[TxMt] Re: Single selection command that returns multiple selections?

[Allan Odgaard]

On 29 Apr 2015, at 23:23, Graham P Heath wrote:

> Is it possible for a bundle command to accept a single selection and 
> return multiple selections (or just carets)? 

It can return a snippet where subsets can be selected, but I don’t 
think this is useful for your example.

> Here’s an example (brackets indicate selection, | is a caret );
> […]
> Then I’d press command T to switch from "dark-theme" to 
> "theme-dark".

I am not sure I follow your example. If you mean control T (rather than 
command T) then this will transform “dark-theme” into 
“theme-dark” if the entire thing is selected, so here there is no 
need to “split” the selection into left/right carets, or to select 
only the first word (on the contrary).

Though when there are multiple selections, control T changes from acting 
on each selection, to acting on all selections, and will transpose them 
(swap them around).

So I think I understand what feature you want, but the example isn’t 
the best, and also, if you get multiple carets, they sort of all act on 
the actions you do, e.g. move left/right etc., so “splitting” a 
selection into a left/right caret would be very hard to subsequently 
work with, as I don’t think there are many actions that would be able 
follow this.

> Im not sure what the logic would be in the bundle, my use would be 
> served by simply returning the caret at the beginning and end of my 
> selection (then command + w to select the word).

Here I assume you mean control W. The end result could be achieved by 
selecting the “dark-theme” instances, then do a (regexp) “Find 
All” for \b\w+\b, although I don’t know step would follow this; if 
the goal is to swap them around, it might be simplest to do a search and 
replace, though leaving out the find dialog, I would probably have 
selected “dark-” and used control W to select consecutive matches, 
then ⌘X, ⌥→, -, ⌘V, ⌫ to “swap” the order of all the 
instances.

> I’m also curious how Filter Through Command’s behavior could be 
> reproduced in a bundle command, where the commands results are 
> distributed to each line.

Do you mean “each caret” (rather than “each line”)?

If the input/output option of the command is selection/replace input, 
then it should act the same as Filter Through Command (which is really 
just an ad hoc command).