Hidden control or XP quirk?

General questions about using TextPad

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portal
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:45 am

Hidden control or XP quirk?

Post by portal »

As one who started using Textpad under W98 have missed the ability to move text around after moving from W2K to XP.

Specifically, under W98 I could mark characters or words, and move them elsewhere in the text just like with Word etc.

Under XP I have never been able to do this within Textpad, I mark a few characters, click with the cursor to begin the move, and the mark disappears. FWIW, Word has not been affected.

A search of the database turned up no mention of this that I could see, so decided to post and find out if there is a control for this somewhere.
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MudGuard
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Post by MudGuard »

hm. Cant reproduce the problem.

Select some text.
Put mousepointer in selected text.
Press and hold left mousebutton.
Move mousepointer (still holding left mousebutton) to destination.
Release left mousebutton.

Text is now at the new position.
portal
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:45 am

Post by portal »

[quote="MudGuard"]hm. Cant reproduce the problem.

Select some text.
Put mousepointer in selected text.
Press and hold left mousebutton.
Move mousepointer (still holding left mousebutton) to destination.
Release left mousebutton.

Text is now at the new position.[/quote]


That's what fails!

What you call 'Press and hold' is what I called "click with the cursor to begin the move" and that action causes the text marking to disappear.
nvj1662
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu May 17, 2007 10:02 am

Post by nvj1662 »

It works for me under XP3.

Thanks Mudguard; I never knew TP could do that - I've only been using it a decade or so :oops:
portal
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:45 am

Post by portal »

Textpad has a switch that controls the ability to move text around BUT you only get one shot at defining it.

To get the bottom of why Textpad's behavior had changed under XP, I pulled out an old laptop to compare configurations and under the options for Configure/Preferences/Editor of 4.1.05 is a grayed out option:

gray___ticked__Enable Drag and Drop editing

On XP, both the 4.73 and 5.40 list the following Configure/Preferences/Editor choices:

gray___________Enable Drag and Drop editing

I could find no control choice that would make the Enable Drag and Drop option clear, so there was no way to tick the box.

Decided to begin again from scratch with a Control Panel Uninstall of Textpad and then reinstalled 4.7.3.

Before opening any files, went through Config to modify everything to match previous settings and Configure/Preferences/Editor showed:

black_________Enable Drag and Drop editing

A chance to change the behavior, so opted in with:

black__ticked__Enable Drag and Drop editing

Used Textpad to open a file, and the behavior to move marked content around was back to what had been normal operation under W98 and W2K.

Imagine my surprise to find Configure/Preferences/Editor changed, the option had disappeared!

gray___ticked__Enable Drag and Drop editing

The line was grayed out, the ability to change Drag and Drop behavior was gone! One shot, one and only one shot to choose a desired behavior.

Assumptions:

Older versions of Textpad installed with 'Enable Drag and Drop Editing' as the default (which was retained through subsequent upgrades).

Somewhere along the line, Helios changed the default and as 4.7.3 was a new install under XP I no longer had the Drag and Drop capability.

The worst part of this scenario is that even if you know about the Drag and Drop option, there is no way to change the default behavior after first use because the option is grayed out.

Grayed out functions usually mean a required capability is not installed.

This is a very weird option - it has no dependencies and the user is given only one opportunity to set a permanent behavior.

Hope this helps somebody else.
wangna
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Location: bsrtg

Post by wangna »

It works for me under XP3.





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miked
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Post by miked »

The option to enable/disable text dragging is greyed out if you have any documents open (see help file).
ak47wong
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Post by ak47wong »

miked wrote:The option to enable/disable text dragging is greyed out if you have any documents open (see help file).
Bravo, this is the answer! Close all documents, then select Configure > Preferences > Editor > Enable drag and drop editing.
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