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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.

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.