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zyedidia / micro

A modern and intuitive terminal-based text editor
https://micro-editor.github.io
MIT License
24.87k stars 1.17k forks source link

Tool to move columns of text left or right #2298

Open BobCollins42 opened 2 years ago

BobCollins42 commented 2 years ago

Need tool to move columns of text left or right. In other editors, this is accomplished using rectangular selection. Is there a method with current features for doing this? I'll admit, I haven't figured out the multicursor mode yet.

Commit hash: b9763856 OS: Arch Linux, sysupgrade on 2021-12-10 Terminal: xfce4-terminal 0.8.10

BTW, I am quite impressed with the project. I am thinking that I might be compelled to help out with the documentation. ;-)
Oh, as I am sure you know, the name "micro" shares the same web search ambiguity as "Go" does. Have you considered a "standard" enhanced name such as what the Go team did with "golang?"

Thanks!

BobCollins42 commented 2 years ago

After further investigation, I can get what I need using the multicursor mode if I change from the default mode of tabstospaces to true. It's also a bit tedious, but it works. Before this, I have not had the function of a text editor demand which of the the ever-contentious "tabs vs spaces" choice to use. If there is another approach—like rectangular selection—which wouldn't have this constraint, I'd like to learn about it. Thanks!

zyedidia commented 2 years ago

I think multicursor is probably the best way to achieve this if I understand what you want. If you just want to tab/untab lines you can make a selection and press tab/shift-tab, but it sounds like you want something a little different.

BobCollins42 commented 2 years ago

I suspect that what I now understand about multicursor, it will—somewhat clumsily—address most of what I need.

If you don't understand what I am looking for, there are many examples of text editors (including emacs, vscode, geany, etc.) having what it commonly called rectangular selection.

Cheers

mrx23dot commented 2 years ago

Yeah but micro is not a full blown code editor. You should use e.g. vs code for that.

BobCollins42 commented 2 years ago

Yeah but micro is not a full blown code editor. You should use e.g. vs code for that.

This is a sad comment. While I do use VS Code, I would also like to use a lightweight editor like Micro.

And FYI, I regularly move columns of text left or right for applications other than code. For example, writing and editing outlines.

zoomosis commented 2 years ago

Years ago I used a non-GUI shareware text editor in OS/2 called BOXER that could do rectangular selections, AKA column mode. The version I used was released in 1997, so it's is definitely not a new idea.

I believe the modern-day GUI editors Notepad++ (Windows/WINE) and BBEdit (Mac) both have a column mode if you want something less bulky than VSCode.

Joe's Own Editor (joe/jmacs) also has a rectangular selection mode (confusingly called "square") though it's a bit rudimentary.

It'd be a nice feature for Micro to have, but maybe complicated to implement.