This page describes the specific use of MarkupBinder from within TextPad, a text editor for Windows. TextPad is mostly accessible with JAWS and perhaps other screen readers but not with NVDA.
After reading this page, read the
Getting started with MarkupBinder as a light word processor alternative page in this section.
It is assumed that you have installed MarkupBinder as described in: Installation > Installing in Windows.
After the installation procedure, MarkupBinder is configured in TextPad as a series of tools which are easily accessible. Each tool represents usually a single MarkupBinder command.
First you load TextPad with a content page written in Markdown (with the '.md' file extension). Edit the file. The author finds it convenient to toggle the 'Word wrap' mode on and off by invoking the key sequence [Ctrl + q] followed (after releasing the previousley held keys) by the 'w' key. After editing the file, issue the required command by invoking the appropriate tool. The tools for MarkupBinder are located under the Tools > External Tools sub-menu.
The MarkupBinder commands, together with their shortcut keys, are:
After you run any of the tools (commands) above, either from the TextPad menu or using the shortcut keys, a beep announces that the tool has completed its operation and an output (read only) console is displayed and has the focus. By pressing the Up arrow, you can find if the tool was successeful and you can navigate the console in the usual way to examine any errors. (Errors should not happen very often.) You can move the focus back from the console to the editing area by pressing [F6]. Make sure that before you invoke any of the tool commands above, the focus is in the editing area, otherwise TextPad does not pass the parameters correctly to MarkupBinder and unexplained errors may occur.
In the usual editing process, you will most frequently use the 'Build Document Page' command which builds a single page and therefore should only take a few seconds to run. When you build a single, very large file or perform a command on the binder (a command involving multiple files), processing may take a while so wait patiently for the bbeep announcing that the operation has completed.
All the tools above, except for the 'File Conversion', perform a single MarkupBinder command. When you invoke the 'Convert File' command, a dialog is displayed asking you to enter the file conversion command required which is explained in detail in the Using MarkupBinder from the command line page. Note that you need to enter only the command itself (not the '-' flag indicator). For example, to convert an HTML file displayed in TextPad, type 'html2md'.
It is useful to work with a binder folder structure and load TextPad with a document using Windows Explorer the Windows File Manager.
MarkupBinder's documents are written in Markdown, a lightweight writing format with the file extension '.md'. For convenience, configure Windows Explorer to open these types of files automatically when pressing Enter (double clicked) using TextPad; you can do this as follows:
From now on, in Windows Explorer, whenever you press [Enter] (double click) on a file with the file extension '.md', TextPad should open with the file loaded.
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