Your comments

Hi, sounds like a good idea, but I already tried to implement gestures for cursor navigation. See my latest comment at http://feedback.textasticapp.com/feedback/15671-gestures-do-navigate-page-up-page-down-etc-it-would-make-life-much-easier/

It was really slow and interfered with scrolling and zooming gestures.

I think I need a way to do this with buttons but without taking away too much space. I already have something in mind - I believe I saw a similar solution in iSSH: a "navigation wheel" with cursor buttons that appears above the text when you do a double-tap on the editor.
Interesting. The license at https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/blob/master/COPYING sure looks like this is usable in an iOS app. Thanks for letting me know.
This additional per-file switch could be added to the popover that is described in this idea: http://feedback.textasticapp.com/feedback/8814-what-about-tabbed-coding/

The popover would appear when you tap on the file title. The title could show a lock symbol when the file is in read-only mode.
Well, yes, you can only select text when you have a cursor. This is only possible when the editor has focus (or is the "first responder" in iOS speak).

But you are right, Safari for example allows you to select text by double-clicking even when the text is not editable. I'll consider adding this feature.
Great to hear that it worked!
Thanks a lot for sharing this tip! It might be really useful for others.
Interesting approach! Does this require a jailbroken iPad?
You can just download a single file, edit it and upload it again (see http://www.textasticapp.com/manual/lessons/How_can_I_quickly_upload_downloaded_files.html) – and then delete the local file. You do not need to download the whole directory structure if you don't want to.

What other applications do you use to edit files remotely? Unless you're talking about an SSH terminal session, I'm quite sure they basically do the same thing (download the file, let you edit the file, but upload the file automatically when the file is closed).