In emacs, it's possible to set a mark with c-space. The mark marks one end of a selection then when you move the cursor the other end of the selection moves with it.
For example, c-a, c-space, c-n, c-n selects two lines of text.
Matlab doesn't seem to have the concept of placing a mark. Is there any way to select text from the keyboard?
I'd like to do things like whack/yank a few words or comment out multiple lines without using the mouse.
I found this old question while trying to figure out the same problem. If anyone out there is still looking for how to do this, Matlab (as of version 2016a) supports keyboard selection shortcuts in the keyboard binding preferences (Preferences --> Keyboard --> Shortcuts). By default the text select functions are using the Home/End and Ctr/Shift + arrow keys to do this. I don't think the Emacs marking concept works but you could define a shortcut to your liking.
Matlab Emacs Keyboard Binding Defaults
At least you don't have to use the mouse :-)
Related
In Vim, you can press fx and Fx to move to the next and previous occurrence of x on the same line:
**fx** - jump to next occurrence of character x
**Fx** - jump to previous occurence of character x
source: https://vim.rtorr.com/
I don't wish to use a vim emulator in VS Code, I instead would like to bind Ctrl+f to forward search and Ctrl+b for backwards search.
How can I do that?
I just posted an extension (I'm pretty sure you can't do it without an extension) that does what you want: Jump and Select
It does a little more than you want in case other people would like the selection option. You can bind any keybinding to the commands you want. The following demo uses Alt+f for forward and Alt+b for backward.
Note that the key you want to go to is not displayed. And you don't have to hit Enter to trigger the move - it just goes there immediately. And it works with multiple cursors.
Also, I am not familiar with vim. If you go back to some designated previous character, should the cursor end up before or after that character? Right now it goes to that character (so the cursor is after it) but it is easy for me to make to change that behaviour in the extension. Just let me know.
In VSCode, "find next" is performed by Ctrl+G (Cmd in MacOS) and "find previous" by Ctrl+Shift+G.
You can edit the keyboard shortcuts by going to Code > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts and looking for both "Find Next" and "Find Previous", and hovering over the keybinding to edit it to your preference.
In EMACS the default seems to be to 'copy' any text highlighted with the mouse. I'm attempting to replicate the functionality of modern text editors, where I can highlight a section of text and press 'paste' to replace it. I have so far added
(delete-selection-mode 1)
to my init.el
The problem is, if I copy something, then highlight to paste in its place, I end up pasting what I had just highlighted, changing nothing.
What do I need to change to fix that behaviour?
The most powerful element of emacs is its introspection features, lets have a look at how we can use them to try and solve this problem. We must use the power of the source.
One of the most important tools for introspection in emacs is the describe-key command which is bound to C-h k. It brings up the documentation of whatever keystroke is called after it. So in our case if we press C-h k and then click and drag we will see the documentation for <down-mouse-1> and more importantly for <drag-mouse-1>. The documentation states that "<drag-mouse-1> at that spot runs the command mouse-set-region". Below it then gives some documentation for this command. It says
Set the region to the text dragged over, and copy to kill ring.
This should be bound to a mouse drag event.
See the ‘mouse-drag-copy-region’ variable to control whether this
command alters the kill ring or not.
Now we know that somehow mouse-drag-copy-region controls whether or not the highlighted text is copied.
If we follow the link of that variable it tells us the default value and some documentation:
If non-nil, copy to kill-ring upon mouse adjustments of the region.
Now all we have to do is set the variable to be nil to get the effect that you want. Place the following code at the end of your init file and you should be all set
(setq mouse-drag-copy-region nil)
I hope that this helps you with this problem and that more importantly it helps you with further issues.
By default, selecting a region with the mouse does not copy the text to the kill ring. If your Emacs does this, you probably have set the variable mouse-drag-copy-region.
In a fresh Emacs (24.5 started using -Q), you can do the following:
Start delete-selection-mode.
Mark a region using the mouse. Copy it using M-w.
Mark a second region. Replace it with the first using C-y.
I see two alternatives, neither of which does exactly what you request. (For both, yes, turn on delete-selection-mode.)
Use the secondary selection for the text to copy, and use the primary selection (the region) for the text to be replaced.
You copy text into the secondary selection using the Meta key plus the mouse - for example, press and hold Meta (the Alt key, usually) while dragging or double-clicking mouse-1.
You paste the secondary selection using Meta plus mouse-2.
Select text with the mouse, then copy it to the kill-ring using M-w. Then select the text to replace with the mouse and use C-y to paste the copied text to replace it.
After searching for a word using an I-search, the selection mode remains enabled and pressing the escape button just once does not turn it off.
Is it possible to search for a word (forwards / backwards) and quickly go on about my business without pressing a bunch of keys to exit out of the select mode?
Also, the selection mode looks useful -- is there any way to turn it on / off without first performing a search?
Thanks.
You probably have transient-mark-mode enabled, which is now the default Emacs behavior. (It was not enabled by default in older versions of Emacs). If you're not familiar with it you may want to read about it in the Emacs manual.
You can set the mark (begin selection) using Control-space (C-SPC, the default key binding for set-mark-command). Then you can use other navigation keys to extend the selected region before you operate on it. For example: C-SPC to set the mark, M-f M-f to extend the selection forward two words, C-w to delete the selected region.
If you set the mark before beginning an incremental search, the search acts as a navigation command and extends the selected region. Exiting the search will leave the entire region selected from the place where you set the mark to the place where you exited the search. Note that this is not the default behavior for isearch-forward however.
just press ENTER to end the search.
if you mean that the selection area is displayed, you can unmark it with Ctrl-Space.
but I am not sure this answers your question.
--dmg
I'm writing my own terminal application in C using the VTE library. Everything works great except I cannot select text with the keyboard. For example if I have just typed something, in most terminals you can hold down the shift key and select the previous text with the left arrow key, then you can paste it wherever you want. In VTE, all that happens is you get a D in the current cursor position. I can obviously block the printing of D in the terminal by returning TRUE from the keypress (which I have done), but I still cannot select the text.
I thought I might be able to do it manually starting with vte_terminal_get_cursor_position(), but there is no method to select a block of text (that I could find) in VTE once I have the boundaries for the selection.
I've looked at other VTE based projects such as tinyterm, and evilvte, but they just print the D in the terminal as well when that key combination is pressed.
So is there any way to select text in VTE using the keyboard? Thanks.
Correction:
It turns out that very few if any terminals allow you to select text with the keyboard. Not sure how that got into my head. Anyway, I still think it would be a handy capability, so the question stands. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
I have searched the Web for this, but with no luck. Any idea?
Thanks.
Try using the Emacs+ plugin available here:
http://www.mulgasoft.com/emacsplus
It provides a HUGE range of functionality - including the selection highlighting that you're looking for - that really helps the move from Emacs. I've only been using it for a couple of days, but it appears stable and integrates very well with the editor.
As described here, you can set emacs key binding to work in component editor in Eclipse
Go to Preferences -> General -> Keys.
Change Scheme to Emacs if you haven't done so already, so you can easily
spot the emacs key bindings.
Sort by Category and look at the "Text Editing" categories
Find the commands that you care about, e.g. Next Column, Previous Column
Select that command and click "Copy Command"
Set the binding to the key by pressing the keys, e.g. press Control-f to
generate "^F".
Change "When:" to "Editing Components".
Repeat for all the key bindings you care about.
So if, in emacs, selection is done by setting the mark (Control-Space) at the start of the region, then moving the point to to the end of the region, you could associate the appropriate shortcut to:
Text Editing > Select Text Start
Text Editing > Select Text End