GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 88167
cell movement using Tab/rtn
Last modified: 2007-08-22 14:18:04 UTC
Desired result: After typing in a cell and pressing tab and repeating this procedure x times across a row, press Return (Enter) and the highlighted cell should be under the first cell of the tabbed series. Current result: Same as above except...press Return and the highlighted cell is the one under last one typed in. Desired result Example1: Starting at A1, type 4.99 Tab(to B1) 5.35 Tab(to C1) 6.99 Enter (to A2). Cell fill and position don't matter Desired result Example2: B45 Tab, C45 Tab, D45 Tab, E45 Enter. Enter should highlight cell B46 instead of E46. Advantage: Fingers can stay in normal keyboard position and fill in a large block of cells. Home and arrow keys not needed. This action is only realistic in consistent movement across a row using Tab (not arrow keys or other navigational keys).
Why is this significantly better than selecting the area to be filled and then to cycle through all cells using tab (and the right end of the selected area the cursor will jump to the left end of the selected area but one row below)?
I'm not sure if it is _significantly_ better. I was not aware of the behavior you describe but the behavior is similar. Although, there seem to be a couple disadvantages of the highlighting cells method. 1. If the number of needed columns varies from one row to the next, more keystrokes are needed when the cells are highlighted. 2. Any movement between cells other than Tab and Shift+Tab removes highlighting. This also messes up the Tab sequences but only for one row, not many, as it does when highlighting. I still would like to see the changes made, but if I am the only one, it must not be too important. I'll change the Priority to "Low."
The menu change proposal (bug 116535) contains a proposal how to handle this.
ignore my last comment (wrong bug)
Finally thought about this a bit this morning and realized it would be 6 lines of code. Patch will be in 1.7.1
*** Bug 342865 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***