SimpleMovement plugin

This plugin started very humbly, and is now my dumping ground for all movement, selection, and very simple insertion commands.

If you use it to the fullest, you'll have what I consider to be better newline, selection, and movement commands.

Newline

• Pressing enter while writing comments continues writing comments
• Pressing super+alt+enter inserts a ; in languages that need it, in places where they are needed. In Python, it inserts a : at the end of lines that start withdef/for/while/etc
• alt+enter inserts a “\n” and begins at the beginning of the line
• super+shift+enter inserts a line above the current line

Beginning/End of Line

Pressing super+left goes to the very beginning, unless you're already there, then it goes to the first non-whitespace character.

super+right does the same, but for the end of line.

Goto line

super+l has super powers. You can select a range (12,20) a single line (40,), or use relative locations (-1,+1)

Duplicate line

super+shift+d uses the same line parsing as goto-line, but inserts the lines you choose at the current cursor location(s).

Selection/cursor manipulation

• Selecting “blocks”: Use the keyboard to select a bunch of text, then ctrl+shift+b to turn it into separate selections. Useful for doing ASCII art, among other things.
• Selecting characters: Turn selection(s) into 1-character selections; useful for selecting whitespace and converting into periods or dashes.
• Select next: this is my version of the built-in and handy super+d. My version does not “wrap” to the beginning, and there's a bug when selecting whitespace that my version doesn't have.
• Quick find: I don't like the way “Incremental Find” works in sublime text. I prefer the quick-and-immediate search that TextMate provided via ctrl+s. Then I added regex search, search+extend-selection (with support for multiple cursors) and reverse search. You should master these, they are REALLY REALLY useful!
• Multiple cursors => less cursors: I really love the multiple cursors feature of Sublime Text. The simple_movement_one_selection command can either remove one cursor, or select one of the cursors. For instance, I might select five things, then iterate through then using super+1..5. Or select all of them in the document, and go to the first or last. Or unselect the first and last, or select the odd or even selections. Again, really useful, but you'll need to learn them.

Inserting text

Sometimes you just need a way to insert some text. I bind ctrl+v,( to insert a literal '(', otherwise typing '(' auto-inserts (thanks to SublimeBracketeer) a pair of parentheses.

Also handy is a command that brings up a palette to select some text to insert. The simple_movement_snippet_picker command is additionally useful because it actually inserts using the insert_snippet command, so you can bind a collection of related snippets to a keypress and choose them using quick-search. I use it to make it easy to find ⌘⇧⌃⌥.

Aligning the cursor

Actually, wbond has a much better plugin, but this one works using multiple cursors.

Moving the viewport

I used this ability in TextMate a lot, and wanted it here. It's basically using the keyboard to scroll, by a little or a lot.

Select duplicates

Select a bunch of things that might be similar, then activate this command. It will unselect the first of each unique item, leaving it up to you what to do with the duplicates.

Installation

1. Using Package Control, install “SimpleMovement”

Commands

simple_movement_bol

Moves the caret to the beginning of the line. - If the cursor is already at the beginning of the line, it will move to the first non-whitespace character. - accepts an extend option, which moves the cursor while selecting from the previous cursor location.

simple_movement_eol

Moves the caret to the end of the line. - If the cursor is already at the beginning of the line, it will move back to the first non-whitespace character. - accepts an extend option, which moves the cursor while selecting from the previous cursor location.

simple_movement_insert

Inserts a character. Used to insert literal quotes, tabs, anything. - If you use smart quoting plugins, this is a way to bypass those. I use ctrl+v," for example, to insert just a single " - you must provide the insert: "text" option to this command.

simple_movement_select_block

Changes a multi-line selection into multiple block selections. Each block will begin and end at the same column, as determined by the start and end points of the original region.

Select a block of text, activate this plugin, and now you'll have each line selected. I often use this to select an entire file, then this command gives me a cursor on every line. Like if I'm editing a log file for instance.

simple_movement_select_chars

Change selections into multiple one-character selections. I use this to convert a bunch of whitespace to periods, or change dashes to underscores.

Select some dashes or whitespace (or anything), activate simple_movement_select_chars, and hit _ or .. Every character will be replaced.

simple_movement_align_cursor

Inserts spaces so that all the cursors are on the same column. If move is left, it removes spaces (so the text moves to the left) instead of adding them. - This tries to be pretty smart about what cursors to give you when you're done. For example, if the first line looks like a “header”, it will deselect that line. Useful for any code editing, but also has support for “objc-style alignment”, where you want all the : to line up - accepts the move: 'left'|'right'|'align' option, defaults to right. Move all the text to the left, to the right, or align the current cursors (objc-style : alignment)

simple_movement_goto_line

Can be given a line number or line numbers, and that will become the selection. - Great “goto line” replacement. It can parse the input to “goto” multiple lines, in which case it also selects those lines. - Jumps to the line(s) you type while typing, hit esc to go back, so a great way to preview a section of code, then go back to where you were

simple_movement_duplicate_line

Takes the same arguments as simple_movement_goto_line and copies those lines to the current cursor. Try -1 to duplicate the line above. - uses the same line(s) parsing as simple_movement_goto_line. Inserts the lines you specify at the current cursor(s).

goto_line and duplicate_line both support cool line selection tricks:

• 123: Goes to line 123
• 123,: Goes to line 123 and selects it
• 123,,,,: Goes to line 123 and selects it and the next 3 lines
• 123,125: Selects lines 123-125
• -1,+1: Selects one line up, the current line, and one line below
• ,,,: Select the current line and next 2 lines

The duplicate line command supports all these, but duplicates those lines at the current cursor location rather than moving the cursor.

simple_movement_nl

Inserts a newline, or moves caret to end of line. Can also insert line-ending characters and unindent. Quite a few options:

1. hard_nl true|false: inserts a newline, and keeps the cursor at the first position; doesn't try to match whitespace
2. with_terminator true|false: in languages that use a ; as the line terminator, this option inserts the terminator at the end of the current line.
3. insert_nl true|false: if false, it doesn't insert a newline! weird, but makes sense when you combine it with with_terminator. Inserts a semicolon if there isn't one there, then goes to the end of the line.
4. unindent: true|false: Useful in python, where there's no real way for the editor to detect unindention, so you can explicitly tell it to unindent with this option.
5. with_comment: true|false: If this is true, then it will take comments into account - for instance it will 'continue' a block of comments, or it will end a block of comments if unindent is true.

Honestly, this command does a ton of stuff. Check out the example key bindings for my configuration, then practice them to see how they work.

simple_movement_select_next

At one point, some version of Sublime Text changed how “Quick Find Next” (super+d) worked. This command makes super+d the same simple powerhouse it's meant to be. - works intuitively (for me!) with multiple cursors - has a select_all option to select all instances of the current selections.

simple_movement_one_selection

This command is used to select or UNselect one of your cursors. I work with multiple cursors A LOT, and I love this command. I have it bound to super+1..0, but super+0 selects the last cursor, which is often very handy.

super+shift+1..0 unselects a cursor, usually I just need to use super+shift+1 or super+shift+0 to unselect the first or last cursor.