Comments on: Idea for word processors/text editors: Really smart drag-and-drop (for whole words) http://www.betalogue.com/2005/09/23/really-smart-text-drag-and-drop/ Notes from an unfinished world… Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:29:08 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Pierre Igot http://www.betalogue.com/2005/09/23/really-smart-text-drag-and-drop/comment-page-1/#comment-3144 Pierre Igot Mon, 26 Sep 2005 18:47:01 +0000 http://www.betalogue.com/2005/09/23/really-smart-text-drag-and-drop/#comment-3144 Not entirely sure about extending this to paragraphs: There are many more real-world situations where you'd want to append a selected paragraph to an existing paragraph. Plus there isn't really a standard way of selecting whole paragraphs (although triple-click does seem to work in a fairly large number of applications—with the notable exception of hard-wrapped messages in Mail, of course). That said, the "shuffling" options that you describe do sound interesting. Having to use the clipboard when you don't want to use the mouse is a drawback. Not entirely sure about extending this to paragraphs: There are many more real-world situations where you’d want to append a selected paragraph to an existing paragraph. Plus there isn’t really a standard way of selecting whole paragraphs (although triple-click does seem to work in a fairly large number of applications—with the notable exception of hard-wrapped messages in Mail, of course).

That said, the “shuffling” options that you describe do sound interesting. Having to use the clipboard when you don’t want to use the mouse is a drawback.

]]> By: Paul Ingraham http://www.betalogue.com/2005/09/23/really-smart-text-drag-and-drop/comment-page-1/#comment-3143 Paul Ingraham Mon, 26 Sep 2005 18:09:13 +0000 http://www.betalogue.com/2005/09/23/really-smart-text-drag-and-drop/#comment-3143 Great idea, Pierre: simple but powerful. It would nice to have the same logic apply to dragging paragraphs. Or, better still... I long for the return of an old AppleWorks feature, which I call “paragraph shuffling.” I find that shuffling paragraphs around is something I want to do quite routinely (especially when the paragraphs are items in a list). AppleWorks had the seemingly magical ability to change paragraph order with Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down, key combinations that simply (and for me, uselessly) duplicate PgUp and PgDn in all modern Mac word processors that I know of. The result is almost effortless movement of logical blocks of text wherever you want them to go in the flow of the document. Beautiful. Nice to have words move around that way too! Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right seem to be sitting around duplicating Cmd-Left and Cmd-Right... perhaps they could do the job! Want to move a word to a different place in a sentence? Just tap Ctrl-Left three times, and it just shuffles on over! It’s been a while and I don’t remember for sure, but I think AppleWork’s “shuffling” feature also applied to selections. That is, if there was no selection then Ctrl-Up would move the current paragraph above the preceding paragraph... if you selected several paragraphs, it would move the whole selection above the preceding paragraph. By contrast, the current situation bizarrely requires several selection and command steps to move anything, word or paragraph: place the cursor, expand the selection with keyboard or mouse, Cmd-C or Cmd-X, place the cursor, Cmd-V, and then (often) clean up the loose ends with several keystrokes. Sigh. Soooo clumsy. Great idea, Pierre: simple but powerful.

It would nice to have the same logic apply to dragging paragraphs. Or, better still…

I long for the return of an old AppleWorks feature, which I call “paragraph shuffling.” I find that shuffling paragraphs around is something I want to do quite routinely (especially when the paragraphs are items in a list). AppleWorks had the seemingly magical ability to change paragraph order with Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down, key combinations that simply (and for me, uselessly) duplicate PgUp and PgDn in all modern Mac word processors that I know of.

The result is almost effortless movement of logical blocks of text wherever you want them to go in the flow of the document. Beautiful.

Nice to have words move around that way too! Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right seem to be sitting around duplicating Cmd-Left and Cmd-Right… perhaps they could do the job! Want to move a word to a different place in a sentence? Just tap Ctrl-Left three times, and it just shuffles on over!

It’s been a while and I don’t remember for sure, but I think AppleWork’s “shuffling” feature also applied to selections. That is, if there was no selection then Ctrl-Up would move the current paragraph above the preceding paragraph… if you selected several paragraphs, it would move the whole selection above the preceding paragraph.

By contrast, the current situation bizarrely requires several selection and command steps to move anything, word or paragraph: place the cursor, expand the selection with keyboard or mouse, Cmd-C or Cmd-X, place the cursor, Cmd-V, and then (often) clean up the loose ends with several keystrokes. Sigh. Soooo clumsy.

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