10.4: Use non-linear text selection in TextEdit

May 19, '05 09:59:00AM

Contributed by: jjmarcus

Tiger only hintIn TextEdit 1.4, hold down the Option key and watch the cursor become crosshairs. Now drag that cursor across a block of text, and you'll find that Tiger offers the same rather useful non-linear text selection that MS Word has had for a long time.

I actually discovered this in Address Book 4.0 -- where I really really need it, because selecting text in a contact card is way more clunky than it needs to be. Unfortunately, the feature is broken, at least in my copy: when I let go of the mouse button, my text selection snaps back to include only one line. It works fine in Text Edit, though.

[robg adds: My AddressBook is similarly non-functional in this regard. In TextEdit, it works, though the highlights are confusing, as they'll highlight to the end of the window width for any row that's shorter than your selection. That's harder to explain than it is to just see, so try it. But it works fine when you copy; it just looks a bit weird.]

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