15. More about windows...

Typing cmd-o in the "Scrap" window allows loading text files of any type. This window provides work space to edit grammars and data. For instance, another grammar may be loaded to the "Scrap" window and parts of it copied to the current grammar.

The "Trace" window may equally be used for storing text. However, it is also used by BP2 for displaying error messages, and sometimes BP2 needs to clear it (with the user's permission).

Clicking the go-away box of the "Trace" window erases its content after prompting the user to save changes.

15.2 Adjusting window sizes and locations

Window sizes and locations are saved with the current settings. If the name of the settings file appears on top of the grammar or data, each time the grammar or data is loaded the same window environment is reset.

If the project was created on a larger monitor, BP2 checks the dimensions of the current screen and avoids dragging or resizing windows beyond screen boundaries.

Users of large monitors may want to change default positions and sizes taking full advantage of their large screen. Start BP2 (with no project), drag and resize windows, then save settings as a start-up file.

15.3 BP2 editor

BP2 is basically a word processor (enhanced as bol processor, where 'bol' stands for a musical-speech symbol) using the WASTE text engine designed by Marco Piovanelli. Unlike BP2 versions before 7.5.2, window contents are not limited to 32,000 characters.

Basic operations: copy, cut, paste, find/replace are implemented in the usual manner. Undo (cmd-z) works more or less as expected in word processors.

If the option key is down, left/right arrows move by one word while up/down arrows move by one paragraph. In word processing, a paragraph is a sequence of characters between two carriage returns; it is displayed on several lines if it is larger that the window width. These movements with the option key down are much more practical than the usual scrolling.

If both the option and the shift key are down, moving by one word or one paragraph extends the current selection accordingly.

The command key (cmd) may be used for jumping to the beginning or the end of a line (left and right arrows), and to the beginning or the end of a text window (up and down arrows).

These commands using arrows in combination with option, shift or command keys are identical to the ones in well-known editors like Alpha or Symantec® C++.

Any musical item, grammar rule or script instruction in BP2 must be written as one single paragraph. This is a problem when text warping provokes undesirable lay-outs (depending on the window width). Because of this, a special line break character is supplied: '¬'. To use the special line break, type 'return' with the 'option' key down. (The same symbol and keyboard sequence are used by HyperTalk and AppleScript.) When interpreting the input, BP2 pastes together lines separated with '¬'.

Tabulations in BP2 documents are displayed as ordinary spaces. Nevertheless, typing tabs instead of spaces may be useful for formatting the text in a word processor.

BP2 has another useful feature borrowed from Symantec: typing cmd-b allows you to check the "balance" of brackets () and {}. You may try it with polymetric expressions contained in the last subgrammar of "-gr.Mozart". Each stroke selects a higher bracket level. After several strokes you get a beep (if brackets are not balanced) or the entire window is selected, meaning that all expressions are balanced. Note however that a correct grammar (e.g. "-gr.koto3") may contain rules with unbalanced brackets.

In addition, BP2 allows users to 'type' notes from a MIDI keyboard (using cmd-j, see §1.4) or map the keyboard to predefined tokens (see §10.4).