Writeroom tap-cursor zones plus select gesture

13 years ago • updated 13 years ago • 4

Howdy!

Loving Textastic. I've found it very easy to use. The shortcut keys along the top have been very useful.

One thing I'm missing is quick cursor movement similar to Writeroom. They use a single-finger tap in a margin to move the cursor one character and two-finger tap to move one word.

I know Texttastic currently doesn't have margins, but this might be something for a future update. You could even take it a step further by adding a select (possibly by holding a single finger in opposite margin while using the writeroom-style gestures).

Just a wish. Thanks for all your hard work.

-Dave C.

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13 years ago

Hi,

did you try the cursor navigation wheel? http://www.textasticapp.com/v3/manual/lessons/How_can_I_bring_up_the_cursor_navigation_wheel.html

13 years ago

I have tried the nav wheel and it works well, but consider a simple example...

"the quickbrown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

Right away we can see that "the" isn't capitalized. So we touch it, moving the cursor to the front of the word. Now, we have to two-finger touch to bring up the nav wheel, move the cursor, and then, two-finger touch to dismiss the nav wheel. Only then can we backspace and capitalize the "T".

The same would happen for "quickbrown". Ignoring the cursor moves that would happen regardless of method, you have an extra 2+ taps to get where you're going (opening and dismissing the nav wheel). Leaving the nav wheel on all the time takes up real-estate (which, I'm guessing, is why you made it "hideable").

You might say that it's quicker to touch and hold, but you still have to drag your finger to the right place. This method has always felt clumsy to me.

Writeroom's cursor zones have handled this in a simple way... giving you quick access to "cursor nudging". The word jumping gesture is just a happy bonus.

Nothing wrong with the nav wheel. This is a "nice to have" feature request; maybe something for v4.

Thanks for the quick reply too. I appreciate it.

13 years ago

Why do you want to dismiss it? Just leave it open. It takes away some screen real estate but you can move it where you want it.

But, of course I'll think about your idea.

13 years ago

Strictly a preference/creature-comfort. I like Writeroom because of the lack of clutter. I also like Textmate for the same reason (thanks for adding TM theme support, by the way). There's a lot of functionality in them, but they feel 'clean'. Add in TextExpander support (which you've also done), and you have an awesome and extensible environment for programming.

Unfortunately, there aren't many options for keeping UI elements down in iOS... at least when it comes to cursor movement (from what I can see... I'm really no expert on this). You've done an excellent job packing a lot of functionality into Textastic too, but the nav wheel doesn't flow with how I like to work.

As I see it, no harm in asking and nothing lost if it can't be done, right?

Later,

-Dave C.

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