This is a feature request.

Gnumeric does this differently than Excel and Openoffice.

Let's say I have a function in cell A3
=A1+A2

If I press F2 to edit cell A3, Excel and Openoffice will put different colored
boxes around A1 and A2 and color the cell references in the edit bar.  This is
very handy.

Gnumeric takes the tack of doing this one at a time depending on where your
cursor is in the edit bar.  If it's under A2 it highlights cell A2 with a blue
box, if it is under cell A1 it highlights cell A1 with a blue box.

It's true that as formulas get complex the Gnumeric approach is quite clean but
it would be helpful if the other behavior were available as well.  

Is it possible to provide both?

Say upon pressing F2, while the cursor is at the end of the edit bar all cells
could be highlighted as is done in Excel and Openoffice, and as the cursor is
moved the current Gnumeric approach is used?  That would seem to give the best
of both worlds.  

In my opinion if you don't have the Excel technique available you'll alienate a
lot of first time power users.


I'm using gnumeric 1.2.8 on the latest FC2 distro.