Multiple cursors

Bike Outliner
1

I’d love to suggest multiple-cursor editing for Bike, similar to what many code editors and IDEs provide.

I think it could fit Bike unusually well because it doesn’t need to add any permanent UI, panels, buttons, or visual clutter. It would simply be another editing capability that stays completely invisible until you use it.

For example:

  • Option-click to place additional carets

  • A command to select the next occurrence of the current selection

  • Editing several matching pieces of text at once

  • Adding or removing the same prefix, punctuation, formatting, or wording across multiple rows

I use Bike primarily as a text editor for structured text, and this feels like one of those features that could be incredibly useful for some people without making the application feel more complicated for everyone else.

It also seems particularly natural in Bike because rows already give text a lot of structure. Being able to edit several independent locations at once would make repetitive cleanup and restructuring much faster, while keeping the editor itself just as clean as it is now.

Not something I’d want to turn into a large feature or a new mode, just a lightweight editing capability that stays out of the way when unused.

2

I agree with most of what you say, but I don’t expect to add this.

The problem is I implementing it would add more complexity to the codebase then I want. It would require making the extension API more complex. Bike’s editing model is already a bit more complex then standard editor, handling cases for focus and fold state. Adding extra selections would just make that even harder.

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