Reformat

The Reformat command can be used to reformat the paragraph at the text cursor within the defined Text Width and according to the current Justification Style. The Reformat operation begins on the current line and includes all lines to the end of the current paragraph (see note below). The text cursor is advanced to the first line of the next paragraph following Reformat, so that successive Reformat commands will move smoothly through the document.

If a range of lines is selected, all paragraphs within the selected range will be reformatted. Use the Select All Text command before Reformat to reformat an entire file, but first check to be sure that the file doesn't contain tables or lists which might be adversely affected by reformatting.

When Boxer reformats text, it does so by adding a true newline (hard line ender) character at the end of the line. The nature of text editors is that they must not place special characters in the files they produce, so adding a soft line ender at the point of wrap is not an option. At present, Boxer does not have a passive wrap-to-window mode in which lines would be wrapped to the window width for display purposes only. This feature is under consideration for a future release.

Boxer uses the amount of indent on the second line of the paragraph to determine the indent level for the entire paragraph. A paragraph can be made fully indented by manually indenting the first and second lines of the paragraph and then reformatting.

The indent on the first line of the paragraph is not applied to other lines in the paragraph. A hanging indent can be achieved by placing less indent on the first line of the paragraph than on the second line. Likewise, if the first line of a paragraph has extra indent, it too will be preserved.

If you wish to create bulleted paragraphs that will retain their layout after being reformatted, use a Tab character to separate the bullet from the body of the paragraph. If a series of Spaces were to be used between the bullet and the body text they would be adjusted during Reformat. Tabs are maintained in this situation.

To have text wrap to the next line automatically as you type, use the Word Wrap feature.

The Unformat command is essentially the opposite of Reformat: it removes line enders from a paragraph to create a long, flowing line of text.

The end of a paragraph is signaled by the presence of one or more blank lines between paragraphs, but not simply by the presence of additional indent on a line which immediately follows the current paragraph. Lines which begin with a period (.) will also be recognized as blank lines for purposes of Reformat. This is to permit the use of text markup languages such as Flexicon for adding formatting commands to text.

Reformat will break lines between HTML or XML tags, when appropriate, even if an intervening space is not present.