Author Topic: Multiple selections  (Read 3700 times)

jporkkahtc

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Multiple selections
« on: August 26, 2014, 11:55:33 PM »
#1 In options clear "Delete selection before insert" and "auto-deselect".
Setup 2 or more cursors with selections.
Start typing.
Only one of the selections is cleared.
Only one of the cursors move, the other cursors insert the characters but do not move.

#2 In options clear "Delete selection before insert" and "auto-deselect".
Setup 2 or more cursors with selections.
move the cursor.
All the selections are cleared, but they shouldn't be.
If you have just one selection, it is not cleared.

#3 The commands to jump the cursor(s) to the begining / end of the selection - begin_select(), end_select() should work with multiple cursors, but they do not - given multiple cursors these functions are a lot more useful than they used to be.

#4: "Inclusive character selection" doesn't appear to do anything.

#5: Seems like a copy from multiple selections should create a vertical block
« Last Edit: August 27, 2014, 12:06:53 AM by Clark »

Clark

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Re: Multiple selections
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2014, 12:27:54 AM »
#1 This is a limitation. Only the "Active" cursor/selection actually has a separate currsor and selection. This allows the cursor to be in a location other than the beginning or end of the selection. The non-active cursors/selections can't do this because they only store a selection or cursor which is emulated by a selection. This limitation is to help performance which IMO is more important than supporting stange/uncommon operations. This means you are limited to more CUA-like operations. Clearing these options is not at all CUA-like.

#2 Same as above.

#3 These appear to be broken. We will have to look into this.

#4 "Inclusive character selection" effect the select_char command and select_toggle (click in status line) and probably some others that I can't think of.

#5 Maybe there should be an option for this. The current implementation assumes you are creating a list of items (one per line) and a column selection would be bad for creating a list of items to paste elsewhere.

Have you tried doing a paste while you have multiple cursors? Pretty cool eh?

jporkkahtc

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Re: Multiple selections
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2014, 01:00:36 AM »

#1, #2: Unsupported - sure, but the behavior is weird.
If multiple selections aren't supported for a given command, then the multi-select should be converted to a single selection first (by dropped all selections / cursors except the "active" one) - not allow random wierd behavior.


I was playing with this option because I thought it would be nice if I could move the cursor around inside the selections (as well as begining / ending of selection). Once you get to the begin/end of a selection it would be nice to be able to do something (like insert, toggle case, etc), without losing the selection.


Multiple cursors isn't very CUA-like either :-)






#5: WRT paste: Yes - nice, though the first thing I tried was pasting with a single cursor, and expecting behavior like vertical block.


I'm kinda surprised that there isn't a "Paste Special" option to toggle between vertical and horizontal.
The "Clipboards" tool window has a horizontal/vertical context menu - but it doesn't change the data format, just the window :-)



Clark

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Re: Multiple selections
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2014, 02:14:47 AM »
I'm kinda surprised that there isn't a "Paste Special" option to toggle between vertical and horizontal.
The "Clipboards" tool window has a horizontal/vertical context menu - but it doesn't change the data format, just the window :-)
There isn't any kind of Paste special yet but it would be nice. There are a lot of possibilities with a paste special. There are some Copy special-like things (Edit>Other>Copy UCN As and Edit>Other>Copy Unicode As). The same sort of thing could be done by Paste and a paste as Block/Column selection would be useful too.

I would like a Copy as paragraphs option. When you use soft wrap, you don't need this. But when you don't, this option would take consecutive non-blank lines, strip leading blanks, and create a single line for each paragraph. Then I could paste the paragraphs into an email or Microsoft Word and have it wrap perfectly.