Added the Selection of cells till Top and Bottom

[adityar-r]

References

This Pull Request solves the issue: #6783

Code changes

The following files were changed:

1. jupyterlab/packages/notebook-extension/src/index.ts
   in which two new command definitions i.e extendBottom and extendTop have been added.
2. jupyterlab/packages/notebook-extension/schema/tracker.json
   in which two new shortcut keys are defined i.e Shift+PageUp and Shift+PageDown to select to top and bottom respectively.
3. jupyterlab/packages/notebook/src/actions.tsx
   in which the function definitions extendSelectionAbove and extendSelectionBelow have been added an extra parameter to identify selections till top or only one cell above and vice versa, respectively.

User-facing changes

Backwards-incompatible changes

[jupyterlab-dev-mode]

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[jasongrout]

How about the new toTop and toBottom parameters default to false? Then the current code does not need to change, and it is backwards compatible so this can go in for 1.2.

[jasongrout]

Thanks! I left a few review comments.

[jasongrout]

Thanks! I added a few more comments inline.

[adityar-r]

@jasongrout do I need to change any more files for accepting the pull request?

[jasongrout]

Can you look at the two outstanding comments above?

#7177 (review)

#7177 (comment)

[adityar-r]

I have made the necessary changes, @jasongrout is the file ok?

[adityar-r]

@jasongrout any more changes to be made, before merging?

[jasongrout]

@jasongrout any more changes to be made, before merging?

Thanks for your patience. I think the only thing left is picking the right keyboard shortcuts. The survey on macOS in #7177 (comment) indicates that probably Accel-Shift-Up/Down is the right keystroke on a mac. As I mention in #7177 (comment), I'm hoping someone will have time to experiment a bit on windows/linux to see if the corresponding Ctrl-Shift-Up/Down is natural there compared to common applications.

[adityar-r]

For Ubuntu(Linux):

Application	Selection Type	Select to Top	Select to Bottom	Consecutive Behaviour
VS Code	Text	Ctrl + Shift + Home (Shift + Page Up)	Ctrl + Shift + End (Shift + Page Down)	Last Extreme
LibreOffice Writer	Text	Ctrl + Shift + Home (Shift + Page Up)	Ctrl + Shift + End (Shift + Page Down)	Last Extreme
LibreOffice Calc *	Object	Column: Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow	Column: Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow	None
HTML TextArea in Firefox	Text	Ctrl + Shift + Home (Shift + Page Up)	Ctrl + Shift + End (Shift + Page Down)	Last Extreme

LibreOffice Calc : Shift + Home, Shift + End -> Selects upto the last extreme top of current column and last extreme bottom of current column respectively.

[jasongrout]

Thanks. Can you try a file browser list of files? That is a common object list that people will have experience with. Also, do you happen to know of an application that has a gnome listbox to see the behavior there?

[adityar-r]

I have tried with the gedit's( file->open), file browser list, using Shift + Home and Shift + End selects some items, but not upto the top or bottom respectively, and consecutively it repeats selecting the same number of items before or after the currently selected items respectively. I suppose after searching in nautlius(file browser of Gnome) the results are displayed in a list box, and the results are same as the file browser above.

[jasongrout]

We're trying on windows:

Application	Selection type	Select to top	Consecutive behavior
Windows Explorer (file manager)	Object	Shift Home	Last Extreme
Windows Explorer (file manager)	Object	Ctrl Shift Home	Everything
Excel 2016	Object	Ctrl Shift UpArrow	Last Extreme
Anki application	Object	Shift Home	Everything
Wordpad	Text	Ctrl Shift Home	Last Extreme
Firefox multiselect, Chrome multiselect, Edge multiselect	object	Shift Home	Last Extreme
Chrome multiselect	object	Ctrl Shift Home	Last Extreme
Firefox multiselect	object	Ctrl Shift Home	Everything
Firefox textarea, Chrome textarea, Edge textarea	text	Ctrl Shift Home	Last Extreme

[jasongrout]

@bw-space - based on these survey results, how about we have Last Extreme behavior, with the following two sets of shortcuts:

Shift Home / Shift End

Cmd Shift UpArrow, Cmd Shift DownArrow (and explicitly Cmd so that it is mac-specific) Never mind. I experimented a bit (see phosphorjs/phosphor#438), and I think it is difficult to make mac-only keybindings. The current keybinding schema insists that keys is a nonempty array, for example. So let's just do Shift Home / Shift End for now, and wait for discussion at phosphorjs/phosphor#438 to resolve before trying to add the mac-specific keybinding.

[jasongrout]

In other words, let's do Shift Home / Shift End as keybindings and we can merge this, and later we can do the mac-specific keybindings when we figure out a good way to do it.

[jasongrout]

Suggested change

	"keys": ["Shift PageUp"],
	"keys": ["Shift Home"],

[jasongrout]

Suggested change

	"keys": ["Shift PageDown"],
	"keys": ["Shift End"],

[jasongrout]

I suggested the changes to the keybindings above. If those look good to you (given the survey results above), feel free to commit the suggestions, and then I can merge.

Thanks again for working on this, and your patience in the process.

[adityar-r]

@jasongrout, I am very thankful to you for helping me in the process, you have been one of my constant guides. I am looking forward to solve more of the issues :D . It's feels great to contribute here.

[jasongrout]

I put in a PR to make it possible for us to have platform-specific bindings: #7335. So after that is merged, we can introduce the mac-specific binding too.

[jasongrout]

One last test - and it works great! Thanks again. I look forward to working with you again on another issue.

[jasongrout]

@meeseeksdev backport to 1.x

[adityar-r]

Thanks a lot, and same here. It would be great to have platform specific key bindings.

[adityar-r]

@jasongrout there has been a slight error in the key bindings above, and has been corrected.
As with the list views the key bindings are correct.
I sincerely apologise for the same.

For Ubuntu(Linux):

Application Selection Type Select to Top Select to Bottom Consecutive Behaviour
VS Code Text Ctrl + Shift + Home (Shift + Page Up) Ctrl + Shift + End (Shift + Page Down) Last Extreme
LibreOffice Writer Text Ctrl + Shift + Home (Shift + Page Up) Ctrl + Shift + End (Shift + Page Down) Last Extreme
LibreOffice Calc * Object Column: Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow Column: Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow None
HTML TextArea in Firefox Text Ctrl + Shift + Home (Shift + Page Up) Ctrl + Shift + End (Shift + Page Down) Last Extreme
LibreOffice Calc : Shift + Home, Shift + End -> Selects upto the last extreme top of current column and last extreme bottom of current column respectively.