Double click selecting super- or sub- script as part of word

[gmulhollan]

I type a lot (OK, only some) chemical formulas when I write papers. When I go to select a chemical name, e.g, O2 (with 2 as a subscript), double clicking selects the non-super/sub-script text (in this case the 'O'), but not the subscript (the '2'). Is there a preference I can select to make Nisus consider the superscript and/or subscript text as part of words so they gets selected as well during the double click (triple click gets the whole sentence)? Same problem goes for hyphenated text, though 'em' dash works well enough, first double click gets first word and the next click selects 'em' dash and second word. I don't want to assign chemical formulas as special characters, etc., I just want contiguous selection without having to drag-select (or press umpteen keys) which is tricky with those little subscript characters. Maybe I missed this in the manual somewhere?

[xiamenese]

As a work around, once you have selected your chemical symbol, shift-right arrow will select the next glyph, which in your case would be your subscript. I know it's not a "one click selects all", but a press of shift-right arrow is hardly a lot of keystrokes.



Mark

[phspaelti]

Try using a character style for the subscripts. If you do it that way you should notice a change. And as a bonus you can easily redefine the look of the subscripts (e.g. you can reduce the baseline without making the typesize so much smaller.)

[martin]

Is there a preference I can select to make Nisus consider the superscript and/or subscript text as part of words so they gets selected as well during the double click (triple click gets the whole sentence)?

There is no such preference, sorry.

Same problem goes for hyphenated text, though 'em' dash works well enough, first double click gets first word and the next click selects 'em' dash and second word.

This is actually going to be mostly dependent on OSX and your International system preferences, since we generally defer to OSX for this behavior. On my system an "em" dash counts as a selection/word break. There's not many options in the "Word Break" popup in the system preferences and I doubt there's a way to configure this how you want.

I just want contiguous selection without having to drag-select (or press umpteen keys) which is tricky with those little subscript characters.

It's possible to write a macro that does this and assign it a keyboard shortcut. Would that interest you? If so I could write it up- let me know.

[martin]

Try using a character style for the subscripts. If you do it that way you should notice a change. And as a bonus you can easily redefine the look of the subscripts (e.g. you can reduce the baseline without making the typesize so much smaller.)

Hrm, this does seem to be a workaround that makes NWP treat the superscripted numeral as part of the word. Personally I'd consider this a bug, but for now perhaps it can help gmulhollan out.

[harryhoffner]

Martin, I'm relieved that you suspect a bug here, because I use a superscripted letter for notes and would not want to miss examples of a word searched for using "find whole words only" if there was an alphabetic character appended as a note, because the app considered that letter a part of the word.

[martin]

Even though there is a bug here, you don't have to worry Harry. The find and replace "whole word" option is not affected by this confusion.