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Kudos to the ST team for never trying to patent or sue random companies for using the multi-select feature. That feature alone has helped improve so many editor

Kudos to the ST team for never trying to patent or sue random companies for using the multi-select feature. That feature alone has helped improve so many editors.

danielvf 9y ago
Note that that feature was in TextMate, which was Sublime's inspiration.
- joncalhoun 9y ago
  EDIT: Leaving the original comment below for posterity, but it looks like the TextMate article I found on this doesn't predate ST's multi-select, so I have no idea which is true. I'll just take the ST devs at their word :) Interesting. TIL It even looks like TextMate implemented the individual copy/paste buffer for each cursor correctly as well, something that VSCode had horribly wrong the last time I tried to use it. Do you know if this only worked with the cmd+click cursors, or did it also support the cmd+d mode to select the same word in multiple places? Regardless, kudos to TextMate as well :)
- jskinner 9y ago
  No, it wasn't. I believe TextMate had a feature where you could edit multiple lines at once, but it was part of a column selection mode, it certainly wasn't free form multiple selections. Multiple Selections were one of the earliest core features built for Sublime Text, and weren't inspired from other software. I don't think TextMate existed when I implemented this.
  - mmjaa 9y ago
    PC-Write had it, long, long ago and .. like ST .. this feature was the only reason I used that app.
    - shubhamjain 9y ago
      I can't comment on how well it was implemented in PC-Write but it won't be far-fetched to say that Sublime made multiple-selections mainstream. I had seen some references to vim plugins that offered that feature but it had limited abilities. The three ways of doing multiple selections—selecting multiple instances of a word, placing multiple cursors downwards in succeeding lines, and using point and click—made Sublime's implementation vastly more powerful.
      - mmjaa 9y ago
        Back in the day (early-mid 80's), PC-Write was kind of like the SublimeText of the era. Multiple-select was indeed one of the key reasons to use it, as a programmers editor, even though it was intended for more general-purpose word processing tasks. Anecdotal experience: my first unboxing of ST2 led to the proclamation: "finally, someone has done multi-select cursors again, almost as good as PC-Write back in the day!"
    - armandososa 9y ago
      hey! I used PC-write back in the nineties. I have nothing to add, just happy to find another user of that softeare.
  - danielvf 9y ago
    You are correct - as you already know. I was wrong TextMate 1 had multiple column editing, but true multi caret editing was not until TextMate 2 in 2011.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    It had already been implemented in the alpha versions of TextMate 2 earlier. But it’s quite plausible that the two implementations were independent. ... Unlike most of Sublime Text which was a close copy of TM features except for the ability for users to edit customizations, making the Sublime community a giant leech that sucked all of the air out of TextMate bundle development without ever contributing anything back. Sad history.
jhgb 9y ago
Didn't Emacs have something like this before ST?
- hellofunk 9y ago
  Probably. I've used it in Emacs for quite a while, but I'm not sure where that falls in the history with the sublime text.
giancarlostoro 9y ago
Indeed, they at the very least made it known / very popular to use. I realized JetBrains IDE's have support for it as well and it comes in really handy from time to time.
tskaiser 9y ago
multi-select is by no means an ST invention.
- jskinner 9y ago
  As far as I'm aware it is. If you know of an implementation done before 2008 I'd love to know about it.
  - panic 9y ago
    jEdit appears to have had multiple cursors since at least 2005, though I don't know how useful they were.
    - jdc0589 9y ago
      jEdit was a seriously under rated text editor, I used the CRAP out of it in college.
      - badsectoracula 9y ago
        Was? It is still being developed, the last version was released six months ago: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jedit/files/jedit/5.4.0/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/jedit/files/jedit/5.4.0/
        jdc0589 9y ago
        nice, I had no idea.
    - billbrown 9y ago
      They worked great and I stayed with jEdit long past when it was reasonable to do so because of that and so many other amazing features.
      - icebraining 9y ago
clairity 9y ago
yes! this was the feature that won me over (on top of the great syntax highlighting on black background). /happy sublime text user

Kudos to the ST team for never trying to patent or sue random companies for using the multi-select feature. That feature alone has helped improve so many editors.

danielvf 9y ago

Note that that feature was in TextMate, which was Sublime's inspiration.

joncalhoun 9y ago
EDIT: Leaving the original comment below for posterity, but it looks like the TextMate article I found on this doesn't predate ST's multi-select, so I have no idea which is true. I'll just take the ST devs at their word :) Interesting. TIL It even looks like TextMate implemented the individual copy/paste buffer for each cursor correctly as well, something that VSCode had horribly wrong the last time I tried to use it. Do you know if this only worked with the cmd+click cursors, or did it also support the cmd+d mode to select the same word in multiple places? Regardless, kudos to TextMate as well :)
jskinner 9y ago
No, it wasn't. I believe TextMate had a feature where you could edit multiple lines at once, but it was part of a column selection mode, it certainly wasn't free form multiple selections. Multiple Selections were one of the earliest core features built for Sublime Text, and weren't inspired from other software. I don't think TextMate existed when I implemented this.
- mmjaa 9y ago
  PC-Write had it, long, long ago and .. like ST .. this feature was the only reason I used that app.
  - shubhamjain 9y ago
    I can't comment on how well it was implemented in PC-Write but it won't be far-fetched to say that Sublime made multiple-selections mainstream. I had seen some references to vim plugins that offered that feature but it had limited abilities. The three ways of doing multiple selections—selecting multiple instances of a word, placing multiple cursors downwards in succeeding lines, and using point and click—made Sublime's implementation vastly more powerful.
    - mmjaa 9y ago
      Back in the day (early-mid 80's), PC-Write was kind of like the SublimeText of the era. Multiple-select was indeed one of the key reasons to use it, as a programmers editor, even though it was intended for more general-purpose word processing tasks. Anecdotal experience: my first unboxing of ST2 led to the proclamation: "finally, someone has done multi-select cursors again, almost as good as PC-Write back in the day!"
  - armandososa 9y ago
    hey! I used PC-write back in the nineties. I have nothing to add, just happy to find another user of that softeare.
- danielvf 9y ago
  You are correct - as you already know. I was wrong TextMate 1 had multiple column editing, but true multi caret editing was not until TextMate 2 in 2011.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  It had already been implemented in the alpha versions of TextMate 2 earlier. But it’s quite plausible that the two implementations were independent. ... Unlike most of Sublime Text which was a close copy of TM features except for the ability for users to edit customizations, making the Sublime community a giant leech that sucked all of the air out of TextMate bundle development without ever contributing anything back. Sad history.

jhgb 9y ago

Didn't Emacs have something like this before ST?

hellofunk 9y ago
Probably. I've used it in Emacs for quite a while, but I'm not sure where that falls in the history with the sublime text.

giancarlostoro 9y ago

Indeed, they at the very least made it known / very popular to use. I realized JetBrains IDE's have support for it as well and it comes in really handy from time to time.

tskaiser 9y ago

multi-select is by no means an ST invention.

jskinner 9y ago
As far as I'm aware it is. If you know of an implementation done before 2008 I'd love to know about it.
- panic 9y ago
  jEdit appears to have had multiple cursors since at least 2005, though I don't know how useful they were.
  - jdc0589 9y ago
    jEdit was a seriously under rated text editor, I used the CRAP out of it in college.
    - badsectoracula 9y ago
      Was? It is still being developed, the last version was released six months ago: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jedit/files/jedit/5.4.0/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/jedit/files/jedit/5.4.0/
      - jdc0589 9y ago
        nice, I had no idea.
  - billbrown 9y ago
    They worked great and I stayed with jEdit long past when it was reasonable to do so because of that and so many other amazing features.
    - icebraining 9y ago

clairity 9y ago

yes! this was the feature that won me over (on top of the great syntax highlighting on black background). /happy sublime text user