To the lay person, a 'line of text' is a line as seen on the page or screen, i.e. from the left margin to where the text stops at the right margin. Thus a long sentence may 'wrap' onto a new, different, line so as to remain visible to the reader.
For instance, as currently drafted in the author's TBX file, the text above comprises two sentences wrapped onto three lines (for display purposes). It is also only one paragraph of text.
Importantly, it is the latter definition of a 'line'—i.e what we more normally think of as a discrete 'paragraph'—that must be understood as 'line' when using action code text operations. To clarify, from a code perspective the discrete lines within a String of textual data are most easily understood as:
- the run of characters from the text's start to the first line break character,
- then each run of characters between a pair of successive line break characters within the text,
- plus the run of characters after the last line break character up to the text's end.
Therefore for action code use, this article is seven 'lines' of text (each bullet is effectively a paragraph), even though it may display as many more lines when read in the TBX file or ints output web pages.