How to backspace over only one space?

[Walter Ian Kaye]

If I have a line with several spaces, and I hit backspace at the end
of the line, it erases the entire line instead of only the last space.

How do I adjust BBEdit to only delete one space?

I looked through the prefs but couldn't find any relevant setting.

[Fletcher Sandbeck]

It seems like BBEdit will delete spaces in multiples defined by the "Tab width" setting in the Editor Defaults section of the Preferences. If you set this to 1 then it will backspace like you want.

[fletcher]

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[Rich Siegel]

On Wednesday, June 14, 2017, Fletcher Sandbeck <flet...@cumuli.com>
wrote:

> It seems like BBEdit will delete spaces in multiples defined by the
> "Tab width" setting in the Editor Defaults section of the Preferences.
> If you set this to 1 then it will backspace like you want.

You will also hate yourself in the morning.

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.

[Rich Siegel]

There is an expert preference; open the Expert Preferences help
and search for "backspace from the insertion point".

Enjoy,

[Fletcher Sandbeck]

Ugh, yeah, you're right. I was focused on the problem at hand, but changing that setting like that would be pretty irritating in the long run.

[fletcher]

[Todd Wachob]

Thank you!

Spark by Readdle

[F. Alfredo Rego]

Rich,

You wrote generically: “There is AN expert preference”. Can you please provide the SPECIFIC name and location of this preference, or the specific “defaults write” command?

My reason for asking: Searching the Expert Preferences help for “backspace from the insertion point” doesn’t lead anywhere (at least here in the mountains, under BBEdit version 11.6.7 (397078) ).

Thanks.

Alfredo

[Kerri Hicks]

On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 11:02 PM, F. Alfredo Rego <F.Alfr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Searching the Expert Preferences help for “backspace from the insertion point” doesn’t lead anywhere (at least here in the mountains, under BBEdit version 11.6.7 (397078) ).

It works fine here in the colonies...maybe this will help:

[Patrick Woolsey]

On 6/15/17 at 11:02 PM, F.Alfr...@gmail.com (F. Alfredo

Rego) wrote:

>You wrote generically: "There is AN expert preference". Can you
>please provide the SPECIFIC name and location of this
>preference, or the specific "defaults write" command?
>
>My reason for asking: Searching the Expert Preferences help for
>"backspace from the insertion point" doesn't lead anywhere (at
>least here in the mountains, under BBEdit version 11.6.7
>(397078) ).

Searching the Expert Preferences page for "backspace" should
turn up the requisite key :-), namely:

========

Clippings, Editing and Text Completion

[...]

* When you backspace from the insertion point, BBEdit will
delete a
tab stop's worth of spaces if there are only spaces (and tabs)
between the insertion point and the start of the line on
which you're
editing. This may be disabled by an expert preference if desired:

defaults write com.barebones.bbedit
Editor_DeleteIndentationWhitespaceToTabStop -bool NO

[...]

========


Regards,

Patrick Woolsey
==
Bare Bones Software, Inc. <http://www.barebones.com/>

[F. Alfredo Rego]

Thanks to your visual tip, Kerri, I manually navigated to “Clippings . . .” and I found it. Here it is, for those who might want to go straight to the point:

defaults write com.barebones.bbedit Editor_DeleteIndentationWhitespaceToTabStop -bool NO

However, for the record, this is what I get when I do my search-and-rescue in the mountains: 

SIXTY-NINE total results and just ONE for BBEdit Help, 

without a mention of “BBEdit Expert Preferences”:

Versus the TEN total results and TWO for BBEdit Help that you get in the colonies, 

including the desired reference to “BBEdit Expert Preferences”.

Here is the relevant slice from YOUR animated GIF:

Any explorers/conquerors out there who might know WHY we get different results?

Just curious.

Alfredo

<backspace from the insertion point.gif>

[Patrick Woolsey]

The cause of this behavior is that Help Viewer does not perform
exact string searches; instead, it behaves more like Spotlight
and thus is likely to report lots of spurious matches when fed
such a set of words: for instance, "point" leading to the entry
for "Set advanced Point-to-Point Protocol settings" (which has
no relation to your intent :-).

Regards,

Patrick Woolsey
==
Bare Bones Software, Inc. <http://www.barebones.com/>

On 6/16/17 at 1:26 PM, F.Alfr...@gmail.com (F. Alfredo Rego) wrote:

>However, for the record, this is what I get when I do my
>search-and-rescue in the mountains:
>SIXTY-NINE total results and just ONE for BBEdit Help, without
>a mention of “BBEdit Expert Preferences”:
>

[...]