Click brings to foreground but doesn't place cursor

[dcasler]

I love textpad! Except...I use it to edit html pages, and then I'll do some research and then come back to textpad. I have to click twice--once to bring Textpad to the foreground, and the second click to position the cursor where I want it. This drives me nuts! Nearly every other app works so that a single click not only brings the app to the foreground but also positions the cursor at the same time.

Is there anyway to configure Textpad to behave in this manner?

Now, when I'm working hard and forget that Textpad is different, I'll click where I want the cursor to be and start typing away--except the inserted text goes where the cursor was before I brought another app to the foreground, and my text ends up in the wrong place.

[ak47wong]

I have to click twice--once to bring Textpad to the foreground, and the second click to position the cursor where I want it. This drives me nuts! Nearly every other app works so that a single click not only brings the app to the foreground but also positions the cursor at the same time.

I'm using 5.2.0 on Vista and it does just what you asked: when I click the TextPad window to give it focus, the cursor is positioned where I clicked. What version and OS are you using?

Andrew

[ben_josephs]

Is Configure | Preferences | Editor | Use Microsoft's conventions for mouse click selection selected? If so, try deselecting it.

[dcasler]

Unchecking the box for using Microsoft's conventions for mouse click selection did the trick. Many, many thanks!

[IconMatrix]

Version: 6.2.2 32 Bit
OS: Win7 Ultimate SP1

I've tried the suggestions here and a few others and cannot get TextPad to focus instantly on returning to the TextPad window.

Example: When TextPad is configured not to allow multiple instances to run so that all View Source commands open the files in the same instance of TextPad, sometimes it is useful to have a second plain text editor running in another monitor to copy and paste from. In this circumstance enabling multiple instances of TextPad doesn't help. So I installed Notepad++ to pull up as a secondary text editor for this purpose. When I click on the document in Notepad ++ to highlight a specific segment, the focus is instantaneous ... no need to click to get focus and then click again to highlight. It's nice and smooth.

However after selecting and copying the text in Notepad++ and switching back to TextPad on the other monitor to highlight the segment that needs replacing with what's on the clipboard, it takes 2 clicks ... one to bring the window into focus, and another to begin the drag and highlight. This seems like a small thing until you have 100 lines you need to do this to that can't be managed by a macro or search and replace sequence because each line has different content. The extra 100 clicks is like constantly having to jump a small obstacle every time and it adds up to a significant annoyance.

Summary: When returning focus to the TextPad window, one should be able to immediately mouse click to select text instead of having to click once to get focus and again to make the selection.

Solutions Tried: All options in the Configure > Preferences > Editor settings including the suggestion for deselecting the Use Microsoft's conventions for mouse click selection.

[bbadmin]

IconMatrix: thanks for your clear exposition of the problem.

TextPad mimics the behaviour of MS Word, when clicking a document to activate the application and "Use Microsoft conventions for mouse click selection" is checked. The principle is to preserve the current cursor and selection position, no matter where you click in the document. Otherwise, click activation should be just like any other click, so we'll fix this issue in the next release.

In the meantime, you can work around it by setting the option to ignore when files are modified by another process, on Configure/Preferences/File.

Helios Software Solutions

[IconMatrix]

IconMatrix: thanks for your clear exposition of the problem.

TextPad mimics the behaviour of MS Word, when clicking a document to activate the application and "Use Microsoft conventions for mouse click selection" is checked. The principle is to preserve the current cursor and selection position, no matter where you click in the document. Otherwise, click activation should be just like any other click, so we'll fix this issue in the next release.

In the meantime, you can work around it by setting the option to ignore when files are modified by another process, on Configure/Preferences/File.

Helios Software Solutions

Thank you for the fast response ... yet another reason to keep sticking with this excellent product! Not to mention that the workaround you suggested WORKS TOO Yeah !