xref: /plan9/usr/glenda/readme.acme (revision 9a747e4fd48b9f4522c70c07e8f882a15030f964)

Welcome to acme, the editor/shell/window system hybrid.  Acme is a
complete environment you can use to edit, run programs, browse the
file system, etc.

You can scroll the text this window by moving the mouse into
the window (no clicking necessary) and typing the up and down
arrows.

When you start Acme, you see several windows layered into two
columns. Above each window, you can see a ``tag line'' (in blue). The
first thing to notice is that all the text you see is just that:
text. You can edit anything at will.

For example, in the left column is a directory window.
If you look at the window's tag line, you will see that it contains

	/usr/glenda/ Del Snarf Get | Look

(This might be truncated if the column is narrow.)
That is just text.

Each mouse button (1, 2, 3, from left to right) does a different
thing in Acme:

 *	Button 1 can be used to select text (press it, sweep, release it),
	and also to select the point where text would be inserted in the
	window. Use it now in your /usr/glenda window.
 *	Button 2 can be used to execute things.  For example, use button 1
	to type "ls -l" before "lib/" in the window showing
	/usr/glenda.  Now use button 2 to select "ls -l lib/" (press
	it, select, release it).  As you can see, button 2 means
	"execute this".
 *	Button 3 can be used to get things. For example, click button 3 on
	"lib/" within the "/usr/glenda" window. Can you see how a new window
	shows the contents of "/usr/glenda/lib"? Button 3 can also be used
	to search within the body of a window. Just click button 3 on the
	thing you want to search. Again, you can select something with
	button 1 and then use button 3 on the selection.

You can double-click with button 1 to select words; a double click at
the end or beginning of a line selects the whole line.  Once you have
text selected, you can click on it with button 2 to execute the
selected text.  A single click of button 2 would execute the word
clicked as a command.

Now let's pay attention to the tag line once more. As you can see,
the left part has a path. That is the name for the window and shows
also the directory for the thing shown (file/directory/program
output). When you execute something using button 2, the current
directory for the command is the directory shown in the left part of
the tag (if the thing shown is a file, its directory is used).

As you saw before in the example, there are windows labeled
"/dir/+Errors", that is where Acme shows the output of a command
executed in "/dir".

Another thing you can see is that tag lines contain words like "New",
"Del", "Snarf", etc. Those are commands understood (implemented) by
Acme. When you request execution of one of them, Acme does the job.
For example, click with button 2 on "Del" in the
"/usr/glenda/+Errors" window: it's gone.

The commands shown by Acme are just text and by no means special. Try
to type "Del" within the body of the window "/usr/glenda", and then
click (button-2) on it.

These are some commands understood by Acme:
 *	Newcol: create a new column of windows
 *	Delcol: delete a column
 *	New: create a new window (edit it's tag to be a file name and you
	would be creating a new file; you would need to click on "Put" to
	put the file in the file system).
 *	Put: write the body to disk. The file is the one named in the tag.
 *	Get: refresh the body (e.g. if it's a directory, reread it and
	show it).
 *	Snarf: What other window systems call "Copy".
 *	Paste: Can you guess it?
 *	Exit: exit acme

Acme likes to place new windows itself. If you prefer to change the
layout of a window, you only need to drag the layout box at the left
of the tag line and drop it somewhere else. The point where you drop
it selects the column where the window is to be placed now, as well
as the line where the window should start. You can also click the
layout box to enlarge its window a small amount (button 1), as much
as possible without obscuring other tag lines in the column (button
2), and to fill the whole column (button 3). You can get your other
windows back by button-1- or button-2-clicking the layout box.

This is mostly what you need to get started with Acme. You are
missing a very useful feature: using combinations (chords) of mouse
buttons to do things. You can cut, paste, snarf, and pass arguments
to programs using these mouse chords. You can read this in the
acme(1) manual page, but it's actually extremely simple: Select a
region with button 1 but don't release the button. Now clicking
button 2 deletes the selected text (putting it into the snarf
buffer); clicking button 3 replaces the selected text with the snarf
buffer. That's it!

For more information, read /sys/doc/acme/acme.ps (you can just
button-3 click on that string to view the file).