Column Editing

[Drxenos]

I have an odd question because it's not an issue with Textpad, but with making other editors act like Textpad. I prefer Textpad, but there are times when I can't use it (like in particular labs at work where I'm not allowed to choose what software is available).

There one feature that Textpad has that I absolutely LOVE, but doesn't seem to be available on any other editor. I don't know if there is a name for it, but it involves editing columns of data. Most editors, when you arrow down, will just go straight down. Textpad, on the other hand, will go to the first column where you started entering text after positioning with the arrows. This makes it incredibly fast to adjust columns of text. Instead of enter text, down, left, etc., it's just enter text, down. So nice!

Anyone know what this feature is called (if anything) and if other editors can be configured to do it? I am hoping this feature as a common name that I can Google to figure out how to do it in other editors.

Thanks,
DrX

[ak47wong]

I agree, it's one of the first things I noticed when I first used TextPad. If I'm not mistaken I think the old DOS editor "Brief" may have behaved like this too.

Anyway, I've seen a few requests for other text editors to behave this way and in both cases the user has referred to this as "smart" cursor movement, probably for lack of a better term:

Sublime: “Smart� horizontal cursor positioning
Notepad++: Looking For SMART Cursor Movement (ala TextPad)