Text Referencing is a phrase used to describe manipulation of text through references. Text References  act as "shortcuts" to real text. 

If you have ever wanted to have the power of a spreadsheet or database within a text editor, this is where text referencing chimes in. Text referencing allows you to quickly output text into a text editor file. The references can be stored in a temporary gridsheet view, database, spreadsheet, or even active MultipleSelections.

Example 1: you input the command "A1,A5" into your Text Referencing bar (like a formula bar in a spreadsheet). This immediately displays cell A1 and A5 contents in the text editor in real time. It then gets as powerful as using ranges, multiplication, and addition like you would use in a spreadsheet.. but this happening inside your text files.

Example 2: you have twenty-four active MultipleSelections in a text editor. You type in the command "S1:S24". The twenty-four selections are immediately displayed (output) in the text editor one after the other. You could also insert carriage returns between each reference with a different command. You never had to use the clipboard, or cut and paste, or singular selections. Therefore, you just re-organized 24 snippets of text in only a split-second, without ever using the clipboard or copy/paste.

So in the above examples, A1, A5, S1, S24, were your text references or your "shortcut commands" to real text.

Text Referencing is keyboard centric and breaks the copy/paste barriers, and the "buffer" barriers. It also reduces wasted mouse movements and typing efforts. 

Many times one finds a scripting language too verbose and lengthy to perform fast and quick manipulation of text in real time. Or if Regular Expressions might work, but seem clunky or not powerful enough for the situation, the text referencing bar is the useful gizmo to have on hand. In fact, regular expressions may be used within text referencing or to extend text referencing software, making the situation even more powerful.

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Also known as: Text Reffing