TextEdit for macOS Ventura: selecting discontiguous text

Bob Savryk wrote:

It appears that transitioning from TextKit1 to TextKit2 is directed toward text editing app developers?

That was just a link to the Apple Developer video documenting the change. Since this was describing a change in Ventura, that would explain why you still see the old behaviour in Monterey. The new logic is used throughout the operating system and in any app that uses text.

Hope that these developers can bring back the efficient and productive text editing I used for years.

Sorry, but it likely means the opposite. Any app that gets updated for Ventura will use the new text editing system.

I'm not very familiar with text editing logic. It may be possible to support discontiguous text selection using the new APIs. But this is an advanced feature that few apps ever supported. When Apple rewrites these things for updates, they always make them more simple. There is a reason for this. The old generation of Mac developers is either retired or dead. Everything in the future will be simple iOS code ported to the Mac.

Looks like I will search for a third party text editor similar to the OLD TextEdit.

You would have to find some app that has developed a completely different text engine. That would be extremely difficult. The only app I have that does that is Microsoft Word, and it does support discontiguous selections. In truth, if you were doing any kind of serious writing, especially any writing where you found a feature like this, you should have been using Microsoft Word in the first place.

Apple's new focus is going to be having AI do all the writing for you. You won't select anything.

PS: If you want to use Word, I recommend purchasing it using the Mac App Store. It's the same price, but the Mac App Store imposes certain technical restrictions that prevent some of the worst parts about modern Microsoft apps, such as the constant updates. I switched my subscription from direct to the App Store this year and I'm very pleased.

I found an app, LibreOffice, that does allow discontinuous text selection while holding down the ⌘ key. It's free and is an alternative to MS Office as it can open, edit and save MS Office files in either the Office format or LibreOffice's own format.

Bob Savryk wrote:

macOS Monterey's TextEdit allowed selecting discontiguous text; Ventura does not; clearly a loss in efficiency.

Is there something I am missing?

Selection of discontiguous text? 😄

In Monterey, I could select text for highlighting and changing color, adding underlining, and it did not have to be contiguous text.

I just tested this and you are, indeed, correct. In macOS Ventura, Apple changed the default text management API to the "new and improved" TextKit 2.

If you weren't already aware, Apple has been slowing porting all of iOS over to the Mac. This is something that you can't do on an iPhone, and so now, you can't do it on a Mac either.

This is an advanced feature that few users were aware of or ever used. Fewer still will be using it in the future. This is why we can't have nice things.

I did another check. It looks like TextKit2 actually does support noncontiguous text selection. I downloaded the sample code and only had to make a couple of changes to get this:

So TextKit2 can definitely do this. That doesn't necessarily mean that any 3rd party app developers would choose to implement it. Apple didn't bother when they rewrote TextEdit, which they do every year. TextEdit serves as a demo program for many of Apple's new text APIs each year. Preview serves the same purpose for image APIs.

In my previous reply, I actually thought about making an inside joke about a "sandwich app". There was one year where all of Apple's demo projects were about a sandwich app. Now that I see the screenshot, I guess that was the same year. 😄

Other than Microsoft Word, I don't know of any apps that support discontiguous selection.

Sublime Text allows non-contiguous selection.

Be sure to tell Apple what missing features you'd like restored to the system via Feedback - macOS - Apple, i.e. the squeaky wheel effect.