Re: Octave GUI (Win) mark text with keyboard

[Nicholas Jankowski]

(keeping the mailing list in the loop)

On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 12:09 PM, Oliver Betz <address@hidden> wrote:

Nicholas Jankowski wrote:

>     in the "Command Window" of Octave GUI (4.4.0), how can I mark text with
>     the keyboard e.g. for later Ctrl-C?
>
> Just to verify, you only mean on the current command line text, correct?

correct.

> Since the command line has the keyboard input 'captured', I'm not sure

sorry, I don't understand.

> how you'd use the keyboard to mark beyond the input line even if it was
> enabled.

I don't want to go beyond the input line.

> I do note that for both previous output text and current input text
> (even before hitting enter) I can mark text with a mouse and either
> Ctrl-C or 'right click/copy to clipboard' works fine as I would expect.

correct, but switching from the keyboard to the mouse is anno^W inefficient.

> I'm not sure if keyboard highlighting (shift-cursor, ctrl-shift cursor)
> is a standard feature in the terminal being used 'under the hood' for
> the gui, and if there would be a way to enable it.

doesn't seem to behave like usual Windows text edit fields.

Not overly surprising since the Windows version is cross-compiled from Linux.

 

>     Is it intended that there is no "cut" or overwrite marked text as in
>     other Windows applications?
>
> just checking: if you highlight text on the input line and past it
> inserts the pasted text at the cursor rather than overwrite the selected
> text. 

it pastes at the cursor position, which is not the position where I
marked a piece of text.

That's what I usually expect from a terminal window. I just tried and it is the same behavior that the Windows Command Line produces. pasting text always appears at the cursor. There is also no 'cut' function

 

I can't set the cursor with the mouse, IOW marking portions with the
mouse is independent from cursor movement.

Again, same behavior as the windows command line.  I'm not familiar how much variability there is with different CLI tools and terminals. It may be that there are alternate behaviors that Octave could emulate if it's within the ability of the underlying terminal used by Octave.

 

I don't want to complain about the current implementation - it's not
worse than command line editing on the terminal. But a GUI command
window conforming to standard Windows behaviour would be a nice improvement.

Since Octave is not primarily developed or built on Windows, there have been several mentions of a need for more Windows developers to help with things such as that. If you are aware of other programs exhibiting the terminal behavior you describe, I'm sure we could look at it and see what is feasible.

Nick J.