Re: spotlight and cutting/copying/zapping

[Benno Schulenberg]

Op 07-03-2021 om 13:03 schreef Liu Hao:
> v5.6 added the `highlightcolor`/`spotlightcolor` feature. This is really a
> significant improvement, as it was not easy to notice a match after pressing 
> Meta-W.
> 
> However, it does introduce confusion: After a match is spotted, despite the 
> color
> difference, it looks like being marked.

I think this mostly just needs some getting used to.  For twenty years,
nano only put the cursor at the start of the match and any highlighting
meant: selected text.  It will take a while before users will learn to
make the distinction between the two types of highlighting.

> When someone is tempted to cut this
> occurrence by pressing Ctrl-K, instead of spotted text, the whole line is 
> cut. Is
> there something we can improve further?

I don't know.  Any suggestions?  I've tried adding italic, but that doesn't
look nice: the last letter in the selection tends to get clipped.

Or maybe the default for selected text should become without a background
color, say "italic,orange"?  The spotlight color needs to have a background
color, otherwise it is too hard to spot.  But when selecting text, you know
what you're doing, your eyes are on the cursor already, so you just need a
relatively small contrast between selected and unselected text.

Benno

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