KEDIT Hints and Tips: Drag-and-Drop Editing

Working with Blocks

KEDIT for Windows supports a feature called drag-and-drop editing. This allows you to use the mouse to mark a block, drag the block to some other position in the file, and drop the block there. This bypasses the Windows clipboard so you don't need to cut and paste the block.

Say you have a data file that looks like the screen below and for the first item you want the string "1.5" to appear at the end of the line with "KEDIT for Windows".

You start by dragging the mouse with button 1 (for most people this is the left mouse button) down to mark a stream selection to encompass the text "1.5" as shown here:

With traditional cut and paste you would now cut the selection into the Windows clipboard, click the mouse at the end of the line above where you want the text to be moved and then paste the text there. With drag-and-drop editing you instead click mouse button 1 somewhere on the selection and while holding down button 1, drag the block to the end of the line above as illustrated in the figure below:

Note that the mouse pointer has changed and it now has a small block around its base indicating you are in this dragging mode. The text insertion bar follows the mouse and this indicates where the text will be inserted when you release button 1.

After releasing button 1 the text is moved to the insertion point as seen below:

Had you wanted to copy this text as opposed to moving it you would have held down the Ctrl key while you dragged the selected text. This copy operation is indicated by a small plus character appearing with the mouse pointer as shown below:

Opening Files

Drag-and-drop editing can also be used when opening files. Say you have a copy of KEDIT open on your desktop as well as a copy of Explorer as shown below:

If you wanted to open README.TXT you could select it in the Explorer window, click mouse button one on the selected file and then drag this over to the KEDIT window. When the mouse pointer moves over the KEDIT window it looks like the image below:

Now all you have to do is release button one and the README.TXT file is added to the KEDIT ring:

If you want, you can select multiple files in the Explorer window, click mouse button one on one of the selected files, drag it to the KEDIT window and release button one. This would bring all of the selected files into the KEDIT ring.