A selection is a block of text marked for further manipulation. Range selections are equivalent to selections in most other text editors; they cover text between two points in a buffer. In addition to the standard text-selection mode, jEdit also allows rectangular selections that cover a rectangular area (some text editors refer to these as “column selections”). Furthermore, several chunks of text can be selected and operated on simultaneously.
Dragging the mouse creates a range selection from where the
mouse was pressed to where it was released. Holding down
Shift while clicking a location in the buffer will
create a selection from the caret position to the clicked
location.
Holding down Shift in addition to a caret
movement key (LEFT, UP,
HOME, etc) will extend a selection in the specified
direction.
> (shortcut: C+a) selects the
entire buffer.
>>
(shortcut: ESCAPE) deactivates the
selection.
Dragging with the Control key held down will
create a rectangular selection. Holding down Shift
and Control while clicking a location in the buffer
will create a rectangular selection from the caret position to the
clicked location.
Alternatively, invoking
>> (shortcut: A+\) toggles
rectangular selection mode. In rectangular selection mode, dragging
the mouse always creates a rectangular selection, and keyboard
commands that would normally create a range selection create a
rectangular selection instead. A status bar indicator is shown when
this mode is enabled.
It is possible to select a rectangle with zero width but non-zero height. This can be used to insert a new column between two existing columns, for example. Such zero-width selections are shown as a thin vertical line.
Inserting text into a rectangular selection repeats the text going down as many times as necessary, and shifts the selection to the right. This makes it behave like a “tall” caret.
Rectangles can be deleted, copied, pasted, and operated on using ordinary editing commands. If necessary, rectangular selections are automatically filled in with whitespace to maintain alignment.
Rectangular selections can extend beyond the end of a line
into “virtual space”. Furthermore, if keyboard
rectangular selection mode is on or if the Control
key is being held down, clicking beyond the end of a line will
insert the appropriate amount of whitespace in order to position the
cursor at the clicked location.
Rectangular selections are implemented using character offsets, not absolute screen positions, so they might not behave as you might expect if a proportional-width font is being used or if soft wrap is enabled. The text area font can be changed in the pane of the > dialog box. For information about soft wrap, see the section called “Wrapping Long Lines”.
>> (keyboard shortcut: C+\)
turns multiple selection mode on and off. In multiple selection
mode, multiple fragments of text can be selected and operated on
simultaneously, and the caret can be moved independently of the
selection. The status bar indicates if multiple selection mode is
active; see the section called “The Status Bar”.
Various jEdit commands behave differently with multiple selections:
Commands that copy text place the contents of each selection, separated by line breaks, in the specified register.
Commands that insert (or paste) text replace each selection with the entire text that is being inserted.
Commands that filter text (such as , , , and so on) behave as if each block was selected independently, and the command invoked on each in turn.
Line-based commands (such as , , and ) operate on each line that contains at least one selection.
Caret movement commands that would normally deactivate
the selection (such as the arrow keys, while
Shift is not being held down), move the
caret, leaving the selection as-is.
Some older plugins may not support multiple selection at all.
>>
(shortcut: ESCAPE) deactivates the selection
containing the caret, if there is one. Otherwise it deactivates all
active selections.
>> (shortcut: C+e C+i) selects
a set of text chunks such that all text that was formerly part of a
selection is now unselected, and all text that wasn't, is
selected.
Deactivating multiple selection mode while multiple blocks of text are selected will leave the selections in place, but you will not be able to add new selections until multiple selection mode is reactivated.