Moveable multi-line carets

Coises

@Alan-Kilborn I feel a bit stupid asking this question, but… is there a list of the intended changes in multi-caret editing? The release notes only say, “Multi-edit is the main feature of this version”; but making and editing multiple selections (with the now-removed checkbox checked) was already possible. What actually, intentionally, changed (besides removing the option to disable Ctrl+mouse multi-selection)?

Coises

@Alan-Kilborn said in Moveable multi-line carets:

official issues

I see one already open:

https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/14464

Coises

@László-Botka said in Moveable multi-line carets:

Is this by design? How can I avoid this?

I see here:

https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/14266

that it is by design, and there is (apparently by the developer’s choice) no option to disable it.

This is annoying for people who use rectangular selections often while rarely if ever using multiple cursors. The solution seems to be to get in the habit of pressing an arrow key (which converts the rectangular selection to an empty multiple selection) and then pressing the Escape key. I believe that will always work.

Alan Kilborn

@Coises said in Moveable multi-line carets:

I feel a bit stupid asking this question, but… is there a list of the intended changes in multi-caret editing?

No reason to feel that way about it.

What kicked off the recent development of the feature was THIS. And yes, I say sheepishly, it was all MY fault. :-)

The user “bitagoras” was a major protagonist on how it should work, i.e, the fancier parts of it.

Sure the basics of making multiple selections was already there, but it was rather like musicians warming up individually for the symphonic performance to come. The attempt was made to get it all working in-concert…and that’s where we’re at now.

Coises

@Alan-Kilborn said in Moveable multi-line carets:

Sure the basics of making multiple selections was already there, but it was rather like musicians warming up individually for the symphonic performance to come. The attempt was made to get it all working in-concert…and that’s where we’re at now.

I guess the discussion (especially the spin-off to Issue #14266) attracted people who use multi-edit more than they use rectangular selections, and escaped the notice of folks who use rectangular selections all the time and almost never intentionally make a multiple stream selection.

I left a comment on Issue#14464, but I suspect that ship has already sailed. :-(

Bas de Reuver

I know I’m late to the discussion, but wouldn’t it be better to cancel multiline selection on cursor up and cursor down? 🤔

So keep the “cursor left” and “cursor right” as-is, but remove cursor up down from the “Column Selection to Multiline editing” behaviour. I mean I can see how moving the multiline-select in certain ways is useful, but I don’t quite understand the practical use-case for keeping the multiline selection when moving up or down:

Cursor left/right = adjust multiline column position, skip existing column characters when editing etc.
Cursor up/down = …?
End key = Use multi-select to quickly add quotes or comma’s at end of lines with irregular lengths (JSON editing for example)
Home key = Same as left but faster, jump to the start of long lines, re-align column multi select etc.

For example I can change all patient IDs from 001KUL to 05-001 using the multi-select and cursor left/right, see screenshot below. But when I start using cursor up and cursor down the multi-select becomes this weird situation. For example, when I move the multi-line selection up to beyond the start of the file and then press left/right then the first line has 2 cursors blinking(?).

notepad_multi_selct

I know the I can cancel the current multilines selection with the Esc key, or disable moving the multiline entirely in Preferences -> Editing 2 -> Enable Column Selection to Multi-editing -> uncheck.

But in what situation is moving the multiline-select up and down useful? Wouldn’t you have to make a new multiline-select in most of those cases anyway?

Alan Kilborn

@Bas-de-Reuver said in Moveable multi-line carets:

but wouldn’t it be better to cancel multiline selection on cursor up and cursor down?

I tend to agree.

in what situation is moving the multiline-select up and down useful?

I can’t think of any.

mkupper

@Bas-de-Reuver said in Moveable multi-line carets:

but wouldn’t it be better to cancel multiline selection on cursor up and cursor down?

A slightly “better way” is available via the settings under Preferences / Editing 2 / Multi-Editing. Turn off the option Enable Column Selection to Multi-Editing.

When you do that then:

Left/right arrow keys keep the multi-cursor mode intact. It gets a strange when one or more of the cursors goes of the end of the line as the cursor(s) wrap to the next line.
Up/down arrow keys cancel the multi-cursor mode and you have one cursor either on the line above or below where the multi-selection was.
The End key unfortunately cancels the multi-cursor mode. Snapping all the cursors to the end of the lines seems useful. One issue with this is that you can have more than one cursor on a line. Should End put all of them at the end of the line or should it delete the surplus cursors?
At present Home is like End in that it ends multi-cursor mode. With a standard single cursor Home looks to see if the line had leading spaces or tabs and Home jumps to the first visible character. You tap Home again and it goes to the start of the line. If we remain in multi-cursor mode to we want the various cursors to do this leading space thing?

Something else to consider is Ctrl+Left arrow and Ctrl+Right arrow. Those do word jumps in single cursor mode.

Coises

@mkupper said in Moveable multi-line carets:

A slightly “better way” is available via the settings under Preferences / Editing 2 / Multi-Editing. Turn off the option Enable Column Selection to Multi-Editing.

When you do that then:

Left/right arrow keys keep the multi-cursor mode intact. It gets a strange when one or more of the cursors goes of the end of the line as the cursor(s) wrap to the next line.

Up/down arrow keys cancel the multi-cursor mode and you have one cursor either on the line above or below where the multi-selection was.

Strange… that is not the behavior I see. When that box is unchecked, any cursor key (horizontal, vertical, home or end) cancels a column selection; any cursor key moves each cursor in a multiple selection.

When that box is checked, any cursor key moves each cursor in a multiple selection in the same way as if the box were unchecked; any cursor key converts a column selection to a multiple selection and then moves it the same as if the box were unchecked.

Tested with:
Notepad++ v8.7.1 (64-bit)
Build time : Oct 31 2024 - 00:48:56
Path : C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Notepad++.exe
Command Line :
Admin mode : OFF
Local Conf mode : OFF
Cloud Config : OFF
Periodic Backup : OFF
OS Name : Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)
OS Version : 22H2
OS Build : 19045.5011
Current ANSI codepage : 1252
Plugins :
DSpellCheck (1.5)
mimeTools (3.1)
NppConverter (4.6)
NppExport (0.4)
NppMarkdownPanel (0.7.3)

mkupper

@Coises said in Moveable multi-line carets:

Strange… that is not the behavior I see. When that box is unchecked, any cursor key (horizontal, vertical, home or end) cancels a column selection; any cursor key moves each cursor in a multiple selection.

You are right. I normally use zero-width multi-selections and so that’s how I tested the behavior. I see that the OP had a one character wide selection. I tried that with both Enable Multi-Editing and Enable Column Selection to Multi-Editing turned on and match your results.

If I, recall, we already went down the road of asking for automatic cancellation of a multi-selection when the Up/Down arrow keys were used. The best we got was the Enable Column Selection to Multi-Editing switch which disables multi-selection when any of the arrow keys, Home, or End are used. Maybe it’s time to try again?

Coises

@mkupper said in Moveable multi-line carets:

If I, recall, we already went down the road of asking for automatic cancellation of a multi-selection when the Up/Down arrow keys were used. The best we got was the Enable Column Selection to Multi-Editing switch which disables multi-selection when any of the arrow keys, Home, or End are used.

I think you are failing to distinguish between rectangular (aka column) selections and multiple selections. They are not interchangeable.

Cursor arrows and the Home and End keys have never, to the best of my knowledge, canceled multiple selections. What those of us who use column selections more often than multiple selections requested, and received, was the ability to restore the previously familiar behavior of having cursor movement keys cancel column selections.

The new behavior, when Enable Column Selection to Multi-Editing is checked, is that a column selection is changed to a multiple selection when a cursor movement key is pressed, then moved accordingly. (It has never been possible to move a column selection and keep it as a column selection. There would, for example, be glaring inconsistencies when using proportional fonts.)

You can (almost) tell the difference by looking at the status bar; a zero-width column selection looks like Sel: 4 x 0 = 0 while a multiple selection looks like Sel 4: 0 | 4.

I say “almost” because Scintilla creates something called a thin selection after you type into a rectangular selection. A thin selection behaves like a zero-width column selection, but the status bar indicator shown in Notepad++ looks like the one for a multiple selection. (I don’t know why this choice was made; it might be an oversight.)

Alan Kilborn

@Bas-de-Reuver said:

but wouldn’t it be better to cancel multiline selection on cursor up and cursor down? 🤔

A script can allow an up/down arrow press with an active column selection to cancel the selection.

Here’s a Python3 script for it, I call the script ArrowUpOrDownCancelsColumnSelection.py:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

#########################################
#
#  ArrowUpOrDownCancelsColumnSelection (AUODCCS)
#
#########################################

# note:
#  This script was developed and tested under Python3 64-bit on unicode (non-ANSI) encoded data.
#  It may work as-is using Python2 and/or ANSI-encoded data and/or 32-bits, but that would be incidental.

# references:
#  https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/25221/moveable-multi-line-carets
#  for newbie info on PythonScripts, see https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/23039/faq-desk-how-to-install-and-run-a-script-in-pythonscript

from Npp import *
from ctypes import ( WinDLL, WINFUNCTYPE )
from ctypes.wintypes import ( HWND, UINT, INT, WPARAM, LPARAM )

user32 = WinDLL('user32')

LRESULT = LPARAM

WndProcType = WINFUNCTYPE(
    LRESULT,  # return type
    HWND, UINT, WPARAM, LPARAM  # arguments
    )

SetWindowLong = user32.SetWindowLongPtrW
SetWindowLong.restype = WndProcType
SetWindowLong.argtypes = [ HWND, INT, WndProcType ]
GWL_WNDPROC = -4

WM_KEYDOWN = 0x0100
VK_SHIFT = 0x10
VK_CONTROL = 0x11
VK_MENU = 0x12
VK_UP = 38
VK_DOWN = 40

class AUODCCS(object):

    def __init__(self):
        self.new_editor1_wnd_proc_hook_for_SetWindowLong = WndProcType(self.new_editor1_wnd_proc_hook)
        self.orig_editor1_wnd_proc = SetWindowLong(editor1.hwnd, GWL_WNDPROC, self.new_editor1_wnd_proc_hook_for_SetWindowLong)
        self.new_editor2_wnd_proc_hook_for_SetWindowLong = WndProcType(self.new_editor2_wnd_proc_hook)
        self.orig_editor2_wnd_proc = SetWindowLong(editor2.hwnd, GWL_WNDPROC, self.new_editor2_wnd_proc_hook_for_SetWindowLong)

    def new_editor1_wnd_proc_hook(self, hwnd, msg, wParam, lParam):
        retval = self.common_editor_wnd_proc_hook(hwnd, msg, wParam, lParam)
        if retval: retval = self.orig_editor1_wnd_proc(hwnd, msg, wParam, lParam)
        return retval

    def new_editor2_wnd_proc_hook(self, hwnd, msg, wParam, lParam):
        retval = self.common_editor_wnd_proc_hook(hwnd, msg, wParam, lParam)
        if retval: retval = self.orig_editor2_wnd_proc(hwnd, msg, wParam, lParam)
        return retval

    def common_editor_wnd_proc_hook(self, hwnd, msg, wParam, lParam):
        retval = True  # default to letting N++ handle the message
        if msg == WM_KEYDOWN:
            if (wParam == VK_UP or wParam == VK_DOWN) and \
                    (user32.GetAsyncKeyState(VK_SHIFT) & 0x8000) == 0 and \
                    (user32.GetAsyncKeyState(VK_CONTROL) & 0x8000) == 0 and \
                    (user32.GetAsyncKeyState(VK_MENU) & 0x8000) == 0:
                sel_mode = editor.getSelectionMode()
                rect_sel_mode = True if (sel_mode == SELECTIONMODE.RECTANGLE or sel_mode == SELECTIONMODE.THIN) else False
                if rect_sel_mode:
                    cp = editor.getCurrentPos()
                    editor.setSelectionMode(SELECTIONMODE.STREAM)
                    editor.setSel(cp, cp)
                else:
                    editor.lineUp() if wParam == VK_UP else editor.lineDown()
                retval = False  # don't let N++ do any more processing on the key that was pressed
        return retval

ARROW_UP_OR_DOWN_CANCELS_COLUMN_SELECTION = AUODCCS()

To try out the script, all you have to do is run it ONCE. It will then sit there and listen for up or down arrow presses.

If you like the script and you want to have it always active, you can set this script to run from user startup.py by adding the following line to that file:

from ArrowUpOrDownCancelsColumnSelection import ARROW_UP_OR_DOWN_CANCELS_COLUMN_SELECTION