Transformational Editing

Transforms are built-in, context-sensitive, language-specific editing operations. Each transform is enabled or disabled based on the current value of the structural selection. One common form of transform replaces a placeholder with a template, i.e., an outline of some construct containing placeholders for its constituents. Other transforms may do more complicated source-to-source modifications. Transforms are guaranteed to preserve syntactic correctness; i.e., they never introduce syntax errors.

The currently enabled transforms are listed in the Transform menu and in the context pane (if shown). A transform can be invoked by selection from the menu, by clicking Select in the context pane, or by typing its name (or a unique prefix thereof) in the command pane. Within a script, a transform can be invoked by calling sg:execute-command.

The command describe-transform lists the currently enabled transform in a hypertext card and provides access to any existing documentation about specific transforms.