Bars

The main window of PieceWorx Writing Studio has two bars:

• Format Bar
• Status Bar

Format Bar

The yellow region in the screen capture below shows the location of the format bar at the top of the editor window.

Hide the Format Bar

Format Bar	Click up-arrow
Right-click menu	Format->Toggle Format Bar
Hotkey	Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B (fiddle bars)
Right-click menu	Layout->Fiddles->Bars

You can hide the format bar in a few ways. First, you can click the up arrow in the format bar which is the right-most button.

You can also hide the format bar using the Bars button on the top bumper. This fiddles the visibility of the format bar and status bar. The hotkey Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B does the same thing.

Finally, you can use the right-click menu. First right-click in the editor window, then select Format->Toggle Format Bar.

NOTE: You may notice that the hotkey hint for the Format->Toggle Format Bar menu item is Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B, which fiddles visibility of both the format bar and status bar. That's only because there is no hotkey to only toggle the visibility of the format bar. This menu item, however, does only toggle the visibility of the format bar.

Show the Format Bar

Right-click menu	Format->Toggle Format Bar
Hotkey	Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B (fiddle bars)
Right-click menu	Layout->Fiddles->Bars

You can show the format bar by right-clicking on the editor window and selecting Format->Toggle Format Bar from the context menu.

You can also use the Bars fiddle Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B which fiddles the visibility of the format and status bar.

Format Bar Buttons

First note that all text formatting operations can be found in the context menu under the Format submenu when clicking on the editor window. Note also the hotkey shortcuts shown on the context menu.

The format bar itself contains a subset of all the format operations. The buttons in the format bar may not always be enabled depending on whether the operation is allowed for the current state of things. For example, if no text is selected, then the copy button will be grayed out.

If you hover your mouse over each button you will see a tooltip explaining what it does along with the hotkey short cut.

From left to right the buttons in the format bar are:

• - Copy
• - Cut
• - Paste
• - Select All
• - Toggle Bold
• - Toggle Italic
• - Toggle Underline
• - List Options
  • None
  • Bullet
  • Number
  • Lower case letter
  • Upper case letter
  • Lower case roman numeral
  • Upper case roman numeral
• Text alignment (Quadding)
  • - Left
  • - Center
  • - Right
  • - Justify
• - Decrease left indent
• - Increase left indent
• - Other indent options
  • Toggle indenting of first line of paragraph
  • Increase right indent
  • Decrease right indent
  • Clear all indents
• - Line spacing
  • Single
  • 1.5
  • Double
  • Clear all line spacing
• - Quick fonts (customized in settings)
  • Heading 1
  • Heading 2
  • Heading 3
  • Normal
  • Emphasized
  • Small
• - Open the font dialog
• - Increase font size
• - Decrease font size
• - Undo
• - Redo
• - Hide the format bar

Status Bar

The yellow region in the screen capture below shows the status bar along the bottom of the main window.

Hide/Show the Status Bar

Hotkey	Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B (fiddle bars)
Right-click menu	Layout->Fiddles->Bars

The main way to show or hide the status bar is by using the bar visibility fiddle. This can be accessed in the right-click menu under Layout->Fiddles->Bars or on the top bumper by clicking the Bars button to cycle the bar visibilities or by using the hotkey Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B.

Status Bar Items on the Left Side of the Bar

The status bar contains several pieces of information which may changed based on context, status or state of the program.

The left side of the status bar contains information related to unsaved changes and session monitoring.

• - Unsaved changes. This icon is red when there are unsaved changes and blue () when there are no unsaved changes.
• - Session monitoring. This session status tells me that the program has been open for 7 minutes and I have added 4 words to the notebook. Clicking this status region with the mouse is a shortcut way of opening the session dialog where you can set/reset alerts or change the session monitoring settings.
  NOTE: Click this status region with the mouse to open the session dialog where you can set/reset alerts or change the session monitoring settings.
• - Alerts. Alerts are countdowns to either a minute target (m) or a word target (w). In this example, an alert was set for 500 words and since four were typed, the alert shows 496w. When the target has been exceeded, a popup will display to let you know. If you don't cancel or restart the alert, the green arrow in the status icon will change from green to red.
  NOTE: Click this status region with the mouse to open the session dialog where you can set/reset alerts or change the session monitoring settings.

Status Bar Items on the Right Side of the Bar

The right status bar regions are associated primarily with the editor and may change according to the current position of the cursor.

• - The character position of the cursor in the current document.
• - The current line number of the cursor.
• - The total number of words in the current document Click to open the statistics dialog.
  NOTE: Click to open the statistics dialog.
• - The text alignment at the current cursor position.
• - The font at the current cursor position.
  NOTE: Click to open the Quick Font configuration tab in the Settings dialog.
• - The font zoom factor at the current cursor position.
  NOTE: Click to restore the current zoom factor to 1.0x
• - The currently active frame or tab.
• - The currently selected theme.
• - The current computer time.