Line Number Selection

In most cases, the easiest way to highlight a given advisory line is to type its line number:

So let us assume you type ms and your Phrase Advisory is populated as follows:


typing the digit 5 will select the fifth advisory line with the phrase may still try this, that you can then expand. 

Likewise, assuming you type app and your Word Advisory is populated as follows:

you can type 2 for application and 5 for appointment.

As you can see, the line number selection is a very powerful way to easily highlight a displayed entry. There are good chances, you will end up using this mechanism very often.

Ambiguous cases

Now getting back to our Phrase Advisory example, let us imagine the short form for the muscle strength is 5/5 phrase is now msi5 instead of msi:


You will probably be surprised to see that typing the digit 5 will not select the fifth advisory line in this case, but the third one with the msi5 short form instead.

To understand what is going on, let us look at this other example first. Assume you are using an ages glossary and you type y4:

Now, how do you get 42-years-old? Obviously, you want to type a 2 and get it with y42. So when the short forms include digits, you want typed digits to match these short forms rather than being understood as line numbers. And this is exactly what Instant Text does. It would indeed be very surprising in this case if the 2 was interpreted as a line number selection and highlighted 40-year-old!

So the rule is:

When a typed digit can be interpreted as part of an abbreviation matching an entry of the current glossary, the line number selection mechanism is not activated.


Now that you know the rule, you also understand why in our first example, typing the digit 5 results in the selection of the phrase with the short form msi5 (for which ms5 is a valid abbreviation) rather than in the selection of the fifth line.

It is generally good practice to use digits carefully in short forms, in order to minimize potential conflicts with the line number selection. In our previous example, msi is obviously a better choice than msi5 for the short form of the muscle strength is 5/5 phrase.

Note that digits, used in the first two characters of a phrase short form, can't create any conflict with the line number selection which can only take place after having typed two characters anyway.

See also:    Scrolling the Advisories