Editing Pico (text editor) (section)

== Basic commands and navigation ==

Pico features a number of commands for editing. Arrow keys move the cursor a character at the time in the direction of the movement. Inserting a character is done by pressing the corresponding character key in the keyboard, while giving commands (such as save, spell check, justify, search, etc.) is done using a control key.

The {{key press|Ctrl|T}} command is used to spell check. The speller is defined from the command line using the -s option. When a person writes files in different languages, the speller can be set to be a script that interacts with the user to select the language to be checked.

The {{key press|Ctrl|J}} command is used to left justify text. Text is flowed in each line of a paragraph up to a limit set with the -r option in the command line. If no limit is given in the command line, then a default value of 72 characters per line is used. This limit is used to wrap lines during composition, as well as to justify text. The {{key press|Ctrl|J}} command justifies the text in the paragraph that the cursor is placed on. The command {{key press|Ctrl|W}} {{key press|Ctrl|U}} is used to justify the full file. In case that justification is not done correctly, or by mistake, it can be undone by pressing the {{key press|Ctrl|U}} command immediately after justification has been done.

The {{key press|Ctrl|W}} command is used to search for text. Search is done [[Case sensitivity|case insensitively]], The search and replace command is not available by default, but must be enabled through the -b option in the command line.

Moving inside the editor can be done using the keyboard by using the arrow keys. Keys such as {{key press|Page Up}}, or {{key press|Page Down}}, scroll the text up or down (towards the beginning or end of the file, respectively). The commands {{key press|Ctrl|W}} {{key press|Ctrl|Y}}, and {{key press|Ctrl|W}} {{key press|Ctrl|V}} move the cursor to the beginning or end of the file respectively, while the commands {{key press|Ctrl|A}} and {{key press|Ctrl|E}} move the cursor to the beginning and the end of the line that the cursor is located on.