Block highlighting of text - was Locking directory panes while cd'ing

[Keith Roberts <keith karsites net>]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, kilgota banach math auburn edu wrote:

snip

> Also here is another suggestion, for the editor:
>
> Is the Shift-Tab command taken in the editor? If 
> not, it would be useful to be able to indent a block of 
> text by highlighting the block and then doing Shift-Tab, 
> would it not? Or is there already a way to indent a 
> highlighted block and I am unaware of it?
>
> Theodore Kilgore

At the moment the editor supports selecting text by range or 
line, depending on where you start and end your selection 
with the F3 key.

I would also like to be able to select an arbitrary size 
block of text to copy, move or delete.

Eg. placing the cursor at line 1, column 1, then selecting 
'block mode', then pressing F3 to start the selection, then 
moving the cursor to another place in the text (say line 15, 
column 20) and pressing F3 again, to mark out the bottom 
right hand corner of a block of text. So in this example a 
block of text starting at line 1, column 1 and ending at 
line 15, column 20 would be selected and highlighted.

So in block selection mode, the cursor should not select 
text any farther to the right of the actual current cursor 
position - even when making a selection over several lines 
of text.

This should then hightlight that block for copying, 
moving or deleting.

Maybe the editor could allow one to choose between 
'select range', or 'select block', before pressing the F3 
key to start the selection?

So really what we need is the ability to select text by 
columns of varying width and height, which equates to a 
block of text.

Then being able to copy, move or delete those columns from 
the text with the F5-copy, F6-move or F8-delete function 
keys?

This functionality would then allow one to copy, move or 
delete text by columns of varying sizes, which would be 
very usefull IMHO.

Kind Regards

Keith Roberts

------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.karsites.net
http://www.raised-from-the-dead.org.uk

This email address is challenge-response protected with
http://www.tmda.net
------------------------------------------------------------