If you are accustomed to using Windows, you are probably habituated to many ways to express commands in the way established by Microsoft. Scaramouche: Hacker/Factotum has tried to maintain that lexicon, but has invented new twists of our own.

If your mouse is configured as "left-handed", you'll have to referse left-right orientations.

• Left mouse button refers to the left button on your mouse. (Right, if you are a lefty.)

• Pointer refers to the arrow-shaped cursor on the screen that looks something like this 

• Choose means to move the pointer to an object, menu, command, tool, or button and press the left mouse button. This term is synonymous with click.

• Select means to mark an item with the selection cursor, which can appear as a highlight, a dotted rectangle, or both. You select an item by clicking on it once with your mouse, or by using theTAB or an arrow key to move the cursor to the item.

• Double-click means to press the left mouse button twice rapidly.

• Right-click means to press the right mouse button (or the left button if you are a lefty).

• Drag means to hold down the left mouse button, move the pointer to another location on the screen, and release the mouse button.

In addition to these terms, the following conventions are used:

• Menu and command names are shown in bold italic type.

• Buttons are shown in bold.

• The carriage return is the <Enter> button. It's near your right pinkie. Most keyboards mark this key with this symbol:  ¿

• When two keys are used together to perform a task, they are separated with a plus sign. For example, the key combination Alt + F4 is used to exit a dialog box, window, or application.
Alt + F4 means you hold down the Alt key and press the F4 function key.

To indicate a sequence of steps, each step is marked with a greater-than sign: >. For instance,

means...    1) From the menu bar at the top left-hand of the screen
                2) Click on File
                3) Click on Save As
                4) Enter the filename "c:\temp.txt"
                5) Maybe <Enter> after keying in the previous line

In an attempt to lend variety to online prose, some authors give directions in a mixed order of ordinary prose, thus...

    Select Save As from the File menu. Enter "c:\temp.txt". You have to re-read that line
    and try to figure out the order for yourself.

Several intelligent web writers  render (4) like this:

A link is a specially designated word or image appearing in an HTML file. A link is underlined and is coloured differently from surrounding type. When you are online and click on a link, your browser accesses a new page — often another website. Many websites, including Chez Scaramouche: Hacker/Factotum, follow a convention that underlined passages are always links.

A URL [Uniform Resource Locator] is a standardized address for a file or information resource on the Internet.

Scaramouche’s URL (website address) is

    http://www.chez-schf.comi

When you are online, you can reach Chez Scaramouche: Hacker/Factotum by typing that address in your browser’s location panel, then pressing <Enter>. Since URL's are often long, meaningless (to humans) strings, it's best to drag and drop URL's rather than keying them in.

Some people have trouble reading URL's when they're in very small print. Try this fix:

    1) Choose the URL.
    2) Copy the URL         ( this puts it into the Windows Clipboard)
    3) Open Notepad
    4) Paste the URL into Notepad
    5) Notepad's characters are big enough and plain enough to work with
        Check copy work and make corrections as needed. Then revese the
        process.
    6) In Notepad, copy the URL
    7) Paste the URL into the document or other source. Make sure you
        delete or over-write the original URL.

Scaramouche usually places URL’s on separate lines, omitting any punctuation that might normally occur in a document. In other contexts, a period, exclaimation point, or question mark might be used to end a sentence. That punctuation might be swept up with the URL, then mess up your surfing.

Paragraphs are sometimes marked with these symbols:

                                                                     Word and HTML documents    Textfiles
A tip or suggestion                                                     F or % .             {Hey}
Additional or optional information                                         $     {more}
Warning                                                                     M or N    {!}

Sometimes, you'll see a mixed decimal number. For instance, "55.3"

This gives you a more precise location. The integral part is the page number. The fractional part (.1 to .4) gives the quarter of the page in which the cited passage starts. The "quartering" includes the top and bottom margins of the page, thus...

When the passage to be cited is near a dividing line, you may have to guess. Book and periodical printers vary from one imprint to the next. A passage citation may appear to begin on page 33.3 in one copy and page 33.4 in another.

If you own the book, you may want to mark the outer edge in quarters with a felt-tip pen. If it's a library book, make a bookmarker with the quarters marked off.

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