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Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python

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On 9/2/2014 4:45 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 6:35 PM, alister
> <alister.nospam.ware@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> if edlin is your only option then it would be better to spend you time
>> writhing your own text editor!
>
> Heh!
>
> Considering how easy it is to deploy a multi-line edit widget in any
> GUI toolkit, it shouldn't be too hard to write a GUI text editor.

Most Python installations have tkinter available. I quickly wrote an 
absolutely minimal script.

import tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()
text = tk.Text()
text.pack()
root.mainloop()

I tested tested the functions and wrote the following.

This is a test text entry.
Enter and Tab work as expected.
The Arrow (Cursor) keys work as expected.
CntL-Left and Cntl-Right move a word at time.
Home and End move to beginning and end of the line.
Cntl-Home and Cntl-Up move to the beginning of the text.
Cntl-End and Cntl-Donw move to the end of the text.
Shift + cursor movement selects between the begin and end slice positions.
PageUp and PageDown are inoperative.
Delete and Backspace work as expected.
At least on Windows, I can select text and delete,
or cut or copy to Clipboard.
I can also paste from the clipboard.
In otherwords, this is a functional minimal text entry widget.

I did not even know about Shift-movement selecting until I tried it.
Notepad has this. Thunderbird's text entry does not.

I think the above is adequate for most multi-line text entry.
In use, a save function would have to be added.
A help text with the above info would be good too (Idle needs this).

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy

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Thread

Editing text with an external editor in Python Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-02 02:11 +1000
  Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-02 02:35 +1000
    Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-02 04:23 +1000
      Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> - 2014-09-01 15:06 -0500
        Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python alister <alister.nospam.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2014-09-02 08:35 +0000
          Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-02 18:45 +1000
            Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python alister <alister.nospam.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2014-09-03 08:06 +0000
          Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-09-02 17:14 -0400
          Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-03 07:36 +1000
          Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-09-02 21:49 -0400
          Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Zachary Ware <zachary.ware+pylist@gmail.com> - 2014-09-02 22:03 -0500
      Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-02 08:30 +1000
  Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-09-01 13:06 -0400
    Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-02 04:02 +1000
      Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au> - 2014-09-02 08:14 +1000
        Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-02 13:18 +1000
      Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-02 08:25 +1000
  Re: Editing text with an external editor in Python gschemenauer3@gmail.com - 2014-09-01 19:24 -0700

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