Is it possible to select a column or block of text in Gedit 3.28.1?
The following image is with Kate 17.12.3 but shows what I want:
Gedit – How to Select a Column or Block of Text in Gedit 3.28.1
18.04gedit
Related Solutions
is an integrated development environment that provides good column editing support which is worth checking out (an example here)
Simply put, press down Alt+Shift instead of just Shift while making selections to invoke column mode. One important limitation is that the edits in column mode are (as yet) not undo-able.
To achieve the same with the mouse, hold down Ctrl while selecting. This actually works with most Scintilla-based editors (including SciTE and Geany).
Find the solution myself:
It was a style (theme) problem. Checked again using the default theme and this behave as expected. So I inspected carefully the other themes and found that not all those themes had this problem.
The solution was to edit the theme's code (twilight.xml) to insert the following lines:
<style name="selection" background="orange" />
<style name="selection-unfocused" foreground="white" background="gray" />
By the way, the location of the themes in gEdit 3 differ from gEdit 2. Here it is:
~/.local/share/gtksourceview-3.0/styles/
You can create the directory yourself if it doesn't exist. Further info on style paths here: http://live.gnome.org/GtkSourceView/StyleSchemes
Best Answer
This answer is based on steeldriver's suggestion to look into
gedit-plugin-multi-edit.I found a blog post which links to a video demonstrating column selection mode. Even though the links are from 2009, the plugin works in gedit 3.28.1 which is found in Bionic Beaver.
Run
sudo apt install gedit-plugin-multi-edit.Open gedit > Preferences > Plugins and enable Multi Edit.
Then, when the need arises to perform edits involving columns, activate Multi Edit Mode from Tools. The mode will be reflected near the top right corner of the window.
Left-click immediately to the left of the letter at the top left of the intended column and select down to include the lowest letter at the bottom right of the intended column.
Press Enter.
The selected area will change to cover just the column. Make the desired changes. They will be reflected onscreen.
Press Escape.
Quit Multi Edit Mode.
Here's a brief animation derived from the video link cited above.
Animation illustrating column selection and editing: