Unexpected behavior/Feature request: complex selection

[sebwin]

It's not possible to create a complex selection of non-contiguous words using shift- and command-(double-)clicks, because, while extending a selection, a shift-click is executed from the very beginning of the selection, not the last initiated selection section.

Example: "tomatoes, garlic and green onions"

If in the above enumeration I wanted to select each of the items individually ("green onions" being a single item), I would double-click "tomatoes", command-double-click first "garlic", then "green" and finally shift-click "onions" in order to expand the last selection section from "green" (spanning the space) to "onions".
What happens instead is that, upon the final shift-click, NWP expands the selection from "tomatoes", creating one contiguous selection all the way to "onions".

P.S. I've just checked and, as a matter of fact, TextEdit doesn't behave any better. No reason for you though, I think, not to go beyond this limitation and allow for complex selections.

[Hamid]

To select "green onions" while "tomatoes" and "garlic" are already selected as you describe, hold the Command key and drag the mouse over "green onions".

[sebwin]

Hamid, that is, of course, what I (and everybody else) do.
But this workaround is crude, slow and error-prone as it involves marking the word boundaries by hand—and MacOS, unlike Windows, will not do you the (dis-)favor of auto-selecting whole words when drag-selecting text.

The Nisus team apparently believes in providing solid custom click-to-select support, as you can tell from their implementation of triple- and quadruple-clicking of text, and I believe that providing more robust and versatile support for atomic selections is well within the same scope.

P.S. Should you tackle this problem, Nisans, unless it created conflicts, I would furthermore suggest considering replacing the cmd-double-click trigger with a cmd-single-click trigger.

[martin]

If in the above enumeration I wanted to select each of the items individually ("green onions" being a single item), I would double-click "tomatoes", command-double-click first "garlic", then "green" and finally shift-click "onions" in order to expand the last selection section from "green" (spanning the space) to "onions".
What happens instead is that, upon the final shift-click, NWP expands the selection from "tomatoes", creating one contiguous selection all the way to "onions".

Ah, I see what you are saying and it makes some sense to me. There's no reason the Shift click should extend the first selection instead of the closest part of a multi-part selection. I'll see about filing a change/enhancement request.

But this workaround is crude, slow and error-prone as it involves marking the word boundaries by hand

There is another workaround: after you have selected "tomatoes" and "garlic" you can Command double-click and hold to drag-select by word across both words in "green onions". Deconstructing that, you would:

1. Hold down the Command key, and keep it down for all these steps.
2. Double-click on "green", but do not release the second click (eg: the mouse button should still be down).
3. Drag the selection across to extend it over "onions".
4. Release the mouse.

[sebwin]

That's a great tip, Martin! Thanks!
At first I thought it wasn't working, because I usually tap-to-click on the trackpad of my "old" MackBook Pro and that way it doesn't work (at least on SnowLeopard it doesn't.) But using the trackpad's dedicated button it does.
Great to still learn new stuff!