3 ms·

really? interesting, wonder why it seems no other editor has something similar, or at least I don't think I've ever seen it elsewhere

jacquesm 10y ago
Yes, confirmed the bbc and the electron already had this. Interesting tidbit: it matched the data on the screen with the font in graphics mode, which meant that if your graphics intersected anywhere with text you wanted to copy that it stopped copying on corrupted characters. There was too little memory in those machines to keep a 'backup copy' of what was in the character cells of the screen, so the copy key function had to recover the screen contents directly. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/BBC_Micro.jpeg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/BBC_Micr... You can see the keyboard here, the copy key is bottom row, rightmost key.
- Wildgoose 10y ago
  Introduced on the Acorn Atom - I still have my Acorn Atom, I taught myself to program on it. Built in BASIC and 6502 Assembler (which could be mixed!) and I also bought AtomForth as well. Great piece of kit.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Ah yes, you are right, the Atom had it too.
astrobe_ 10y ago
Vim has a limited form of this: control-E and control-Y in insert mode copy the character on the previous/next line (both in Emacs/Vim look for extensions about "multiple cursors" if you're interested in this feature). I remember the line editor of the CPC used to edit Basic programs also had this feature.
- tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
  I use multiple cursors in Emacs all the time, but it's a really different workflow from this type of editor, with this it's like having two independent cursors, one for insert and one for "copy from here", you can switch between the two and move them around (don't remember if you could search on the copy cursor, but it would make sense you could) when you press the copy key they both move 1 char to the right and the char from the copy cursor ends up at the insert cursor, in skilled hands this can make some typical coding "copy this line and modify it slightly" quite fast Really surprised it didn't catch on in other editors, I wonder if it could be done in emacs by having a command that copies a char from mark to point and moves them both right, as well as a different cursor to put in mark, since you can already exchange point and mark it seems this should make this functionality feasible

jacquesm 10y ago

Yes, confirmed the bbc and the electron already had this. Interesting tidbit: it matched the data on the screen with the font in graphics mode, which meant that if your graphics intersected anywhere with text you wanted to copy that it stopped copying on corrupted characters. There was too little memory in those machines to keep a 'backup copy' of what was in the character cells of the screen, so the copy key function had to recover the screen contents directly. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/BBC_Micro.jpeg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/BBC_Micr... You can see the keyboard here, the copy key is bottom row, rightmost key.

Wildgoose 10y ago
Introduced on the Acorn Atom - I still have my Acorn Atom, I taught myself to program on it. Built in BASIC and 6502 Assembler (which could be mixed!) and I also bought AtomForth as well. Great piece of kit.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Ah yes, you are right, the Atom had it too.

astrobe_ 10y ago

Vim has a limited form of this: control-E and control-Y in insert mode copy the character on the previous/next line (both in Emacs/Vim look for extensions about "multiple cursors" if you're interested in this feature). I remember the line editor of the CPC used to edit Basic programs also had this feature.

tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
I use multiple cursors in Emacs all the time, but it's a really different workflow from this type of editor, with this it's like having two independent cursors, one for insert and one for "copy from here", you can switch between the two and move them around (don't remember if you could search on the copy cursor, but it would make sense you could) when you press the copy key they both move 1 char to the right and the char from the copy cursor ends up at the insert cursor, in skilled hands this can make some typical coding "copy this line and modify it slightly" quite fast Really surprised it didn't catch on in other editors, I wonder if it could be done in emacs by having a command that copies a char from mark to point and moves them both right, as well as a different cursor to put in mark, since you can already exchange point and mark it seems this should make this functionality feasible