Quanta Plus editing the document you are now reading.
Quanta Plus' MDI is broken down into various parts: the editor window, the quick info trees, informational tabs and the toolbars. Please see the section called “The Editor Window”, the section called “The Toolviews”, the section called “The Informational Tabs”, and the section called “The Toolbars” for more information on these parts.
Quanta Plus' editor window.
Quanta Plus' editor window allows for multiple files to be opened at the same time. When just one file is open, the document fills the entire editor window. As soon as a second document is opened, a small amount of space is taken from the bottom of the editor window to allow for tabs to be displayed with the filenames and a status icon. The above picture shows a floppy icon beside the filename, indicating that the file has been modified and should be saved.
You can right click on the tabs with the mouse to get a context menu with entries related to the current document, like closing the current, other or all tabs; switching to other tabs; reloading, deleting or uploading the document; switching to a bookmarked line ; performing CVS operations on the current document.
Right clicking in the editor area will give you another context menu related to the edited document content, like basic editing actions (cut/copy/paste), editing the tag under the cursor, selecting the area covered by the tag under the cursor, getting context help about the word under the cursor or open a file if the string under the cursor points to a file.
At the top of the editor window is the editor toolbar set. Currently, Quanta Plus defaults to HTML 4.01 Transitional, which has a default set of toolbars that are loaded. As Quanta Plus progresses, the toolbars will be updated to meet the needs of users and to make use of newer features.
Toolbar usage is pretty straight forward. If you want to insert a basic tag, like <p>, into your document, then you can click on the icon that represents the tag. Now you can insert your data for the tag you have just inserted. If you wish to insert a tag that requires certain attributes (like an anchor), then you will get a dialog box with the various fields for you to fill in.
The anchor (<a>) dialog.
The Toolviews.
The Toolviews or Quick Info Trees (QIT) allow you to navigate, open, and gather information in Quanta Plus. Its tabbed format presents you with the Files, Project, Templates, Document Structure, Scripts, Attribute, and Documentation Trees.
QIT Explained
This is where you can browse your entire file system. You are presented with two top-level roots of the file system. The first is your home folder and the second is the filesystem root folder - /. Use these to find existing files on your machine that you would like to edit or add to an active project. Right mouse button clicking on a file in this view gives you several options for managing the selected file and, also, allows you to insert the file into an active project, if any, or toggle the view between tree and list.
Project management is one of the many powerful tools that Quanta Plus offers. This tab displays all files within your project and allows you to manage the files within the project through the use of mouse button clicking. Actions, such as add, remove, upload, or delete files entirely from the disk, can be performed through this menu.
Another feature of Quanta Plus is templates. Templates can be anything you would like. Images, code snippets, an entire web page, et cetera. It is entirely up to you.
Templates are sorted into three categories, which are based on their scope and the context they are being used. These scopes are carried over from Quanta Plus' workspace. Global templates are usable all times, local templates are usable to the current user, and project templates are usable only within their specified project. More on templates can be found in the section called “Templates”.
Here you will find information about the various scripts available for use by you. The Global, Local, and Project concept allows here as well. By
mouse button clicking the entries, you gain access to all the available information about the script. And mouse button clicking allows you to perform a few actions, such as running the script, editing the script, and mailing the script, for example.This tab displays the parser's internal representation of your document. By
mouse button clicking on an element, your cursor will taken to the element's position in the document. By mouse button clicking on an element, you are presented with a number of actions that deal with navigating and updating the tree.This tree appears below all the other QITs. Within it you can quickly edit attributes and namespaces. The content-focused entry system allows you to modify all the available attributes with little more than a few clicks of the mouse.
Attribute Tree
Here you can find complete documentation on web technologies to aid your development. You can download pre-packaged documentation for Quanta Plus at Quanta Plus' documentation site, you can create your own documentation, and, by adding a folder named "doc" to a project, you can add, edit, and view project-specific documentation.
Quanta Plus' Informational Tabs.
By default Quanta Plus has two tabs located at the bottom of the window from which useful information can be obtained. These are the Messages window and the Problems window.
This tab displays information from any scripts run in quanta. For example, the DTD being used for the current document and any changes to the DTD are displayed.
This tab shows any errors in the markup of the current document. Quanta Plus scripts which are executed will also print error messages (if present) in this tab.
Quanta Plus' HTML toolbars.
Quanta Plus' toolbars have been extended greatly and are easy to understand. You click on the button and you get an associated action from that button. The beautiful part about toolbars is that you can define your own actions graphically within Quanta Plus.
Managing toolbars in Quanta Plus is easy. By selecting the menu, you have the options to load, save, add, remove, and email toolbars. When you choose to load a toolbar, you may choose from one of the three workspaces in Quanta Plus. When saving a newly created toolbar, you can save it in the local scope or within a project's scope. If you would like to make a new toolbar available in the global scope, ask your admin to place it in Quanta Plus' global toolbar folder.
Another feature of Quanta Plus is the ability to email your toolbars. Quanta Plus sends the toolbar as a gzipped tar archive through KMail. If you receive a toolbar in email, then you can save (and load) it into Quanta Plus like any other toolbar!
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