Additional conventional UX for text-box GUI element cursor movement and selection

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sparr
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Additional conventional UX for text-box GUI element cursor movement and selection

Post by sparr »

Currently the text-box GUI element is lacking a lot of UX that is present in most implementations of that sort of interface. For example, as I am editing this forum post, I can do the following things that I am not sure if/how I can do in a factorio text-box:
  • double click a word to select it
  • triple-click a paragraph to select it
  • ctrl+home/end to move to the top or bottom of the text box
  • shift+ctrl+home/end to select from my cursor to the top or bottom of the text box
It would be nice to have some or all of these features.

PS: Undo/Redo would also be amazing
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AileTheAlien
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Re: Additional conventional UX for text-box GUI element cursor movement and selection

Post by AileTheAlien »

sparr wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2024 12:37 pm [*]ctrl+home/end to move to the top or bottom of the text box
[*]shift+ctrl+home/end to select from my cursor to the top or bottom of the text box
Note that on non-Apple computers, those shortcuts move to the beginning or end of a line, not the top or bottom of a box / document.
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Re: Additional conventional UX for text-box GUI element cursor movement and selection

Post by Muche »

AileTheAlien wrote: Wed Dec 11, 2024 12:02 am
sparr wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2024 12:37 pm [*]ctrl+home/end to move to the top or bottom of the text box
[*]shift+ctrl+home/end to select from my cursor to the top or bottom of the text box
Note that on non-Apple computers, those shortcuts move to the beginning or end of a line, not the top or bottom of a box / document.
I tried Windows' Notepad, and even that supports "Ctrl+Home" to move to the beginning of the file.

What OS/application do you have in mind for which "Home" and "Ctrl+Home" do the same thing?
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Re: Additional conventional UX for text-box GUI element cursor movement and selection

Post by sparr »

What Muche said.

Also, the specific keys aren't really important. I'd expect them to be configurable keybinds, or at least OS-specific, and I could get used to emacs or vi keybinds instead if necessary. The real request here is to have the functionality at all.
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Re: Additional conventional UX for text-box GUI element cursor movement and selection

Post by AileTheAlien »

Muche wrote: Wed Dec 11, 2024 12:58 am What OS/application do you have in mind for which "Home" and "Ctrl+Home" do the same thing?
Sorry, I spaced out when reading that originally, since it was late at night, and didn't see the Control+ part. I don't have a Mac in front of me right now to test Control+Home or +End, but the behavior of Home in MacOS is to move to the top of the document, like what Control+Home in non-MacOS does. (Similarly for control+end, but to the bottom.) So either MacOS does something different with control+home or control+end, or the answer is that MacOS is what treats them the same.
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Re: Additional conventional UX for text-box GUI element cursor movement and selection

Post by sparr »

MacOS doesn't have system-level standards for this sort of cursor behavior. It was one of the worst parts of using the OS for me. There are 3-5 different common key combinations that move to the beginning of the line or top of the document (and the latter has no shortcut in many places), and no way to know what a particular program is using without experimentation. I expect Factorio would pick any one of these conventions to follow.

From a post I made elsewhere:
Example OSX “go to beginning of line” shortcuts:
cmd+left in TextEdit & Chrome
shift+fn+left or ctrl+a in Terminal
fn+left in iTerm3
cmd+fn+left in Word
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