Guided Editor
The Guided Editor is a text editor that provides specialized help for entering information in InfoSecter. It acts as a normal text editor except that it can provide context sensitive hints to make entering information faster and easier. See here for a reference of available keystrokes.
Guided Editor Basics
When hints are available, a small popup box will appear a little below and to the right of the text cursor as show in the picture. Here the Guided Editor is being used to enter an IP address range for a field in Querent. The user has typed in "192.168.10.0". The green is part of a color code and indicates the input is valid. While a single address is acceptable as a range, you can specify a larger range by entering a network specification, either a CIDR bit count mask or an octet mask, or '-' character and another IP address. The hint box shows all of these to indicate that while the current input is sufficient, you can type more.
Hints can be treated simply as hints and all data entered directly. You can click on a hint in which case the text is added to the input. Hints can be selected by using the UP and DOWN arrow keys and then used by typing TAB or CONTROL - SPACE . For common used values (such as the class C network mask) this can be much faster and more accurate than typing it by hand. You can press ESCAPE to hide the hint box. CONTROL SHIFT H@ will turn off hints entirely until you type @CONTROL @H@.
In this case, for the octet mask, several hints are provided. These are, in order, the mask for the widest network possible for the IP address, the class C network for the address, and the host mask. The class A and class B network masks are not offered as hints because they are invalid for this address. These values are a "best guess" as to the most commonly used masks. If none are correct, you can simply enter the mask directly.
Hints are also provided if part of the data is entered. In this image the yellow means that the input is not correct but could be correct with additional text. The hints in this case are the smallest and largest possible IP addresses consistent with the part of the address already present. Again, these are the common cases and if not correct can be ignored.
What if you make a mistake? In most cases the Guided Editor will catch this and let you know what's wrong. Here the background has been set to red to indicate bad input and the hint explains the problem ("257" is too large a value for a single octect in an IP address). When the input is bad, using the hint will erase the bad input but not replace it. It is usually easier to use BACKSPACE to back up and correct the error.
Some of the names used in InfoSecter can be long. While this makes the display more understandable it can also take extra effort to type. The Guided Editor makes this easier to enter by automatically selecting a hint if that is the only hint. Only enough of a name to be unique must be typed in order to have a hint with the complete name selected. In addition the Guided Editor has additional help for names with spaces in them. For such a name, each space seperated word is checked independently across spaces in the input. For this reason you only need to match enough initial characters of each word to match the correct name.
For example, in Visualizer, the column names contain spaces. Two such column names are "Destination Address" and "Destination Service". Typing just the letter 'd' brings up two hints, one for each column name.
If you type "d a", then the 'd' will match "Destination" in both column names, but the 'a' will be matched against the second words, "Service" and "Address". Since only "Address" starts with 'a', it will be the only hint and become selected.
Typing CONTROL-Space at that point will cause the "d a" you entered to be changed to "Destination Address". This also works with actions and scopes that contain spaces. You can also see that the hints have changed to comparison operators appropriate for values for the Destination Address column.
The Guided Editor is case insensitive -- it doesn't matter if you type "d a" or "D a" or "d A". This example also demonstrates typing additional characters for the first and second word in "Destination Address" still matches, despite the odd mixture of upper and lower case letters.
Color Code
Color is used with the Guided Editor to indicate the validity of the current input, although the exact manner varies. The color code is the same in all cases.
| Color | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green | Input is correct. |
| Yellow | Input is not correct, but could become correct with additional input. |
| Red | Input is wrong. No amount of additional input could make it correct. The current input must be changed. |
Using the Guided Editor in Querent
Querent used the Guided Editor to edit values for clauses and dictionary values. Querent changes the background of the value field to indicate the acceptability of the input according to the color code.
Using the Guided Editor in Visualizer
Visualizer use the Guided Editor to edit filter expressions. Visualizer highlights sections of input according to the color code. More hints will be provided than in Querent because filter expressions are more complex than values.
Special Keystrokes
| Control-H | Enable hinting |
| Shift-Control-H | Disable hinting |
| Up, Control-U | Select the previous hint |
| Down, Control-N | Select the next hint |
| Home | Select first hint |
| End | Select last hint |
| Tab, Control-Space | Use the selected hint |
| Escape | Temporarily hide the hint box |