates their components. A definition list is created with a first term and the corresponding definition; a table is created with a caption and a row containing a single cell. The insertion point is placed automatically in the first of these component. You can enter the content of that component immediately or later. You can move to the next (empty) component with the mouse or the arrow keys.
When you are writing a new document or a new part in a document, you often create elements sequentially. To do that, just press the Enter (or Return) key. The current element is terminated and a new one is created just after. This applies obviously to paragraphs, but also to other types of elements, such as headings for instance.
Most often, the new element created is simply a paragraph, whatever the type of the previous element. If you need another element type, you can immediatly change the type of that element, by selecting the desired type in the Types menu or by clicking on the corresponding button, but you can also keep typing and change the type later.
When the insertion point is in an empty element, pressing the Return key replaces that element by another empty element at the next higher level in the document structure. This feature allows you to create complex nested structures very efficiently.
As an example, consider the following structure:
A paragraph in the first item.
To create that structure, create first a numbered list with a first item by
clicking on the button and type in the
first line. At the end of that first line, press the Return key: it creates a
new paragraph in the item. At the end of this paragraph, press the Return key:
it creates yet another paragraph, but pressing the same key again replaces
that paragraph by an empty item 2. At the end of the first line of item 2,
click on the
button, to create the nested
list with its first item. Item b. is created by a double Return at the end of
item a. When the insertion point is at the end of item b, create item 3 by
four successive Returns. To create the paragraph that follows these lists,
press Return three times when the insertion point is at the end of item 3.
The Return key works in the same way when the insertion point is at the beginning of an element, but it creates new elements before the current element.
For instance, you can add an initial paragraph in a list item by moving the insertion point before the first character of that item and pressing Return. If you press Return twice, you get a new item before the current item. This is useful for inserting a new item before the first one.
This use of the Return key does not apply only to lists and paragraphs, but to all elements. It is for instance very convenient for creating tables.
When a paragraph or another block of text is styled - terminated by an anchor or a character string in bold, italic or other such style - moving the insertion point to the end and typing appends characters to the anchor or the styled string. If you want to exit this styled element and enter plain text, just press Return and continue typing.
The same method can be used to enter plain text at the beginning of a block starting with an anchor or styled characters.
To change the type of an existing element, select it and choose the new type in the Types menu or by clicking on a button. You can thus change a numbered list into an itemized list, for example, or a paragraph into a heading or a list.
To select an entire element, place the insertion point anywhere within it and press the Esc key
More complex structure transformations are also possible.
Simple structure transformations can be achieved using the Types menu (see above). More complex transformations can be obtained by other means.
The Transform command from the Types menu performs complex structure transformations. This command is based on a structure transformation language that specifies how a given structural pattern can be transformed into different structures.
The Transform command pops up a menu that lists all the transformations that can be applied to the current selection. Just choose the transformation you want.
The available transformations are defined in the file
Amaya/amaya/HTML.trans
. Please refer to the document Use of the file HTML.trans
for a description of the language in which they are described.
Additional transformations may be specified in the HTML.trans
file. Some are provided as examples. For instance, it is possible to transform
nested lists into a table.
Successive elements can be merged, even if they are not at the same level in the document structure. Merging is achieved with the Back Space and Delete keys. When the insertion point is at the end of an element, use the Delete key, when it is at the beginning, use the Back Space key. In both cases, these keys do not delete any characters, but merge elements which are separated by a structure boundary.
When the insertion point in within an element, these two keys delete the next or previous character, as usual.
There is no separate table editor in Amaya. A table is simply a structure described by the HTML DTD and it is edited as such. The same commands apply to tables as to other HTML structures.
Tables can be created very efficiently with the Return key.
Note that the table model implemented in Amaya, while
being fully compatible with that defined in HTML 3.2, is extended to implement the
W3C Working Draft The HTML3 Table Model,
which has been accepted by the IETF as a proposed standard, RFC1942. This includes
features such as multiple bodies (tbody
), header
(thead
) and footer (tfoot
).
Amaya allows you to use client-side image maps.
To create a new image map, you must create the image element first, either
by choosing Image from the Types menu or by
clicking on the button. This brings up a
dialog box that lets you enter the file name of the desired image.
Tor create an area in a image, select the image or an existing area of that image. Then choose Rectangle, Circle, Polygon from the AreaMap submenu of the Types menu, depending on the shape of the new area you want to create.
When the area has been defined, you must enter the target of the link associated with that area. Just click on the target (or enter its URL if it is not displayed), in the same way as you create links.
Combining the Control key with the Left button of the mouse you can move the area.
Combining the Control key with the Middle button of the mouse you can resize the area.
The Style menu allows you to change the appearance of your documents by two different means:
The first entries of the Style menu are dedicated to CSS, the last two entries to HTML elements.
Refer to the document Cascading Style Sheet support in Amaya.
Entry Information type from the Style
menu presents a submenu offering a choice of abstract styles. Select first a
character string and then choose an item in this menu. The selected character
string receives the corresponding style. Three of these styles are available
through buttons: emphasis (button i),
strong (button B) and code
(button TT
).
Entry Character elements from the Style menu offers another menu for changing the style of text. Most entries of this menu could be replaced by CSS and should not be used. They are here only for the sake of completeness of the HTML 3.2 implementation.
To remove style from a character string, select the string first and re-apply the command that was been used for associating the style you want to remove. All commands in the submenus Information type and Character element toggle themselves if re-applied.
There are two ways to edit attributes:
The Attribute menu lists all attributes that can be associated with the selected element. It can be used to create an attribute, to change its value or to delete it.
To edit an attribute, first select the appropriate element. You must select the entire element, not simply a character within the element; use the Esc key for this. When the element is selected, choose the attribute to be edited from the Attributes menu. Then Amaya acts according to the chosen attribute:
ismap
for an image),
the command is finished. Choosing that attribute in the menu removes it from
the selected element, if it is present, or adds it if not.
align
for a paragraph or a heading), a dialog box pops up. It
contains a menu of the available values and three buttons.
href
for an
anchor), a dialog box pops up. In this dialog box, you can edit the attribute
value; terminate the command with the Apply button. To remove
the attribute, click on the Delete button.
All attributes are displayed in the Structure view. Attributes whose value can be chosen freely are displayed in black and you can edit their value like any other character string. When the attribute value is displayed in blue, you can only change it with the Attribute menu. This ensures that only one of the correct values is chosen.
You can search and replace text with the Search dialog box. Call this box by choosing Find from the Edit menu or click on the corresponding button (the magnifying glass).
Refer to the document Publishing in Amaya.
To print a document, choose Print from the File menu or click on the corresponding button. Before executing that command, you may need to set some parameters with the Print setup command from the File menu.