[TxMt] 1001 suggestions in shining armour

[Rob McBroom]

On Jun 8, 2006, at 10:14 PM, Timothy Bates wrote:

>> You lost me with the "braindead block editing zero-column  
>> selection". How shouldit work?
>
> The model here should be sub-etha-edit
>
> Here you option drag across a group of lines and they are all  
> highlighted showing they are in group edit mode, then, where ever  
> you insert the selection point or make a selection, that region is  
> group edited (vertically through the lines).

When I select something then click (not hold, but click) somewhere  
else, I expect the selection to go away and the cursor to move to  
where I clicked. This is the behavior of pretty much every  
application on pretty much every OS. To change the behavior in a  
single app would screw productivity in my opinion.

> The benefits are massive: no need for pixel-perfect (pixel- 
> perfect!) dragging of a selection across numerous lines (often  
> several vertical cm). Just a single crude drag-as-you-like option  
> select. Followed by a normal "click here to edit" selection.

Pixel-perfect? Unless I'm missing something, it seems to require  
merely character-perfect mousing, which is 1) not that difficult, and  
2) something you have to do all the time anyway. There are ways to  
make these selections even easier (using the keyboard has been  
mentioned). I also find that (using the mouse) a lot of times it's  
easier to do a regular style selection, let go of the mouse, then tap  
the option key to toggle column-mode on.

"I like the way it is" I guess… would be the… main bullet point of  
this… presentation.

Rob