Ctrl+A, then Shift + Mouse Click - unwanted behaviour

James Pike

Hi all.

I am trying to get to grips with Notepad++, and there is one keyboard/mouse shortcut that I find really useful in other packages that I can’t seem to replicate in Notepad++.

In other text editors, Word, or even Chrome, if you select all using Ctrl+A, then hold down shift while you mouse click in the text/document this results in everything being selected from the start of the text/document to where the mouse click is, and the screen focus is at the point of click.

If you use this same key/mouse combo in Notepad++ the selection is the inverse of what is given in other packages. I.e. the selection is from the point of click to the end of the document.

The closest I have discovered is to first click in the text then shift+ctrl+home. However, this moves the screen focus to the start of the text/document.

Any help would be appreciated!

dail

I ended up fixing this myself a while ago. The reason is that the selection’s anchor is at the bottom of the text, and the cursor is at the top…which as you have discovered is backwards from almost all other applications. Though this is more of a Scintilla bug rather than Notepad++, you can still work around it.

Install LuaScript via the PluginManager, use the Plugin menu to edit the startup script for LuaScript, paste the following code, save, and then restart:

npp.AddShortcut("Select All", "Ctrl+A", function()
	editor:ClearSelections()
	editor:SetSelection(editor.Length, 0)
end)

guy038

Hello @james-pike, @dail and All,

An other method, which does not involve any plugin, would be to create a macro, which uses the SCI_SWAPMAINANCHORCARET Scintilla message. This message, simply, swaps the locations of the anchor and the caret, of the last normal selection

So, once you identified the correct location of your active shortcuts.xml configuration file :

Stop any instance of N++
Add, in macros section of shortcuts.xml, the following macro :

        <Macro name="Select All - Anchor at Pos 0" Ctrl="yes" Alt="no" Shift="no" Key="187">
            <Action type="0" message="2013" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
            <Action type="0" message="2607" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
        </Macro>

Restart Notepad++

From now on, once a Select All operation is performed ( Ctrl+ A ) :

To select from caret location to the very end of the file
- Hold down the Shift button and click at any location
To select from caret location to the very beginning of the file :
- Run the above Select All - Anchor at Pos 0 macro
- Hold down the Shift button and click at any location

Of course, you may attribute a shortcut to this new macro ( Settings > Shortcut Mapper... > Macros > Select All - Anchor at Pos 0 )

Best Regards

guy038

P.S. :

@dail, Two questions :

I don’t see the necessity to add the editor:ClearSelections() command as, regarding the Scintilla message SCI_SETSELECTION(int caret, int anchor), it is said “Set a single empty selection at 0 as the only selection.” ?
If you have used the editor:SetSel(0, editor.Length) command ( instead of editor:SetSelection(editor.Length, 0) ), I suppose that it would had been identical, but with a scrolling to the end of document, at caret location ?

dail

Two questions :

I simply rewrote the logic that Scintilla implements and swapped the selection start/end. See

https://github.com/mirror/scintilla/blob/fb378d0f547173ee0af340e5071785d7ad54c30b/src/Editor.cxx#L2215-L2219

I’m not sure if editor:ClearSelections() is needed but kept it in there since that what Scintilla does.

guy038

Hi @dail,

I’m sorry ! In my previous post, I just forgot to thank you for your… future reply ! So, I do ;-))

Cheers,

guy038