🚀 go-pugleaf

F. Scott Ophof (Ophof@CS.UWINDSOR.CA) wrote:
: On Wed, 21 Jul 1993 14:47:01 GMT Edward T Spire said on extensions:

: Would btw the accounting world (and/or SAS users) be interested in
: column selection modes, ie. the vertical version of line and stream
: modes?  Would it make designing spreadsheets easier?
: (Reminds me of a discussion on UREXX-L some time ago...)

This would amount to a fourth mode.

: >7.  Selection by pointing into the prefix area always does line
: >selection.

: What could it be otherwise?  :-)

When you select text with a mouse (or similar cursor actions) you are
pointing into the text itself.  What I said above was that if you point
into the prefix area and do the same button press and arrow drag stuff
that selectes text in the text area, you'd see highlighting occur in the
text area (rather than in the prefix area) and it's whole lines that
would get selected.

We didn't have to define that mouse clicks and cursor drags would do
anything useful when they happen in the prefix area.  For example,
try doing this in KEDIT.  Nothing happens at all.

: Now if there was the equiv. of a prefix area for the top/bottom of
: the screen, one could do column selection there?
: Someone once pointed out that the prefix area on the right is
: actually a suffix (or postfix) area.  How would one call such areas
: at top or bottom of the screen, headix/footix?  :-)

We'd want a place to point to that would stay on-screen, to do this kind
of selection (much like the prefix area stays on screen when you scroll
left-right.)  I suppose I could use the scale line.  I.e., select an
area of the scale line and you get entire vertical columns selected.

Note that we have three (or four, if we do this column thing) selection
modes, but you don't really have to make line or column the current
mode, since you can do your line and column selections by pointing
into the prefix area or the scale line.  You would usually just be
switching the current selection type between stream and box mode, 
which would control the kind of selection you get when you point into 
the text.

: >9.  Not sure how selected text interacts with standard xedit commands.
: >For example, change could take selected text as it's default scope.

: How about defining a block and typing F or P in the prefix area to
: move that block (be it line, box, or stream)?

Seems like you don't have enough syntax here to differentiate between
moving or copying the block.

: You're talking about a selected block defining the limits of XEDIT
: commands.
: What about the inverse?  Like after SET ZONE 10 50, defining a
: stream block would only do it between columns 10 and 50 instead
: of ignoring the ZONES setting.

This doesn't make any sense to me.  If you wanted to do this,
why wouldn't you just use box selection mode?

-Ed
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=====  "The heart must mediate between the brain and the hands"    =====
Ed Spire                                 ets@wrkgrp.com (on uunet)