OSX: modifying text selection with ⌘⇧→ and ⌘⇧←

Question

I've selected some text using my keyboard, starting at the bottom line and moving up (the | character indicates the cursor position):

AAA |{BBB CCC

DDD} EEE FFF

---

Now, I would like to change the selection so that it starts at the end of the first line, i.e. so that it looks like this:

Expected result:

AAA BBB CCC |{

DDD} EEE FFF

---

I can reduce the selection word-by-word with ⌥ ⇧ →:

---

But the natural way to do it would be via ⌘ ⇧ →, to jump directly to the end of the first line. In many decent text editors this works fine (for instance Sublime Text 2). They also keep the | position visible when text is selected btw.

The default behaviour of OSX apps, however, is that they ignore the fact that the cursor is currently at the start of the selection, and moving it to the right should remove the selection there. Instead, ⌘ ⇧→ always extends the selection from its end until the end of the line, no matter where the cursor currently is:

Actual result:

AAA {BBB CCC

DDD EEE FFF}|

---

Is there any way to make also native OSX apps behave the expected way?

I'm on OSX Yosemite 10.10.2 but I think this issue has been there as long as I can remember.

Answer 1

Mac doesn't use the cursor position if you have a multiple text selection, it considers the cursor is at 'all selected text'.

You can see this demonstrated if you use Cmd ⌘ Shift ⇧ ← instead of →
Adding to the selection with Shift ⇧ includes the previous selection.

Not a fix, but a workaround might be → which would move the cursor to the end of your current selection, simultaneously deselecting it, then Cmd ⌘ Shift ⇧ ← to select to the beginning of the line.

Answer 2

So, the way I see it, text navigation on OS X works (and is expected to work) like this:

1. Navigate per line (or document, i.e. huge chunks of data):

   cmd+arrow keys : moves by lines (left/right for lines, up/down for the whole document). Hold shift to select

2. Navigate per word (i.e. small chunks of data):

   alt+arrow keys : moves by word (left/right). Hold shift to select.

So to achieve your "expected result" you should press the right arrow first to get it to the end of your current selection and then cmd+shift+ ← to select the line leading up to it.

When you already have a selection:

1. using the alt key combo's above will increase/decrease the selection based on direction (always modifying the end-point of your previous selection, presuming that you've missed the end point slightly). Same goes for adding single characters with shift+arrow keys only.
2. the cmd combo's increase in both directions, presuming you're after selecting big chunks of text anyway.

---

Update

Long story short: what you want isn't really possible. If you look at the list of available system key bindings by running

plutil -convert xml1 /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Resources/StandardKeyBinding.dict -o -|pl|grep -v noop:|ruby -pe '$_.gsub!(/[^ -~\n]/)' | grep -i selection

You'll see that even though you can bind custom keys to all selection functions ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict there is no such function that achieves your requested behaviour (since this behaviour is not built into the system).