Scoop Buffer

The Scoop Buffer is an alternative to the Windows clipboard. Like the clipboard, it can be used used to pick up segments of text and move them to other locations. However, the Scoop Buffer has advantages over the Windows clipboard, and can do certain things that the clipboard cannot do. For example, when text is added to the clipboard, it always overwrites the old text in the clipboard buffer. New text cannot be combined with text that is already there. With the Scoop Buffer, text from different parts of the document can be added and combined.

Line Scoops. When the editor is in Immediate Mode, the scoop is turned on by typing Ctrl+R and turned off with Ctrl+F. When the scoop is on, text can be pulled into it by moving the cursor backward over the text. Any backward movement of the cursor, including deletes, scoops up text. You can delete and scoop at the same time.

While the scoop is on, moving the cursor forward causes the equivalent amount of text to be removed from the scoop. Be careful! Generally, the scoop should be turned off before resuming normal editing.

The text that is in the scoop can be inserted into the edit buffer at any time. Executing an “X” command on the Command Line or F5 from Immediate Mode causes the entire contents of the scoop to be inserted into the edit buffer at the cursor. The text remains intact in the scoop until it is erased with an "E” on the Command Line or F8 from Immediate Mode. This allows many copies to be inserted into different locations in the edit buffer.

Text from the scoop also can be inserted into the edit buffer using Ctrl+Y. This inserts the text and erases the scoop, which is useful when moving lots of individual pieces of text.

You can scoop up to 100,000 characters. Since the edit buffer can hold millions of characters, some care must be taken to not overflow the Scoop Buffer. The amount of free space available in the Scoop Buffer is displayed on the Status Line.