On Jun 9, 2006, at 11:11 AM, Jeffrey Robert Spies wrote:
I am with Tim on this. Character-perfect mousing is inefficient from an HCI point of view if you can accomplish the same thing with gross (read: sweeping) movements, both with the mouse and the keyboard.
Well, good or bad, selecting from one specific character to another is a large, unavoidable part of modern computing. I guess I don't see avoiding 3 such selections per day, when I'll probably be making hundreds over all, as that big of a gain.
And selections with the keyboard as you suggest are incredibly frustrating, but with an intelligent block-edit mode (like Tim mentioned, in SubEthaEdit), you could navigate using the keyboard navigation commands you are used to, or with your character-perfect mousing, and not lose your selection-mode.
I maintain that you're *supposed* to lose the selection when you navigate. If for no other reason, it's the fastest and most intuitive way to um… not have that stuff selected any more. :)
Currently, we have to select into column edit mode, edit, move the cursor, select back into column edit mode, edit, etc. The change Tim mentioned reduces this process dramatically.
OK, it's starting to make a little more sense. I hadn't considered wanting to edit multiple different columns within the same range of lines in one sitting. I still think there must be a better way though. Perhaps an easy way to move a multi-line "cursor" a.k.a. an in-between-columns selection left and right (assuming there isn't already a way). This would actually change what's selected, which makes more sense to me than preserving the selection while navigating.
Rob