Cursor Tricks

Cursor Tricks is a BBEdit package that massages the app to work better with my habits and intuition, using customizations I made or found. Most of these scripts, clippings and such compliment or are anchored to a native BBEdit command.

“If I can move a line down, it would be nice if I could copy a line down in a similar way.”

“If this key-command does this work in this context it should do that in another.“

This is the kind of work I want this package to do. Little friction reducers that don’t fight with the BBEdit’s default commands and settings.

It’s my throw rug for my text editor. I think it really brings the room together.

Installation, and Rake Commands

Download or clone this project. Give it the file extension .bbpackage and double click it. BBEdit will install it into ~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit/Packages. This will not install the menu scripts. There are further instructions below.

All the AppleScripts in this package are in sub-folders of the folder Uncompiled Applescripts. These are plain text versions of the scripts. The compiled versions are in a corresponding folder under Contents and are the versions used by BBEdit.

The Menu Scripts are different. They are in the package only in a plain text version. You can open them with Script Editor and save them into ~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit/Menu Scripts as compiled scripts. There are Rake commands to help install and manage the package if you wish.

Any of these scripts can be copied and installed outside of the package of course.

Rake commands

• rake install, installs this project as a Cursor Tricks.bbpackage into BBEdit’s Packages folder. It runs backup, and compiles as prerequisites before installing the package.
• rake compile, compiles all applescripts except the menu scripts.
• rake backup, backs up the installed (and presumably working) copy of this package as Cursor Tricks.bbpackage.backup in ~/Documents/BBEdit Backups/
• rake lines:compile, compiles all applescripts in the Lines directory.
• rake white_space:compile, compiles all applescripts in White Space.
• rake resources:compile, compiles all applescripts in resources.
• * rake menu_scripts:install, compiles & installs into ../BBEdit/Menu Scripts/. It doesn’t run as part of the install command, you must run this command explicitly.
• rake -T to list these commands.

Scripts

Lines:

📝 Copy Line Down

- takes the selected lines duplicates them. The new lines, below the originals, will be selected. Sort of moving down the document.

📝 Copy Line Up

- duplicates the selected lines but leaves the selection put.

These two scripts are meant as to compliments BBEdit’s Edit > Lines > Move Line Down & Edit > Lines > Move Line Up. The two native commands have the default keyboard shortcuts of ⌃↓ & ⌃ ↑. So I use and recommend the shortcuts ⌃ ⌥ ↓ & ⌃ ⌥ ↑ respectively.

📝 Smart Home Move

- moves the cursor to start of the line not including prepended white space.

📝 Smart Home Select

- selects to the start of the line not including prepended white space.

These two are meant to replace the default behavior of ⌃ ← and ⌃ ⇧ ← . They are pulled directly from this blog post. It’s well written and worth a read. Extending BBEdit with AppleScript

I made a small change to make them work in search fields. Kind of a hack and will bring up a accessibility security dialog. It tells System Events to keystroke ⌘ ↑. Which takes you to the beginning of a document. In a one line search field that is a pretty good fallback.

Strings:

📝 Select String

- selects the string literal without including delimiter (double and single quotation markes). If the string is already selected it will bump the selection out to include them.

📝 Toggle String Delimiter

- will change the delimiters from single to double quotes and vise versa, if the cursor is inside the string.

White Space:

* The cursor will be represented with a ⌇

* A selection will be represented by ⌇Some Text⌇

📝 Wrap with Spaces

- wraps the cursor or selection in spaces.

It makes this, {⌇}  
Into this, { ⌇ }

This script could be a BBEdit clipping. But making it a script seems appropriate, and keeps it from popping up in code suggestions.

📝 Clever Indent

- looks at the text on the current line, then changes and indents the next line according to what it sees.

The default behavior is to make a new line and indent it.
This should works great for languages and markup with significant indentation like Python and Haml.

Text⌇

Text
    ⌇

If the cursor is wrapped in bracket characters it will make two new lines and indent the first one.

function () {⌇} 

function () {
    ⌇
}

You might also want to bring the selection down with you.

function () {⌇selected text⌇} 

function () {
	⌇selected text⌇
}

It works the same for tags.

<div>⌇</div>

<div>
	⌇
</div>

<div>⌇selected text⌇</div>

<div>
	⌇selected text⌇
</div>

Ruby: Blocks, Control Statements, and Methods

Array.each do ⌇

Array.each do
    ⌇
end

Why not select and wrap the next line.

Array.each do⌇
puts "hello"⌇

Array.each do
    ⌇puts "hello"⌇
end

Special case for ruby block parameter delimiters.

Array.each do |⌇
	
Array.each do | ⌇ |

*All the following clips wrap the selection.

AppleScript: Control Statements and Handlers (both on and to varieties)

tell app "Finder" ⌇

tell app "Finder"
	⌇
end tell

if condition then ⌇

if condition then
	⌇
end if

on coolHandler(arg) ⌇

on coolHandler(arg)
	⌇
end coolHandler

Bash: Control Statements & Loops.

if [condition] ⌇
	
if [condition]
then
	⌇
fi

if [condition]
then
	echo "sos" | rev
elif [condition] ⌇
fi

if [condition]
then
	echo "sos" | rev
elif [condition]
then
	⌇
else
	
fi

case $var in ⌇

case $var in
	⌇)
	*)
esac

while [condition] ⌇

while [condition]
do
	⌇
done

Also include language specific behavior:

• Fish Shell fuctions, control statements, and blocks.

The Cleaver Indent script was inspired by this: Smart New Line. It does more than my script, such as incrementing numbered list. It’s pretty cool and you should check it out, but it doesn’t quite fit for me.

I use auto-pairing for bracket characters, so I wanted my script to know when the cursor was wrapped in those characters.

I wanted language specific behavior for languages I use a lot. Specifically Ruby, but broadly for languages with varying kinds of end statements.

Also I wanted it to fit with BBEdit’s New Line After Paragraph. It uses the key-command ⌘ ↵ and will make a new line without disturbing the current line or paragraph.

I set Clever Indent to ⌘ ⌥ ↵. It formats the new line as encapsulated. That could be a function, a block, or an indented list.

So my mental model is:

• ↵ for a new line at the cursor.
• ⌘ ↵ for a new line ignoring the cursor position.
• ⌘ ⌥ ↵ to make a new line encapsulated in a context specific way.

I like this a lot. I find I’m simplifying my Clippings and using less of them. I don’t have to think ahead just to use a fancy clipping with a bunch of placeholders. This works really well with me in the flow of things.

The script doesn’t just insert text but inserts a BBEdit clipping. It’s useful because it can take advantage of clippings features. Such as the #INDENT# and #SCRIPT# placeholders.

It respects expanded tabs using two terse scripts; ex_tabs.scpt & ex_tabs_selection.

Menu Scripts

📝 Window•Scratchpad & Window•Unix Worksheet

- activates the project versions of Scratchpad and Unix Worksheet if a project window is active.

This is my favorite, because it uses my three favorite features in BBEdit.

• Menu Scripts let you prepend a script to a native menu command and optionally continues with command. It also optionally appends a script so it runs after the command. Just a great idea.

• Scratchpad is a persistent document in BBEdit. The name really kind of says it. It doesn’t sound like much but in practice it’s great.

• Unix Worksheets are documents that will execute shell commands when you ⌃ ↵ at the end of a line. It’s the command line meets a text document. You can make and save as many as you like but BBEdit also has a persistent one available through the Window menu just like Scratchpad.

I have these two persistent documents assigned to ⌘1 and ⌘2 respectively.

Every BBEdit project also get a Scratchpad and Unix Worksheet. With this script the project versions are just as easy to activate. ⌘1 and ⌘2 in my case, when a project is the frontmost window.

The project Unix Worksheet will toggle back to the most recent document, if one is open. So you can switch between them quickly using only ⌘2.

If you wish to access the app level documents while leaving a project in front, then hold ⌥ and activate them from the Window menu. You can also get them by right clicking the BBEdit icon in the dock.

📝 Lines•New Line After Paragraph & Lines•New Line Before Paragraph

- captures the leading white space from the current line, then applies it to the new line.

📝 Search•Find & Select All

- after selection is made it brings Document window forward if Find Window is in front. The default key command is ⌘⌥⌃G.

📝 Select•Live Search Results

- after selecting results it dismisses Live Find bar so you can edit selection immediately. This doesn’t have a default key command. I haven’t set one but I wish I could just use ⌘ ⌥⌃G, as it is so similar to Search•Find & Select All

Both these scripts exist for the same reason. I feel if a command makes a selection that selection should immediately be available to edit. It frustrates me every time I have to dismiss an iterface element to get to my selection.

The command Select > Live Search Results has a sister command called Select > Highlighted Matches. When the curser is over a word BBEdit will “highlight” every other occurrence. Hit the command and it will select them all for editing. I set it to -and I’m kind of proud of this- ⌘⌥⌃H. It is so much like Search•Find & Select All with ⌘⌥⌃G. The functionality is basically the same and H both stands for highlight and is next to G. I truly think it should be the default.

📝 View•Balance

- will extend the selection to include the delimiters if the content between them has already been selected.

Planned Maybe Additions

• Add fancy outline and list incrementing to Copy Line Down.
• Redo Rake commands/file so it doesn't suck.