vEdit gives you the option of using “persistent” block highlighting. When enabled, a highlighted block remains marked until you process it or explicitly clear the markers. Simply moving the cursor doesn’t clear the markers. When disabled, moving the cursor clears the highlighting from a block; this is typical of most Windows programs.
Persistent blocks offer flexibility you otherwise can’t have:
- After marking a block, you can move the cursor anywhere and then directly copy/move the block to the new position without using a scratch-pad/clipboard; this saves keystrokes. BLOCK > Copytocursor and BLOCK > Move to cursor perform the move. The normal hot-keys are Ctrl-F9 and Alt-F9.
- After marking a block, you can easily change its size. Simply move the cursor to another location and press F9 , the hot-key for BLOCK > Set stream marker. There is no need to hold Shift during complicated cursor movement.
- After marking a block, you can restrict a search/replace to just the block.
- It is easier to mark huge multi-megabyte blocks; you don’t lose the block if you accidentally click the mouse or let go of the Shift key.
- You can make minor edit changes within the block after you have highlighted it. (The block must contain at least 1000 characters; otherwise, the new text will replace the block.)
Most block operations clear the markers after the operation is completed.
The downside of persistent blocks is that you sometimes have to explicitly clear the markers. VEDIT lets you easily clear the markers in many ways, as described in the previous section.
To enable or disable persistent blocks:
- Select Block > Persistent blocks or select config > Emulations > Enable Persistent blocks.
- To save the change for the next time you run vEdit, select CONFIG > Save config.
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