On Jun 9, 2006, at 1:20 PM, Rob McBroom wrote:
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.
Try SubEtha's version of this. Allan has mentioned some problems with this, that he sees, and I'm not arguing anything else other than it is very nice to get in and out of, which prepares for the multi- line cursor (read on). Yes it isn't accessible from the keyboard, but just think if it was. It would be magical.
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. :)
Well, if you hit option to get in, why not hit option to get out (or some other keyboard command). :)
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.
Multi-line cursor: yes, exactly! If you have a multi-line cursor, there's really no reason NOT to select a whole block--it allows a greater range of movement in your initial selection. And why not just select a whole block, keeping the cursor at the point you originally selected? That would merge the character-perfect selection we have and block-mode very nicely.
Jeff.