Tips for Using the Editor Pane

You can obtain a description of any identifier in a method, including the creation timestamp and patch version of the entity, by simply positioning the caret within that identifier and then pressing F11. If the identifier:

When details of a property that has a mapping method are displayed, press F12 to display a freestanding editor pane containing the mapping method source for that property.

If you position the caret on a JADE instruction, primitive type, or a system class, method, or property and then press F1, online help for the current item is displayed. The help text provides the appropriate description, syntax or signature, and often a usage example.

You can make a rectangular selections, by pressing:

You can copy the rectangle selection area to the Windows clipboard or to the JADE editor clipboard. Pasting the text in the clipboard adds the text at the selected position and starts a new line for lines 2 and greater. You can also use this functionality to add tab characters into multiple lines, by pressing Shift+Alt+ to select the lines (without selecting any characters) into which the tab characters are added and then pressing Tab to enter tabs on each of the selected lines. Similarly, to remove tabs, press Shift+Alt+ to select the lines (without selecting any characters) from which the tabs are removed and then press Backspace, to move text back to the prior tab position.

If no text is selected and the cursor is over an identifier, all matching occurrences of that identifier (full‑word and case‑sensitive) are highlighted. The current selection is displayed using the additional selection color (that is, the Selection background color defined on the Editor sheet of the Preferences dialog).

From version 2018.0.01, JADE highlights parentheses (()) and bracket ([]) pairs when editing a JADE method or schema file when the cursor is positioned before the starting or closing () parenthesis or [] bracket character, making it quicker to resolve the omission of the closing parenthesis or bracket. The back ground of the two parentheses (()) and bracket ([]) bracket characters is colored using the Additional Selections value specified on the Editor sheet of the Preferences dialog. The default value is bright green. If the cursor is positioned before a parenthesis or bracket character that does not have a matching starting or closing bracket, the background of the character is highlighted in red. (There is no user preference available for this.)

When text is selected, the result is determined by the value of the Only highlight whole words matching selection check box on the Editor Options sheet of the Preferences dialog. If the check box is:

If you press F12 when the caret is positioned anywhere in the editor pane for a method, a new freestanding editor window containing all of the code for the current method is then displayed. In addition, you can obtain further assistance by pressing:

For details, see "Using Bubble Help in the Editor Pane", in Chapter 4.