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Re: Select text with keyboard?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg102620] Re: Select text with keyboard?
  • From: magma <maderri2 at gmail.com>
  • Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:02:53 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <h5nhsi$8nh$1@smc.vnet.net>

On Aug 10, 12:16 am, Matt <che... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> When selecting text I'm used to pressing the cursor keys to the define
> the start of the selection then holding down shift and pressing the
> cursor keys to define the end of the selection.
>
> Mathematica is the only app i know that, when holding shift and
> pressing the left cursor key, expands the start of the selection! Very
> odd since i defined this point before depressing shift.
>
> Is it possible to change this behaviour?
>
> Thank you,
> Matt

I may be wrong, but I have the impression that you are a beginner in
Mathematica.
If this is so, you will soon realize that the text editing
capabilities of Mathematica are geared toward editing code, that is some kind
of structured text.
In this context it is not so reasonable/useful/frequent to select
things character by character. Normally in Mathematica one is interested in
selecting a whole word or keyword or Mathematica expression. In order to do
this you just click 1,2,3... times on a specified object and your
selection structurally grows (that is preserving balanced parenthesis,
etc.).
If you need to write and edit a LARGE (not small or medium size)
amount of unstructured text, you are probably better off using a word
processor (that is what they are made for), spell check your text and
then paste it into Mathematica. Once in Mathematica you can format it using the
facilities provided for by the program.
In this way you get the best of both worlds.


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