>> Well, could one not do something like the following?
>>
>> :vnoremap <down> <down>o<down>o
>
> No, I did not mean "move the corners of the selection".
> I meants "move the contents".
> I meant "erase the contents at the old place and put the contents
> at the new place". Imagine moving text frames in the Word.
> This is what I mean. As if the selection are is a floating
text frame.
> For example. Given the file:
>
> |--------------
> |abcdefghijk
> |123456789
>
> I select rectangle 2x2 "ab\n12" with Ctrl-V.
>
> I press Down and Right.
> The result shall be approximately like:
>
> |--------------
> | defghijk
> | ab456789
> 12
>
> Depending on sophistication, and text under
> the moving rectangle can be either erase with blanks, or
> preserved. (more difficult). I'd make it an option.
I presume your example should be
|--------------
| cdefghijk
|ab3456789
|12
with the "c\n3" and the "d" back over the "4" in there
which mysteriously vanished from your example.
The following suite of mappings seems to do what you
describe:
:vnoremap <down> ygvr<space>gvoo<down>o<down>pgv
:vnoremap <up> ygvr<space>gvoo<up>o<up>pgv
:vnoremap <left> ygvr<space>gvoo<left>o<left>pgv
:vnoremap <right> ygvr<space>gvoo<right>o<right>pgv
I'm not sure why they need the "oo" in them, but I may have
stumbled across a bug. Without it, the 2nd and subsequent
uses mangle the selection when you move. At least in the
<down> case...I just left it in there for the other 3 cases.
To reproduce it here, I simply
:vnoremap <down> ygvr<space>gv<down>o<down>pgv
and then visual-block something and hit <down> twice.
Debugging showed that on the second attempt, the <down>
didn't move the selection properly.
I don't know so much about swapping bits around or
remembering what got overwritten for later replacement
rather than just erasing with spaces. That, as you say,
would be considerably "more difficult".
-tim
