Key combinations to delete words at a time, or move the cursor from word to word

[s0s]

Hi everyone,

I've been looking for a long time for a way to delete words at a time, or move the cursor right or left in entire word increments, and as a way to select them using shift or something. But I can't find an answer on it. This is one thing that really bugs me. I'm sure there has to be a small little program out there that lets you do it, but either I'm not using the right search criteria, or I just haven't found it yet, or there isn't one.

The ability to move the cursor from word to word and deleting, selecting, etc., is a valuable thing. Does anyone have an answer on this?

[GaryN]

What you're wanting here (which is taken for granted in OSX) does not exist as an OS-level set of options. Rather, in the old days, it was left up to the individual apps to assign keyboard shortcuts as needed in their apps. The option-R or option-L arrow function to jump over a word or select it with option-shift-arrow does exist in most word processors from the era, even MS Word.

While it's not in SimpleText, it IS in SimpleEdit, a better general text editor available at MacGarden.

If you're that desperate for it in other places, there's QuicKeys. There you can write little macros to more or less emulate those functions triggered by any keystrokes you like.

[s0s]

Awesome, I'll check that out! Thanks!

[IIO]

while it is true that these things are not supported on OS level, all text engines i know will support doubleclick for selecting a word, and most text engines also support triple-click for selecting a whole line or paragraph.

[GaryN]

True dat. However, there are those who can actually learned to type (and no, I am not one of them) and they can just fly around lines and words without having to resort to the mouse.

[IIO]

maybe that is why on the atari OS you could move the mouse cursor with the keyboard, too.

[s0s]

True dat. However, there are those who can actually learned to type (and no, I am not one of them) and they can just fly around lines and words without having to resort to the mouse.

Yes, my text editors of choice in Linux (which I use 99% of the time) are Pluma (which is intended to be nearly identical to what I think was GEdit (it's been a while since I've used GNOME, so I may not accurately remember the name (I currently use MATE))), and vim. Even when I'm not using vim, GNU/Linux supports CTRL+DEL and, SHIFT+CTRL+Arrow keys for selecting text.

It saves me so much time that it's painful to go without these abilities. I guess I just need to learn to type 100% accurately 100% of the time

[s0s]

maybe that is why on the atari OS you could move the mouse cursor with the keyboard, too.

Interesting. I have an Atari computer, but it won't work. It came with a bunch of other stuff I got on eBay. I haven't gotten around to trying to fix the motherboard in it or troubleshooting its power supply.

[GaryN]

I'm still completely in the dark as to just what you're editing but again, I really recommend SimpleEdit for OS9. It's most everything you wish TextEdit was.

[s0s]

I'm still completely in the dark as to just what you're editing but again, I really recommend SimpleEdit for OS9. It's most everything you wish TextEdit was.

It's not really about what I want to edit, it's about having these abilities no matter which application I'm currently typing text into, whether it's a filename in a save dialog box, an address in a browser, a filename on the desktop, a text editor, anything.

[IIO]

it is asked a lot, maybe too much.

it somehow makes sense that, while text is edited by the cursor beeing activated, ANY keyboard input shall only create text input.

when you want to used keyboard commands at the same time now that would disable certain characters, which might be present in the currently keyboard layout.

otoh, a function key could of course do it... but how should a system extension for funtion keys now what text engine / application you are currently in? an application could take keyboard commands while beeing in the background... hm.

[s0s]

This is one of the many things I'm currently looking into presently. This has been 100% solved a long time ago in GNU/Linux. In addition to studying window managers and device drivers, I'm also looking into this, but it's not a high priority right now. Hopefully eventually I'll release a FOSS solution.