Version: (using KDE KDE 3.5.7) Installed from: SuSE RPMs In other words select-all is a little broken, because it should be 100% equivalent to: ctrl+home ctrl+shift+end But unfortunately it isn't and thus you cannot (for example) unselect last rows after select-all. It is unselectable though, but in such manner that there is no gain at all.
Yup... seems the cursors are not set by 'select all', unless anyone knows any reason why this behavior is desired, I will look into fixing it when I get a chance.
Let me chime in before some useful legacy behaviour may be destroyed. In KDE 3, Select all was 100% compatible to Ctrl+Home, Shift+Ctrl+End *except* that the current cursor position was retained (i. e. if you hit right arrow, the cursor was moved one character to the right it started *before* select all was invoked instead of jumping to the end of the file). This behaviour is utterly useful especially if one hits Ctrl+A for Ctrl+S and should not be sacrifised.
Leo, I don't use it, but it is useful indeed. But it does not conflict with unselectable selection -- it is just matter of checking if user is selecting or moving cursor.
One more note: a) you select-all and you see the cursor position is not changed, so you can press right-arrow key and the cursor moves one character right from the position it was before select-all b) you select-all and despite the cursor position is not changed you can press shift+up and the last line is unselected You can call such behaviour as delayed cursor placement (whatever, name is not important, idea is) -- with this feature user would get even more powerful selection options. She/he can (after select-all) unselect first lines and the cursor is placed there after she/he unselect them, in block mode it is possible to unselect first N or last N columns. Pretty nice.
Same issue for KMail: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150511
actually kate on KDE4 is doing something strange: 1) open a file with multiple lines 2) move the caret at half 3) CTRL+A 4) SHIFT+UP (or SHIFT+DOWN) one or more time 5) CTRL+A again 6) SHIFT+UP (or SHIFT+DOWN), the selection done on the fourth step is modified.
Confirmed, it is probably double selected so (6) deselects what was selected before ignoring the fact there is global selection.