Missing In Actions

You can download it on the JetBrains plugin page.

Table of Contents

• Why Did I Need Mia?
  • What You Didn't Know Was Missing
  • Auto Indent Lines after Move Lines Up/Down
  • Auto Line Selections
  • Mouse Selections

Adds missing editor actions for end of word navigation but that is just the beginning:

• Automatic Selection stack, stores last 5 selections by default. Recall last selection or any previous selection from a list.

• Isolate Lines mode to make a group of lines stand out from the rest. Handy way to isolate a copy of existing method for modification and not accidentally modify the original text instead of the copy.

• Enable Auto Indent Lines after move line/selection up or down actions to have them indented automatically.

• Use Smart Paste to eliminate case change and prefix edits when pasting identifiers. MIA will match case and style of identifier at destination when you paste, undo to get results before MIA adjusted them.

  Copy myColumnData and paste it over DEFAULT_VALUE to get COLUMN_DATA, reverse the order and get myDefaultValue.

  Works when pasting at the beginning, end and middle of identifiers.

  Supports: camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case, SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE, dash-case, dot.case, slash/case

  Default prefixes: my, our, is, get, set to allow pasting over member fields, static fields, getters and setters.

• Enable Auto Line Selections and select full lines without loosing time or column position by moving the caret to the start of line when selecting or pasting.

  Choose whether you want to paste full line selections: above or below the current line regardless of the caret's column.

• Toggle between selection and multiple carets on selected lines to save time re-selecting the same text again.

• Filter multiple carets saves you time when creating multiple carets by removing carets on blank or comment lines so you can edit only code lines.

• Enhanced Paste from History dialog:

  • combine, arrange and reverse the order of content entries
  • combine multiple clipboard contents with caret information intact
  • paste and re-create multiple carets from information already stored on the clipboard
  • duplicate line/block for each caret in the clipboard content and put a caret on the first line of the block, ready for multi-caret select and paste
  • duplicate line/block for each caret in the clipboard content for multiple caret selections and paste content into each selection
  • see caret information stored on the clipboard for each content entry

• Many more options and adjustments to make multiple caret text editing fast, efficient and indispensable.

• Option to use word highlights to highlight Project View nodes. Useful when you have to isolate files or directories based on a list and want visual queues in the project view.

  

Version History

Why Did I Need Mia?

IntelliJ's development tools are the best of breed when it comes to language support, refactoring and the rest of intelligent language features, but I find they suffer in their text editing capabilities, especially when it comes to multiple caret editing.

I wrote and maintained my own editor for over two decades, only because I could not find the functionality I needed elsewhere. I was using multi-caret editing, with smart caret adjustments in my editor since 1998. It spoiled me. I learned to adopt a naming convention and coding style to facilitate refactoring large blocks of code using multi-caret mode, regardless of the programming language.

When I started development on a Mac, I no longer wanted to maintain that old war horse which was getting long in the tooth. I was sure that I was not going to rewrite it for the Mac and decided that I will give it up and get used to IntelliJ way of editing.

I made the switch but found for some batch edits I still preferred to fire up Parallels Desktop with Windows 10 and do the edit in my old workhorse. Eventually, I found that I was doing this was more trouble than it was worth because the editor was becoming incompatible with Windows updates. I needed a solution on the Mac, and one which would not require me to rewrite my editor.

I started writing Mia to address a feature request, outstanding for 8 years on YouTrack, asking to add Mac style next/previous word navigation to IntelliJ. I was surprised to find that the feature was ignored for so long. I thought it was a no-brainer to implement, which it was. Once I had a basic plugin to extend the editor, adding the functions I wanted was inevitable.

I have since completed the process of bringing the old editor features to JetBrains IDEs with my Mia plugin and added many improvements to the originals. There are only two features still missing:

• Smart Insert Mode: In this mode the editor preserves column aligned text as you edit by inserting/deleting spaces down stream in the line to keep column aligned text unmolested. It helps if there are tab stops defined for the columns to let the editor know where you want the text to be aligned, but not a strict requirement.

• Drag/Drop-Replace: In this mode, dragged text replaces the destination word/identifier/lines instead of moving or inserting text at the dropped location. Personally, I find the default copy, or worse, move text useless for code editing.

  Once I had drag/drop-replace implemented in my editor, I found I often preferred it for replacing identifiers in copied block of source code. In Mia, with its smart paste feature, this mode should be even more useful.

What You Didn't Know Was Missing

This plugin adds multi-caret aware actions, line selections, smart paste and seamless switching between selection and multiple carets, low-lighting of lines, and much more:

1. Move caret, with and without selection, to next/previous start/end of word, including a customizable set of actions where you can completely tune all the boundary stops these actions will make. This has several advantages one of which is that you can quickly and/or via shortcuts change the behaviour of word movement and selection keys without having to change the key mapping.

2. Automatic line selection mode that works with the rest of the IDE as if it was native. All vertical Move with Selection functions will switch to line mode and select full lines, horizontal move with selection switches to character based selections. You can mix these as the need arises. Multi-line character selections are more involved than before but these are rarely used if you have line selections and in trade you get fast line selections without needing to constantly move the caret to the left margin.

3. Automatic line selections for the mouse. If you select text within the same line, it is a character selection. Select text spanning more than one line and it automatically switches to selecting full lines, regardless of the mouse pointer column. You can override this with a Ctrl key modifier, allowing old behaviour if you need it or through configuration to reverse the modifier function: when pressed line selections, when not pressed character selections.

4. Column position preservation when operating on line selections. This was an exercise in catching fleas and herding cats. You'd be surprised how many actions will move the caret to column 1 and the myriad of modalities of the IDE that must be taken into account.

5. Paste of full line selections now behaves like line selections should. These can be made to paste:

   • IDE default, where you left your caret last

   • always above the caret line (my new favourite),

   • above the caret line if caret is between left margin/indent position and below it otherwise,

   • always below the caret line

6. Auto Line Indent on move line or selection up or down. With every other editing operation, the IDE seems to remember to adjust indentation automatically, at least as an option. This operation was left out of the club for some reason, leaving the code indentation messed up, needing a manual intervention. Mia adds an option to re-indent moved lines after a delay. Allowing you to rapidly make multiple moves up/down, and re-indent the code to its proper level when you pause.

7. Select pasted text to automatically select what you paste so you can apply other operations on it. Configuration options include minimum number of lines in the pasted text, below which no selection is made.

No more moving to left margin to select or paste full lines of code and loosing the column position. No more threading the needle in an effort to select full lines with the mouse, and many more no mores.

The no mores are a productivity boost because these operations get in the way, are complete editing fluff and are done often. But Mia has a few niceties added that make text editing, especially in multi-caret mode, a joy:

1. Line bound next/previous word with/without selection when in multi-caret mode. The carets will not fly off to other lines. It makes keeping track and controlling their location easy. This is key to being able to do extensive multi-caret editing. With IDE supplied functions, multiple carets become a jumbled mess after a few keystrokes because they have too much freedom of movement.

2. Delete to end of line action that will not delete the EOL at the end of line, ever. The IDE provided function will delete to end of line most of the time, but when a caret is already at the end of line will delete the EOL, making it useless for multi-caret mode because some carets will delete to end of line while others will join lines. If you want to join lines then use the join lines action.

3. Seamless switching between line selections and multiple carets on each line using the "Toggle Between Carets and Line Selection" action, allowing re-use of already selected text. To me, selections and multiple carets are just manifestations of me telling the editor what I am focusing on. I should be able to switch between the two modes instead of having to re-select the lines, again and again.

4. Caret filtering based on the line content: keep code lines, keep comment lines, keep blank lines, remove code lines, remove comment lines, remove blank lines with their smart counterparts: "Smart Keep Line Carets" which will keep carets only on code lines, if none of those exist will keep only carets on comment lines, otherwise no change. To be used for quickly placing a caret on every line of code in a selection, ignoring comment lines and blank lines.

5. Smart Paste mode that adjusts the case and format of pasted text, if it looks like an identifier, to the format of where it is pasted including removal of user configurable prefixes such as "my" or "our", if they don't look like they belong in the context. A copied member variable name on the clipboard can now be pasted in many places without needing a follow up edit, not even a case change. It is like having a mind reading clipboard.

   

   In all cases if you feel that Mia's help was no help, hit undo and you will have results as the IDE provided. I don't know if you do these case changes and prefix editing often but I found myself doing them ad nauseam. Copy once, use it everywhere is here.

   Every time I use it feels like magic. I know it isn't, I had to write debug the code, but it still feels that way.

6. Duplicate Line or Selection for Carets on Clipboard action is a multiple caret user's dream. It makes modifying a line or lines for repeated variations an effortless joy. A live example from Mia's own source code. I needed variations for several functions based on naming convention: camel case, pascal case, snake case and screaming snake case. I already have the case names throughout the code. I just need to create a new function with these variations. Easy, take existing lines with the case names and use multi-select, copy, select case name in destination line, dupe for clipboard, paste.

   

Auto Indent Lines after Move Lines Up/Down

Line Move up/down is great but Auto Indenting them is a PITA. I added an option to automatically indent the moved lines after a short delay. You can configure the delay so that the keyboard auto repeat on up/done kicks in before the delay runs out. When you pause or invoke another action the lines will be re-indented.

Auto Line Selections

When selecting text in source code, most of the time if it spans more than one line then you want full lines. Instead, all editors work like word processors and select characters forcing you to move the caret to column 1 to select full lines.

Auto line selection actions selects full lines when using vertical movement selection keys: up, down, page up, page down. While horizontal keys will restore the selection to character mode, even if it spans more than one line.

The switching is done by the actions and once your expectations are adjusted you will not want to work without it.

This works best if you have virtual spaces enabled. It will leave the caret column position unmolested throughout all line based operations regardless of the actual text length of the line.

• Switch/Toggle between auto line and normal character selections

Mouse Selections

With auto line selections enabled for mouse selections you get full lines when a selection spans more than one line and character selections for selections within a line.

Use the Ctrl key while selecting to disable auto line selections. Keep the Ctrl key pressed until after you release the mouse button, otherwise the selection will be changed to a line selection when the mouse button is released.