10.4: Adjust word break behavior back to 10.3 default

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May 11, '06 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: macevangelist

Problem: With the advent of Mac OS X 10.4, the default "text double-click selection" behavior was changed so that when double-clicking a key in an AppleScript record, not only the key would be selected, but in certain cases, also its value along with it.

For example, double-clicking aKey in the following line in Script Editor will select the entire aKey:aValue string:

{aKey:aValue, anotherKey:"itsStringValue"}

Workaround: In the International System Preferences pane, under the Language tab, set the Word Break pop-up value from Standard to English (United States, Computer). End of problem.

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10.4: Adjust word break behavior back to 10.3 default | 5 comments | Create New Account

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10.4: Adjust word break behavior back to 10.3 default
Authored by: foilpan on May 11, '06 09:49:25AM

sweet! i had no idea text selections even behaved this way recently.

10.4: Adjust word break behavior back to 10.3 default
Authored by: sjk on May 11, '06 02:13:22PM

In case it's not obvious, the AppleScript record is just one example of what's affected by the Word Break setting. I'm not sure if it's completely generalized, but using "English (United States, Computer)" makes double-click selection behave more the way I like it to in Terminal, which is the first thing I checked after switching to that setting. Thanks for the frustration-relieving hint!

thank you!!!!
Authored by: Krioni on May 11, '06 04:00:46PM

The changes to text selection have made me nuts!

Does Apple ever consider that the people who USE text selection conventions and short-cuts have already developed muscle memory and there is no benefit to changing these?

Yikes.

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http://www.danshockley.com

10.4: Adjust word break behavior back to 10.3 default
Authored by: macevangelist on May 11, '06 07:46:15PM

I know people that know people who don't use AppleScript records that much and are more than happy that they can double-click select a whole HFS style file path in the Script Editor with the Word Break setting left at Standard.


"MacHD:Users:foo:Desktop:"

In that regard I wished there was a modifier key you could press so that the Standard behavior could be activated temporarily. But even with such a feature a blank space would break the double-click selected range. So, whatever.

If you strongly feel that the default behavior in 10.3 was better than in 10.4 then consider giving Apple some feedback, so they know.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/

Let's hope that we actually will still live to see input technology controlled by our thoughts.

10.4: Adjust word break behavior back to 10.3 default
Authored by: Bodoggy on May 15, '06 04:21:05AM

Excellent tip.

Another handy side-effect of this is that when you double-click and copy a word, it no longer inserts a space before it when it is pasted again. This used to drive me insane when wanting to enter bbcode in Safari to reference a thread or post and I would need to flick back one word to take out the space each time. The interesting thing is that dragging and selecting the word would not result in this behaviour. Only double-clicking.

Thanks again.

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