In
human–computer interaction
Human–computer interaction (HCI) is the process through which people operate and engage with computer systems. Research in HCI covers the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and comp ...
, simultaneous editing is an
end-user development technique allowing a single
user to make multiple simultaneous
edits of text in a
multiple selection at once through
direct manipulation.
Multiple selections and cursors are typically created by using a
keyboard shortcut
In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most Operating system, operating systems and Application software, applications come ...
to select repeated instances of the same text or text fragments surrounded by the same
delimiter
A delimiter is a sequence of one or more Character (computing), characters for specifying the boundary between separate, independent regions in plain text, Expression (mathematics), mathematical expressions or other Data stream, data streams. An ...
s, by using a ''search'' feature to select all instances of a ''search term'', by
selecting the same column in multiple lines, or by selecting text or cursor positions with a mouse. The
Lapis experimental web browser and text editor is also able to infer selections based on
concept learning
Concept learning, also known as category learning, concept attainment, and concept formation, is defined by Jerome Bruner, Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin (1956) as "the search for and testing of attributes that can be used to distinguish exemplars fro ...
from positive and negative examples given by the user during a process known as ''selection guessing''.
Tools for
data wrangling (mass reformatting) also sometimes include commands for simultaneous editing of all data in a column or category.
Editors supporting simultaneous editing
* ''Simultaneous editing'' in
Lapis
* ''Multiple selections'' in
Sublime Text
* ''Multiple cursors'' in
Cloud9
* ''Multi-cursor'' package in
Atom
Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished fr ...
* ''Multiple selections'' in
Visual Studio Code
* ''Multiple selections'' in
Firefox developer tools
* ''Multiple-cursors'' in
Emacs
Emacs (), originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor Macros"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...
* ''Multi Edit''
plug-in for
gedit
* ''Multi-Editing Settings'' in
Notepad++
* ''Multiple carets'' in
PyCharm
PyCharm is an integrated development environment (IDE) used for programming in Python. It provides code analysis, a graphical debugger, an integrated unit tester, integration with version control systems, and supports web development with D ...
* ''Column Edit Mode'' in
Vi and Vi derivatives such as
Vim
See also
*
Batch renaming
References
Copy-and-Paste between Overlapping Windowsby Olivier Chapuis, Nicolas Roussel. In Proceedings of CHI'07. "''Other systems have been proposed to support fast copy-paste of multiple selections or text entities like phone numbers''"
Citeseerintroductory article.
an extended description
* Robert C. Miller, Brad A. Myers: Multiple selections in smart text editing. 103–110
Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, January 13–16, 2002, San Francisco, California, USA. ACM, 2002, {{ISBN, 1-58113-459-2
User interface techniques
Text editor features