The simplest way to move the caret is to click the mouse at the desired location in the text area. The caret can also be moved using the keyboard.
The LEFT, RIGHT,
UP and DOWN keys move the caret in the
respective direction, and the PAGE_UP and
PAGE_DOWN keys move the caret up and down one
screen-full, respectively.
When pressed once, the HOME key moves the caret
to the first non-whitespace character of the current screen line.
Pressing it a second time moves the caret to the beginning of the
current buffer line. Pressing it a third time moves the caret to the
first visible line.
The END key behaves in a similar manner, going to
the last non-whitespace character of the current screen line, the end of
the current buffer line, and finally to the last visible line.
If soft wrap is disabled, a “screen line” is the same as a “buffer line”. If soft wrap is enabled, a screen line is a section of a newline-delimited buffer line that fits within the wrap margin width. See the section called “Wrapping Long Lines”.
C+HOME and C+END move the caret
to the beginning and end of the buffer, respectively.
More advanced caret movement is covered in the section called “Working With Words”, the section called “Working With Lines” and the section called “Working With Paragraphs”.
The Home and End keys
If you prefer more traditional behavior for the
HOME and END keys, you can
reassign the respective keyboard shortcuts in the
Shortcuts pane of the
Utilities>Options;
see the section called “The Shortcuts Pane”.
By default, the shortcuts are assigned as follows:
HOME is bound to Smart
Home.
END is bound to Smart
End.
S+HOME is bound to
Select to Smart Home
Position.
S+END is bound to Select
to Smart End Position.
However you can rebind them to anything you want, for example, various combinations of the following, or indeed any other command or macro:
Go to Start/End of White Space.
Go to Start/End of Line.
Go to Start/End of Buffer.
Select to Start/End of White Space .
Select to Start/End of Line.
Select to Start/End of Buffer.