In computing and user interface engineering, a selection is a list of items on

which user operations will take place. The user typically adds items to the list
manually, although the computer may create a selection automatically.

Selections are enacted through combinations of key presses on a keyboard, with a

precision pointing device (mouse or touchpad and cursor, stylus), or by hand on a
touchscreen device. The simultaneous selection of a group of items (either a subset
of elements in a list, or discontinuous regions in a text) is called a multiple
selection.

Context menus will usually include actions related to the objects included in the
current selection - the selection provides the "context" for the menu.

Types
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Uses
Text selection is associated with the cut, copy and paste operations and done with
a cursor, caret navigation or touch.
Image editing applications can feature specialized graphical tools for the
selection and modification of areas and shapes or to interact with colours, such as
the magic wand selection tool, the lasso selection tool, the marquee selection
(bounding box), or the color picker. The border of a selected area in an image is
often animated with the marching ants effect to help the user to distinguish the
selection border from the image background.
Video editing programs may utilise dynamic controls and advanced digital effects on
the selected region.
Files and other interface components can be selected and used with the advent of
GUIs.
Selection and manipulation in 3D virtual environments
Range selection
A variation to facilitate the selection of a range of items in a long list on touch
screen devices is range selection, sparing the user from tapping each item
individually.

It is implemented since early versions of ES File Explorer, where only two listed
items (file or directory) need to be highlighted to select all in-between, in
resemblance to the shift key selection of desktop file managers such as Windows
Explorer and Nemo file manager.

Ideally, the two list items are navigated to with a draggable scroll bar.

Simultaneous editing
Main article: Simultaneous editing
Simultaneous editing is a technique in End-user development research to edit all
items in a multiple selection. It allows the user to manipulate all the selected
items at once through direct manipulation. The technique also appears in data
wrangling tools, allowing the user to make the same changes to several records of
the same kind in a table.

The term simultaneous editing is also used to describe collaborative editing in

collaborative real-time editors.

Column selection

Column selection in a source-code editor

A column selection is a text selection feature found in text editors which allows
the user to select characters in a grid-like fashion, selecting characters in
several lines at the same columns. This is usually initiated by pressing the alt
key (instead of the shift key, which creates a continuous selection) to select text
when dragging. Some applications also enable text to be typed in multiple lines at
once using this method as a limited form of simultaneous editing.[1]

The feature is known by different names in different applications:

block selection - LibreOffice Writer,[2] Kate[3]

column selection - EditPlus,[4] vi, Emacs
non-linear text selection - TextEdit[5]
rectangular selection - jEdit[6]
column block selection - Microsoft Visual Studio[7]
column mode editing - Notepad++[1]
Free-form simultaneous editing
The Lapis text editor,[8][9] Mozilla's Firefox developer tools,[10] and the multi
edit[11] plugin for gedit are examples of the simultaneous editing technique that
work on discontinuous regions through direct manipulation. The Lapis editor can
also create an automatic multiple selection based on an example item.

See also
Focus (computing)
Notes
References
Notepad++ Column Mode Editing
Writer/Selection Mode - LibreOffice Help
The Kate Handbook Archived 2014-05-12 at the Wayback Machine
FAQ - EditPlus Wiki
10.4: Use non-linear text selection in TextEdit
Selecting Text - jEdit
Selecting Text - MSDN
LAPIS: Smart Editing with Text Structure
Lightweight Structured Text Processing
Heather Arthur and Robert Nyman (May 7, 2014). "Editable box model, multiple
selection, Sublime Text keys + much more – Firefox Developer Tools Episode 31".
Mozilla. Retrieved 7 May 2014.
New gedit plugin: multi edit, and a demo video.
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