"Column Mode" in gedit?

Question

I'm transitioning from UltraEdit on Windows to gedit on Linux. So far, the experience is great (there's a lot here for a free tool), but there's one indispensable feature of UltraEdit I can't seem to find a way to replicate -- Column Mode.

Column Mode is a feature available in UltraEdit by pressing Alt+C. With it enabled you can highlight text in a single column over many lines, allowing you to edit many lines at once (e.g., to comment out a section of text, prepend some string to aligned variable names, or for many other reasons). It's saved me countless hours of find-and-replace or repetitive manual editing of consecutive lines, and I feel very awkward in gedit without it.

Is there anything like this (via a plugin probably) in gedit?

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1126156/how-to-select-a-column-or-block-of-text-in-gedit-3-28-1 — Adam, Mar 28 '19 at 18:00

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 21 '20 at 23:45

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I'm not sure if this helps. The GNOME page on the subject is down. Quite a lot of people seem to be looking for that exact feature. One guy is doing this plug-in; try it perhaps it helps: http://jon-walsh.com/journal/multi-edit/

Other thoughts on the subject are here: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17656/. This is supposed to be an unfinished plug-in for what you're looking for, but as I said, the page appears to be down. http://live.gnome.org/Gedit/Plugins/ColumnMode

edited Mar 21 '20 at 23:45

Peter Mortensen

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answered Dec 12 '09 at 16:44

webdreamer

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Yeah, looks like I'm not the only one who became addicted to this feature. Multi-edit looks like an interesting option. Thanks! – Mzzzzzz Dec 13 '09 at 18:38

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 21 '20 at 23:47

Multi-edit only provides a subset of the functions available in UltraEdit column mode. While I can make a column-delimited selection by enabling Multi-edit mode and hitting "Enter" after a regular selection, I can't copy this selection to the clipboard and paste it elsewhere as I can with UltraEdit.

The developer of Multi-edit has developed a sequel called "Imitation", discussed at http://codetree.com.au/projects/imitation/. The sequel also appears to lack the ability to cut and paste a column selection.

There is another editor available for Linux called "Kate", which provides the ability to cut and paste a rectangular block of code. The "block editing" mode in Kate is enabled with Ctrl + Shift + B. Once the block edit mode is enabled, you can click-drag to select a block of text, and cut, copy, or paste the block just as you would in UltraEdit.

When I installed Kate on my Fedora system, it pulled in a lot of KDE dependencies, which may be a problem for some people. For me, it's one less reason to have to boot up Windows, since I was using UltraEdit's column mode to do editing which was simply not convenient in gedit.

So what about rows of arbitrary length as selection and and then copy paste (which ST and Atom support)? Or does it only support a block of equal length rows? — Zelphir Kaltstahl, Oct 02 '16 at 11:19
[Geany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geany) (in many ways the equivalent to [Notepad++](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad%2B%2B) on Windows) is able to do it (I just tested it - version 1.35) - use Shift + Alt + arrow keys to select. — Peter Mortensen, Mar 22 '20 at 00:04
Thanks for recommending Kate. Works great with columns. Indeed lots of dependencies, about 155, but total size is about 50 MB, who cares. +1 — Roland, Jun 10 '22 at 21:23

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 21 '20 at 23:58

5

I also had the experience of transiting from UltraEdit in Windows to some editors in Linux. So far the best solution is:

Using Geany to edit large text files. It is much faster than gedit to open a file and the column mode is quite convenient: just hold Ctrl + Shift when using the mouse to select the contents. Or you can first put the cursor at the start point, and then hold Ctrl + Shift before using the mouse to select the end point. Which is suitable for large columns.
For edit scripts it is better to use Emacs. There is also a mode called CUA-mode which could select a column. And they can add an incremental number on each line of the selected columns. The best tutorial is to search CUA mode Emacs on YouTube.

edited Mar 21 '20 at 23:58

Peter Mortensen

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answered Apr 13 '13 at 11:07

Chenming Zhang

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multiple-cursors is probably a better fit that cua-mode for column editing. – Jordon Biondo Apr 13 '13 at 16:52
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Eclipse handles this well too. I remember doing this with "brief" on a 33MHz Pentium, we thought it was way cool. I also had to move from UE due to the IE6 DLL dependency on installs. – mckenzm Feb 15 '19 at 04:06
Even more convenient than using the mouse is to use the keyboard shortcut: Shift + Alt + arrow keys to select. – Peter Mortensen Mar 22 '20 at 00:05

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 09 '14 at 05:28

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Now you can download the UltraEdit for linux distributions from the following link.

http://www.ultraedit.com/downloads/uex.html

answered Apr 09 '14 at 05:28

Chanaka udaya

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Note that it's a trial version for 30 days. – XavierStuvw Jan 17 '17 at 14:56
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And it's not a purchase, [it's a subscription](https://www.ultraedit.com/register-buy/subscriptions.html) !! from £79.99 annually, here in2019 – Mawg says reinstate Monica Jun 05 '19 at 11:42
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@Mawg says reinstate Monica: Yes, and they are very unclear about it (e.g. they don't tell if the software will actually stop working). – Peter Mortensen Mar 22 '20 at 00:01

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 30 '11 at 13:55

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http://blogs.gnome.org/jessevdk/2009/11/15/new-gedit-plugin-multi-edit/

To get it, just install the gedit-plugins package and enable the plugin from Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins.

answered Aug 30 '11 at 13:55

jmotes

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This seems to be the preferred option as the ColumnMode plugin is deprecated. – nunop Jun 11 '18 at 22:45
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1126156/how-to-select-a-column-or-block-of-text-in-gedit-3-28-1 – Adam Mar 28 '19 at 18:00

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 22 '20 at 00:03

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Development on it has stopped, but NEdit is still available.

It has fantastic column editing, better than UltraEdit. It is a fast editor and you don't have to install KDE components.

edited Mar 22 '20 at 00:03

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 02 '14 at 15:15

Steve

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 06 '19 at 04:09

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Geany has this feature with ctl+shift drag mouse from the cursor

answered Apr 06 '19 at 04:09

Chandra Murthy

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score -1 · Answer 8 · edited Oct 27 '15 at 23:43

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Holding down Ctrl and making a selection will paste as a column. It's not as good as Alt+C but is quick enough for a workaround.

edited Oct 27 '15 at 23:43

zero298

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answered Oct 27 '15 at 22:35

Gergely Kölcsey-Gyurkó

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"Column Mode" in gedit?

8 Answers8