[TxMt] Feature Request: same behavior as Xcode + TextEdit

[Fritz Anderson]

On 13 Sep 2006, at 12:59 PM, Allan Odgaard wrote:
> On 13/9/2006, at 17:04, Andreas Pardeike wrote:
>> can we get the same end-of-text-click behavior as in Xcode,  
>> TextEdit and BBedit?
>> I am talking about this:
>>
>> (1) If you click in the empty area at the end of a text document,  
>> the text cursor
>>     jumps either into the last line exactly vertical to the  
>> clicked position
>
> The reason for this is, if you have no newline on the last line and  
> want to select a subset of it, you can do so w/o having to stay  
> inside of the 14 or so pixels tall line.

But everybody who can't hit a 14-pixel line accurately has already  
stopped using TextMate because they can't select the thousands of  
other lines in their documents, either. This feature isn't  
compensating for any need I'd think TM users really have. Perhaps you  
have marketing or testing information to the contrary.

I'd think that anybody initiating a drag from below the end of the  
text is _not_ aiming at a single character from (say) a hundred  
pixels away. He's using that nice large area to select from the end  
of the text, as he learned to do from _every other application._ That  
has been the semantics of a click beyond the end of the text for more  
than twenty years. You wouldn't change the meaning of a drag in a  
scroll bar; why change the meaning of this gesture?

Think also of a user editing something in the middle of the text, and  
wanting to return the cursor to the end of the text. In TextMate, his  
Fitts-law target is only as wide as the gap between end-of-text and  
the right edge of the window. It _could_ be even less than 14 pixels  
wide. In other applications, he can click anywhere below the text to  
select the end. I'd think this case to be overwhelmingly more  
frequent — especially when there is no newline at the end of the last  
line — than the case of wanting to select from somewhere in the  
middle of the last line.

Also, TextMate's behavior is modal. A click below end-of-text selects  
the end of the document if the last line ends with a newline, but  
selects somewhere in the middle of the last line if it doesn't.  
TextMate doesn't (and shouldn't) give much of a visual cue for the  
user to distinguish the two modes. None, if line numbers are hidden.

I mean no disrespect for this fine program or its maker, but on this  
point I disagree.

	— F