Rectangular editing / column mode / vertical selection / box selection

[szabgab]

This came up several times and searching trac I found several comments and did a little research what other editors provide.

For example see this link:

​http://dave.thehorners.com/tech-talk/programming/227-rectangular-selection-or-column-mode-the-best-text-editor-feature-ever

Features:

• allow the easy selection of a rectangular area of the code event if it has 0 width.
• allow copying from that area
• allow typing in code once and repeating in every selected row
• allow making some changes once and repeating it in every selected row

Padre status: r13695 (version 0.81)

Currently when I try it on my Ubuntu 10.10

• Ctrl-Alt-Mousdrag allows rectangular selection but
• Ctrl-Alt-Right (or Left) just switch viewspace. I guess the windowing system overrides the keys in Padre?

• Shift-Alt-Mousedrag and Shift-Alt-Right (Left, Up, Down) allow me to do rectangular selection. I can copy from the rectangular or I can just delete it but that's it.
• I could NOT select a 0-width selection or add the same text to several lines at the same time.

so the feature request would be to

• Implement the other features listed above
• Make it easy for people to find the key combination eg. by adding an empty menu option that just explains what this key binding does.