The WintextCom Reader allows you to redefine the beginning of a file. You can use this feature to effectively hide preamble at the top of a document that you do not wish to read through again, and instead start the reading at a more useful location when you invoke the beginning of file command (Control+Home). It is still possible to get to the real beginning by pressing Control+Alt+Home instead of just Control+Home.

To set the effective top of the file, press Shift+Alt+Home at the location that you want to be the beginning. This command is on the Braille\bookmarks menu. Once you have set the top of file, the read back, word back, and similar commands, will not move beyond this point, as though there were no more text going backwards. Control+Home brings the display to this location, not to the real beginning. The region of text between the real top of the file and the effective top is hidden as far as normal document navigation is concerned.

However, if you press Control+Shift+Home (on the Braille\navigation menu), the display is relocated to the actual beginning of the text and you can navigate forwards and backward within the hidden region. If you move forwards beyond the effective top position again, you again cannot move back into the hidden region with the standard navigation commands. You can set other bookmarks within the hidden region, however, and jump to them, as well as using Control+Shift+home to move to the very beginning. Control+Home always goes to the effective top, even if pressed within the hidden region.

Is it important to realise that the effective top stays set only if you have a general position bookmark saved for the file. If you delete the general bookmark with Control+Delete, the effective top setting is also lost (as well as all other bookmarks).

The effective top has many applications. It not only provides an additional bookmark, but also prevents you from inadvertently reading in the initial area of a document that you know to contain nothing of interest. For example, you might have downloaded an electronic book in plain text that has copyright and transcription information at the top, which is of no interest once it has been read; you can set the effective top at the location of the table of contents, or if there is no table of contents in a document you are reading, just mark the first section that contains information that you would want to revise on a recap or second reading. You can explicitly set user bookmarks within the hidden region for whatever reason, but you cannot move into it while scrolling text backwards or searching for text.

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Setting the Top of the File