Ctrl+arrow key on space-less language should jump by word not to the next space

Use case or problem

Ctrl+arrow key should jump by word even in languages that doesn’t separate words with spaces (such as Thai). Currently in Obsidian the cursor jumps to the next space in the arrow’s direction, even though in other Windows application (such as Notepad or any textboxes) when you use these key combinations the cursor jumps by word.

This feature will greatly increase the usability of Obsidian in such languages, since the current behavior is as if the cursor jumps to the next period while you just want to move a few words.

To reproduce please try this:

In Notepad or any textboxes in a web browser. (Expected behavior)

  1. Copy and paste the following Thai phrase without the quotation marks “ภาษาไทยไม่เว้นวรรค”
  2. Place the cursor at the very end of the phrase
  3. Press ctrl+left arrow once.
  4. Observe that the cursor is now at the position of the pipe as follows “ภาษาไทยไม่เว้น|วรรค”
  5. You can press ctrl+arrow several times and the cursor will stop at any of the positions of the pipe illustrated here: “|ภาษา|ไทย|ไม่|เว้น|วรรค|”

In Obsidian. (Current behavior)

  1. Copy and paste the following Thai phrase without the quotation marks “ภาษาไทยไม่เว้นวรรค”
  2. Place the cursor at the very end of the phrase
  3. Press ctrl+left arrow once.
  4. Observe that the cursor is now at the beginning of the phrase.

I don’t know if this also happens on other platforms and key combinations on other platforms might be different.

Proposed solution

Make sure the editor of Obsidian behaves in the same way as a normal Windows textbox.

I suspect the current implementation overrides the key combination with a custom logic. It’d be great if that can be reverted while making sure that other features function as intended.

Current workaround (optional)

No

Related feature requests (optional)

No

1 Like

What you are asking is a very hard thing to do. I am not sure if our editor Codemirror supports this.