Scroll while selecting

[ghost]

I can't scroll while selecting text, is there a better way that i don't know about to do this, like if i need 5 pharagpahs of text selected they are not all on the screen, so what do i do about it?

[markvanatten]

Rob Pike explained why this has not been implemented in sam (yet?) on the 9fans list, see this and this.

If the beginning of the first paragraph and the end of the last have useful patterns, use these to make the selection.

Or you can use the k command to set the mark in the file to the beginning of the first paragraph, then find the end of the last paragraph and set the dot there (e.g. by clicking), and then select these paragraphs with ',.

Alternatively, if the goal is to move the paragraphs elsewhere, you can zerox the window, search for the place you want to move these 5 paragraphs to, and cut and paste them from the first window in parts.

[ghost]

What i usually do is check the needed line numbers with '=' and then just n1,n2

Freaky situation we have now here. Either you (for some reason) really like sam, even it's not the most comfy editor, and you have no problems with it, or you have to use acme, which is a full-blown IDE to be fair, and can't really run in a multiple instances like sam. But the we have Chromium-based text editors, vi-like text editors (with no intention of a mouse used), or some indie projects. Developers after these years still can't edit text like a human beings, why are we still living either in a age of neanderthals or post-modern-1000GbOfRAM era?

[markvanatten]

just for reference, see also the end of this

and, from the old sam fans mailing list:

From sam-fans-owner Sun Mar 7 16:13:54 1993
Received: from research.att.com ([192.20.225.2]) by hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <2782>; Sun, 7 Mar 1993 16:13:35 -0500
From: rob@research.att.com
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 16:05:49 -0500
To: sam-fans@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu
Message-Id: 93Mar7.161335est.2782@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu

it would be nice, you're right. the problem lies in sam's design:
splitting the text between host and terminal makes it a logistical
nightmare to handle the scrolling during selection. it has been
tried but the communications in the middle made it too slow to
install. so engineering, rather than intention, forced the
omission of the feature.