Editor, Notepad, Control Panel

Editor, Notepad and Control Panel

Each document consists of three parts: Editor, Notepad and Control Panel.

The Editor is where you put your text in. It's your main writing space, and you'll spent most of your time writing right there.

At its core, it pretty much acts like every other text editor on Mac OS X, including standards such as cut, copy, paste, undo, redo etc. and more advanced features like on-the-fly spell-checking and auto-completion.

But there's nice little feature that goes beyond the ordinary text editor: the Split-View. You can use it whenever you feel like you want to view two parts of a document which are a couple pages apart and don't want to scroll up and down all the time. It splits your editor in two and shows the document twice. Therefore you can edit the document in the upper view while another part of the document is displayed in the lower view. To enable or disable the Split-View, click with the grey square button on the top right of the Editor.

The Notepad pretty much acts like a sticky notes application. It's a second writing space, or rather a storage facility for bits, snippets and pieces of text put aside for later use.

It features four modes, each of which holds different contents: Notes, Notes + Excerpt, Project Notes, Text Trash (only Notes are available in Ulysses core). The first two are attached to the currently active document, while the last two are project-wide. You switch modes via the pop-up menu at the top of the Notepad.

The Text Trash contains everything you deleted with Shift-Backspace instead of the usual Backspace. You cannot edit the contents of the Text Trash, only delete them or paste them into your text again.

The Control Panel holds various meta data for each document, e.g. its title and status. It also shows valuable information such as a word counter.

The numbers on the left show the current word/line/etc. counts for the document while the numbers on the right show the values for the current selection.

You can change the update interval in the Preferences under Interface > Standard Mode > Control Panel.

How do I insert Paragraph Styles, Inline Styles or Markers to the text?
- Inserting Paragraph and Inline Styles can be easily done in three ways. The shortest way is to put the tag, for instance "$$", at the start of the paragraph. You can also select the paragraph, Ctrl-click to open the context menu, go to "Paragraph Styles", and select the style you want. Using Edit > Paragraph Styles and finally the style in the menu on the top works the same way.
  Assigning an Inline Style can be done in the same ways. Either enclose the text in start and stop tags, for example "++text with an Inline style++", or select the text and use the context menu or the style in the Edit > Inline Styles.
  Using Markers is a bit different: first select the text passage you want to highlight. Then either use the Marker's shortcut (you can find it in the Preferences), the context menu item "Markers" or the menu item in Edit > Markers to assign the Marker to the text.
  
  For details on Tags and Markers, see Semantic Text Editing.
How do I add new Tags or Markers to Ulysses?
- Go to Preferences > Text Editing and then choose either "Tags" for Paragraph Styles or Inline Styles or "Markers". You can also set the shortcuts there.
How do I remove a Paragraph Style?
- To remove a Paragraph Style, do one of the following:
  1. Delete the characters that define the Paragraph Style.
  2. Re-apply the current Paragraph Style.
  Tip: You may not have defined a keyboard shortcut for the Paragraph Style you wish to remove. But since a paragraph can only have one style at any given time, you can simply apply a different style and then re-apply that style to effectively strip the paragraph of any style at all.
Why is the text inserted at the vertical middle of the Editor?
- If Typewriter Scrolling is active, the text insertion will always happen at the vertical middle of the Editor.
  To disable Typewriter Scrolling temporarily, Ctrl-click in the Editor and untick "Typewriter Scrolling" from the "Activate" menu.
  To permanently disable Typewriter Scrolling, go to Preferences > Text Editing > Misc. and untick the option there. Then make sure to check the "Editor" tab in Preferences > Interface > Standard Mode to see if "Override defaults" has a special Typewriter Scrolling setting.
What is the Text Trash? (not available for Ulysses core)
- The Text Trash can store snippets you delete from the Editor. Normally, when using either Forward-Delete or Backspace, your text is inevitably lost. This is OK for standard corrections, but sometimes you'd rather save the deleted section for later.
  To delete text to the Text Trash, select it first and then press Shift-Backspace.
How does the Text Trash work?
- Select a text passage and hit Shift-Backspace. A new entry will be created in the Text Trash, holding the deleted passage.
  Every time you delete a text passage that way, a new entry will be created in the Text Trash. You can not manipulate these entries directly (e.g. apply formats or delete characters), but you can copy their contents anywhere you like.
  To delete an entry from the Text Trash, select it and click on the Minus-Button on top of the Notepad or use Shift-Backspace.
What are the numbers in the Control Panel for?
- The left numbers show the calculated amount of Characters, Lines etc. for the currently active document.
  The numbers to the right show the same values for the current selection in that document.
The word count in the Control Panel seems to take several seconds to update. What gives?
- Please check the "Control Panel" tab in Preferences > Interface > Standard Mode. There should be an auto-update interval setting, which defaults to 10 seconds.
  If you want the update to be instantaneous, set the update interval to 0 (zero) seconds.
What does the "auto" checkbox next to the Timestamp do?
- Ticking the "auto" checkbox makes the Timestamp update whenever you save the document.
Can I define my own Label and Status defaults?
- Yes. Go to Preferences > Project > Document Defaults.
Can I hide elements from the Control Panel?
- You can hide certain elements of the Control Panel.
  To do so, go to Preferences > Interface > Standard Mode and select the "Control Panel" tab.
Can I hide the Control Panel?
- You can hide the Control Panel by clicking in the lower left corner of the Control Panel.
How do I show/hide the Split-View?
- To show the Split-View, click on the grey square button on the top right of the Editor. To hide it, simply click that button again.