Strange behavior of TAB key - highlighting lines of text, but only in one document

[Earl Thurston]

Hi folks. I'm a newcomer to BBEdit 12, having recently migrated from the now-sunsetted TextWrangler.

I came across a sudden and surprising issue while editing the text in one of my documents. When I pressed the TAB key on my keyboard, the page scrolled to and highlighted several lines of text some distance from where I was typing. Each press of the TAB key moved the highlight to other lines.

Not sure if I somehow entered some special mode. If I did, have no idea what this mode is supposed to be doing or how to turn it off.

This behavior is only happening with one document, and it continues to happen if I close and reopen the document.

All my other open documents are behaving normally -- pressing TAB inserts a tab character.

[Rich Siegel]

On 10/24/17 at 4:04 PM, earl.t...@gmail.com (Earl Thurston) wrote:

>Hi folks. I'm a newcomer to BBEdit 12, having recently migrated
>from the now-sunsetted TextWrangler.
>
>I came across a sudden and surprising issue while editing the
>text in one of my documents. When I pressed the TAB key on my
>keyboard, the page scrolled to and highlighted several lines of
>text some distance from where I was typing. Each press of the
>TAB key moved the highlight to other lines.

The selected range of text begins with "<#" and ends with "#>",
which makes it a "placeholder". You can read about these in the
user manual. The Tab key behavior can be controlled in the
Keyboard preferences.

Enjoy,

R.
--
Rich Siegel Bare Bones Software, Inc.
<sie...@barebones.com> <http://www.barebones.com/>

Someday I'll look back on all this and laugh... until they
sedate me.

[Earl Thurston]

On Tuesday, 24 October 2017 13:11:05 UTC-7, Rich Siegel wrote:

The selected range of text begins with "<#" and ends with "#>",
which makes it a "placeholder". You can read about these in the
user manual. The Tab key behavior can be controlled in the
Keyboard preferences.

Thanks! As suggested, I turned off "Use Tab key to navigate Placeholders" setting and the expected behavior (inserting a tab character) is there now. In my case, this particular file is a ColdFusion script whereby my use of the <# ... #> combination has another purpose.

However, one thing that's puzzling is that it never happened before in all the years I've edited that document in TextWrangler, and it has the same setting. I didn't know what it was for, and since it didn't perform the same "navigate Placeholders" behavior, it has always been left "ON". Perhaps that feature never worked in TextWrangler.

[Rich Siegel]

On 10/24/17 at 4:38 PM, earl.t...@gmail.com (Earl Thurston) wrote:

>However, one thing that's puzzling is that it never happened
>before in all the years I've edited that document in
>TextWrangler, and it has the same setting. I didn't know what
>it was for, and since it didn't perform the same "navigate
>Placeholders" behavior, it has always been left "ON". Perhaps
>that feature never worked in TextWrangler.

Correct. It's a BBEdit-only feature, and the setting in
TextWrangler is vestigial.