[comp.sys.mac.apps] Multiple word selects

kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) (07/29/90)

"How can I select several items (words or characters) at once.
"
"Ex.  If I have 15 words I want to BOLD, instead of select one, goto format,
"     bold that item, then select another, goto format .... repeat 13 more
"     times,  how can I select several words at the same time, and do one
"     format-bold commend.
"
"TSUNG,FU-LIN                      |  I am going to stop wasting my time reading
"Georgia Institute of Technology   |  all the newsgroups and start working ---

I'm not aware of any text processing program or tool that let's you do this
but at least Word doesn't. However, you can accomplish your goal just about
as quickly using the Repeat command. You can quickly double-click a word
to select it, apply bold to the first one. Then double-click your next word
and type command-a to repeat your last edit.

If you have an extended keyboard you can make this a one key operation--
press a function key instead of command-a. 

Shirley Kehr

baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) (07/31/90)

In article <149461@felix.UUCP>, kehr@felix (Shirley Kehr) writes:
>"How can I select several items (words or characters) at once.
>"
>"Ex.  If I have 15 words I want to BOLD, instead of select one, goto format,
>"     bold that item, then select another, goto format .... repeat 13 more
>"     times,  how can I select several words at the same time, and do one
>"     format-bold commend.
>"
>I'm not aware of any text processing program or tool that let's you do this
>but at least Word doesn't. 

I believe that the new version of Nisus (3.0) will be able to handle
discontinuous selections (at least the ads claim it will).

Even the current version, though, can be made to do something like
what the original poster wants, especially if the words he needs to
bold-face follow some regular pattern.  It's trivial to have Nisus
search for, say, all uppercase words and bold-face them (or words that
start with a capital letter, etc.).  Nisus' builtin grep (and the user
interface that makes grep painless to use) is one of its strongest
features. 

--
   Steve Baumgarten             | "New York... when civilization falls apart,
   Davis Polk & Wardwell        |  remember, we were way ahead of you."
   baumgart@esquire.dpw.com     | 
   cmcl2!esquire!baumgart       |                           - David Letterman