[TxMt] Features request: columnar editing mode and fixed/delimiter conversion

Luc Heinrich lucsky at mac.com
Fri Jul 22 07:49:10 UTC 2005


On 22 juil. 05, at 06:01, Allan Odgaard wrote:

> For my editing tasks I definitely favor the implicit/elusive  
> behavior, but I'll check out UE the next time I get the chance, to  
> see if it inspires me

You may also want to check how SubEthaEdit does it then, I  
personnally find that it makes much more sense and is much easier to  
use than in TM.

Have a look at this 7 lines example where I want to insert some text  
in colum 7 of lines 2 to 6:

Block editing in TextMate:
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Block editing in SubEthaEdit:
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Now tell me which one is the more obvious, honestly. The TextMate way  
where you can barely see the column selection (did you even spot  
it ? :)) ? Or the SubEthaEdit way where all block edited lines are  
clearly highlighted and you know where the column is by simply  
looking at the position of the cursor (which got removed in the  
screenshot) ?

This is one of those case where all I can say is "this looks so wrong  
that there is probably something obvious that I miss, or simply don't  
get". So feel free to enlighten me ;)

There are two reasons why I still prefer SubEthaEdit over TM for most  
of my text editing tasks and that's one of them. The other one being  
the symbol popup which I'm pretty sure *will* make it to TM  
eventually, so I won't mention it. Oh, wait, I just did :)

PS: and while I'm at it, I also love the way SubEthaEdit displays the  
line numbers in the gutter using a slightly smaller font. Details,  
details... ;)

-- 
Luc Heinrich - lucsky at mac.com - http://www.honk-honk.com



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