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Idea #3674: Text multi-select

Written by aruseni the 7 Mar 08 at 06:41. Category: Look and Feel. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
Sometimes it is possible to do things faster with text multi-select. You just select some text and, after that, press ctrl and select any other text skipping all the text between.

Here is a mock-up: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=76479
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Solution #1: Auto-generated solution of idea #3674
Written by aruseni the 7 Mar 08 at 06:41.
Ubuntu Brainstorm was updated in January 2009. Since the idea #3674 was submitted before this update, its rationale and solution are not separated. Please vote accordingly, and if you have the necessary rights, please separate the rationale from the solution. Thanks!

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tomaszx wrote on the 7 Mar 08 at 09:04
very useful idea

Aomapes wrote on the 7 Mar 08 at 10:02
Clever and useful.

fordplay wrote on the 7 Mar 08 at 11:24
Good idea. Simple, easy, different.

aruseni wrote on the 7 Mar 08 at 15:19
Thanks. :)

robzon wrote on the 7 Mar 08 at 22:23
Very nice, but I imagine it's a very complicated thing to do (from a developer's perspective).

aruseni wrote on the 8 Mar 08 at 09:05
Yeah, there is a problem — paste when more than one text is selected. I think, developers should just disable the paste function for that situation. This is to copy text, indeed.

mclarke wrote on the 16 Apr 08 at 21:12
I've wanted this for a loooooong time. The multi-item clipboards you see in some recent OS's and Office suites try to address this, but do it poorly IMHO. Way too clunky...

The fact that no OS has implemented this feature makes me think there are some serious non-intuitive issues that crop up somewhere along the way...

I'd love hear from an interface designer about why this is feature has not been implemented already...

mclarke wrote on the 16 Apr 08 at 21:30
this topic came up today on the sounder list. I was musing that the "Quote Selected" reply feature in email clients would rock if you could multi-select text from the message that you are replying inline to.

Use case:
1) multi-select the snippets of the text that you want to reply inline to.
2) click reply.
3) those snippets are automatically pasted into your reply pane as quoted text.
4) you can quickly cursor around and fill in your replies...

Turns replying inline into an additive process rather than a subtractive one, which may be more intuitive for some users (not all by any means)

Also, it may encourage users to snip long threads more because they would be actively selecting what to reply to -- and not succumb to laziness [puts hand up sheepishly] and just leave huge chunks of quote in the message.

sweet. ?


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