I don’t know what I’m losing out on by unchecking “Enable Column Selection to Multi-Editing”

IMO, you’re not losing out on much; it’s a lame feature (that some feel is important, to be fair).

But if you really want to know, read HERE.

-mr

I noticed that N++ has its own editor command for move lines up or down

This seems irrelevant to the original problem description. Moving lines up or down isn’t related to extending a selection.

…try to use it rectangle extend, it only works the first time – you can’t extend more than two lines using the keyboard.

This actually sounds familiar, like it has been discussed before…

Ok, so there’s the Shortcut Mapper…

Then there’s also the concept that a user would never (!) change a common keycombo to be something else (gasp!). For a wild example, consider a user wanting to change Ctrl+c to not be “copy” (heresy!).

Most often, Notepad++ developers respect what is set by the Shortcut Mapper … but sometimes they disregard it and process hard-coded keycombos. I know, it sounds like a bad thing to do (and it is), but…the devs did it.

So for some “bad” stuff, have a look at the ScintillaEditView.cpp file in the Notepad++ source code repo. Search it for VK_ and you’ll see that it hard-processes some keys. Ideally, it would first use indirection to see what the user really has mapped, before doing what it’s going to.

It appears the offending code in this case has to do with column2MultSelect. If the code that processes this variable is removed (i.e., commented out), and Notepad++ is rebuilt and run, all seems to work fine with Ctrl+Shift+Alt+arrows used rather than Shift+Alt+arrows.

Given that we now know what to look for (we have insight!), we can see that uncheckmarking this setting will allow Ctrl+Shift+Alt+arrows to work:

There are some “heavy” users of NPP here, so give it some time for them to respond. They might have either a workaround, or idea that it is indeed a problem with the NPP/Scintilla interface.

There is a FAQ post that outlines how to post a NPP bug, but first get some feedback from other users. I’m only 1 person who has tested and can replicate it.

Terry

https://sourceforge.net/p/scintilla/bugs/2473/

So it does look like a potential issue with the interactions between N++ and Scintilla.

I noticed that N++ has its own editor command for move lines up or down and it doesn’t list (or use?) Scintilla’s version of those commands. Perhaps that is the issue.

-mr

You can but try. They can just say that it’s not present in Scintilla and it’s the Notepad++ interface causing it. And there is no harm in putting in a bug ticket, although I’d try checking their existing bugs to make sure no one has already located this issue and there is a answer from Scintilla on any outcome to it.

Terry

I’ll give it a shot though.

Thanks again for the reply!
-mr

Is it a bug that you can’t extend more than one time using custom Scintilla RectExtendUp/Down?

Very possibly. I’m on 8.7.8 and can confirm the default shortcut allows for multiple lines (more than 2) to be selected. once I add the “Ctrl” key to the shortcut it only allows for 2 lines to be selected. And as soon as I want the 3rd line the area moves down to retain the 2 lines only.

Unfortunately as this is a Scintilla command it may well be a bug in that, rather then Notepad++. Scintilla has it’s own bug listing forum. I don’t know the exact link at the moment.

Terry

PS as it may take some time for that to be resolved you’ll have to stay with the default shortcut mapping to get what you want.