Make text entry in all controls and indicators respond to the Crlt-A (select all) keyboard shortcut

[littlesphaeroid]

Certain keyboard shortcuts are standard across operating systems and applications. When doing text entry, LabVIEW implements ctrl-c, crtl-v, and ctrl-arrow keys for text selection and manipulation, but does not allow ctrl-a. I have implemented this for string controls. 

I would like to see this be the default behavior for all text entry. 

In LabVIEW, ctrl-a currently selects all objects on the FP or BD. But when the cursor is in an active text field, ctrl-a should select all text in that field. This should include strings, tables, graph labels, control labels and captions, numeric controls and indicators, free labels, and so on, and should work in development and at runtime.

[Petru_Tarabuta]

+1. A current workaround is to triple-click inside the text field. This will select all the text. Double-clicking on a word will select that particular word. This works in edit-mode. I'm not sure if it works at run-time.

[Petru_Tarabuta]

P.S. Double-click (select word) and Triple-click (select whole text) do work at run-time and built EXEs too.

[littlesphaeroid]

I would say that clicking is not a "workaround". It's one of the many ways you can select text. Another is to click and drag. Another is to use shift and arrow/ctrl keys... If any of these standard features didn't work in LabVIEW, I'd ask for them as well 🙂

[Christina_R]

An update on how LabVIEW R&D plans to respond to this Idea in a future version of LabVIEW:

• Any time text editing is active (when editing a VI panel or block diagram text label, string, etc., or in a dialog text field), pressing Ctrl-A (or the platform equivalent shortcut) will select all text.
• The "Select All" item in the Edit menu will be enabled at some times it is currently not, such as when a VI is in Run mode but a text field is being edited. Currently, there is an Edit->Select All item in the menu for dialogs, but selecting it does nothing and pressing Ctrl-A actually inserts an 'a' character into the text. This will be fixed to operate as expected.
• If a user VI is handling application menu events (Filter or Notify), they will continue to fire normally, just like other Edit menu items like Copy and Paste. 
• On Linux and Mac, the primary menu modifier key is not Ctrl, and we support Emacs-style text editing keys, where Ctrl-A already means beginning-of-line.
  - On Mac, there is no conflict, because the menu shortcut key is Cmd; Ctrl-A will keep the Emacs binding, while Cmd-A will Select All.
  - On Linux, the menu shortcut key is the 'Meta' key (which is a historical Unix-y name inherited from the defunct Solaris version) that we map to Alt on PC keyboards. However, LabVIEW on Linux has a preferences option "Use Control as menu/meta key", which is set by default, which allows the user to use Ctrl as a menu shortcut key as well. This creates a conflict between the two bindings. To allow both actions, Ctrl-A will keep the Emacs binding, and Alt-A will Select All.
  If a user wants to use Ctrl-A for Select All instead, there is already an INI setting to exempt specific keys from using their Emacs bindings they can use to override this: Editor.EmacsTextEditing.ExceptKeys=<string>. For example, setting Editor.EmacsTextEditing.ExceptKeys="aw" will allow Select All and Close Window menu bindings to override the Emacs bindings.