[TxMt] 1001 suggestions in shining armour

[Rob McBroom]

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