InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by WayneK on 2020/07/07 22:25

Suggestion: Allow movement between items without exiting edit mode (using up/down arrows).

I might have made this suggestion before but I find this so useful in another program that I can't help but wish I could do it InfoQube.

In XYplorer, when you enter edit mode to change a file title, you can move to the next file name without exiting edit mode.

Just now I wanted to append the same word to 10 files. I copied the word, entered it at the end of the first file name, then hit down arrow/ctrl-v 9 times in rapid succession and it was done in seconds. So much easier than exiting and re-entering edit mode over and over.

Even if it's not a case of repetitive pasting, just being able to stay in edit mode when you are cleaning up text would be helpful in itself.

Wayne

Comments

Since IQ items' text is displayed in multiple lines (unless it's only a few words), using the up / down arrow keys unmodified wouldn't work as you need these keys to navigate up / down between the lines of one item's text while editing. Ctrl-up/down moves to the beginning / end of an item's text while editing and Alt-cursor-combos do something strange: Alt-down appends blank lines at the bottom of the item's text, Alt-up can then be used to remove these blank lines again - I assume this is an unintentional glitch?

Viable options for 'edit item above / below the one I'm currently editing' might therefore be Alt-up/down (if the behaviour described above is indeed a glitch) or repeated presses of Ctrl-up/down, e.g. F2 to edit item, Ctrl-up to go to the beginning of that item's text, Ctrl-up again to go to the beginning of the previous item's text, Ctrl-down to go to the end of that item's text, Ctrl-down again to go to the end of the next item's text etc.

I doubt I'd use it much myself, but it might come in handy in some batch-editing scenarios as Wayne suggests, saving a couple of keystrokes. Though the difference between pressing Ctrl-Up twice and pressing Enter, Up, and F2 to achieve the same thing with what we already have doesn't seem that big.

Now, if we wanted to go down the road of true Ecco-style continuous editing, perhaps there should be an option for the Up / Down arrows to default to 'edit last line of item above / edit first line of item below' when editing the topmost / bottommost line of an item's text so that you could just move freely from one item to another while in edit mode? Not sure how well that would work out but I'd certainly give it a try!

[quote=LeftEccoForIQ]

Alt-cursor-combos do something strange: Alt-down appends blank lines at the bottom of the item's text, Alt-up can then be used to remove these blank lines again - I assume this is an unintentional glitch?

[/quote]

This is by design, to increase the writing area. See Editing Items:

[quote]

When editing a text cell using the WYSIWYG editor, Alt + up-down arrows changes the size of the editing window

[/quote]

HTH !

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Remember just pressing the space bar will put you in edit mode, with the cursor at the end of the field's text. Might be useful for the situation you were describing. Easier then pressing F2 then End.

I agree it would be harder to implement and less useful in InfoQube because of the multiple lines. I was envisioning going to the next cell with something like shift-arrow (but that is probably already being used).

A key part of what makes it useful in a file manager is that you keep your location in the title. If you are making a change to the middle of the text, when you arrow down, you are in the middle of the next item (no navigating to get to the right spot).

Wayne

Maybe semi-helpful: I like to be able to start editing an item right at the location under the mouse cursor with a single click so I have an Autohotkey shortcut for clicking my middle mouse button to send F2 to edit the item under the pointer and then send a left-button click so that I can start editing at that location right away. I use this all the time and it saves me a lot of extra clicks / switching between the keyboard and mouse to achieve this. (I realize this can probably be done with a double click with the right IQ options set, but I like to have the options 'Single click starts editing' set to 'Never' and 'Double click action' set to 'Expand / collapse item') as I found the other options would sometimes do things I didn't want, especially in connection with file or hyperlinks in items.) Lol, I'll yet convince you to try Autohotkey one of these days! ;-)