TeXstudio: How to put already written text in brackets and set the cursor at opening bracket?

Question

No MWE, for this pertains to the editor itself. I use TeXstudio mainly, but have briefly used TeXmaker a little.

When I write LaTeX documents, I very often find myself writing some text only to realise later, I want that text to be bold, italic, or in some command.

I am looking for an all-purpose way of marking text and then, preferably, some keyboard shortcut to encapsulates the marked text in curly brackets and put the cursor before the first bracket - so that I can type a command before the text or whatever markdown I need.

Marking text and then pressing keys for beginning parenthesis places the cursor at the end of the text, not even at outside the ending parenthesis. So in essence I am asking if it is possible to change what beginning curly bracket with marked text does in TeXstudio.

Answer 1

I'm not sure whether this question is asked at the right place, but nonetheless I found it interesting to try. Apparently you can add custom TeXstudio macros. In the main menu, click Macros > Edit macros.... At the right you can name your macro appropriately. The Abbreviation and Trigger option are not needed for this. The Type must be set to Script. Now you can add the following content:

%SCRIPT
c = cursor
var arr = new Array('\\{',c.selectedText(),'}');
str = arr.join('')
c.insertText(str)
c.moveTo(c.lineNumber(),c.columnNumber()-str.length+1)

Now you can achieve what you want with Shift + F1. I think you can even assign your own shortcut in the Options > Configure TeXstudio... menu.

Explanation
c=cursor This line declares a cursor object named c
var arr = new Array('\\{',c.selectedText(),'}'); This line defines an array that starts with \{ and ends with }. In between it places the text that is currently selected in the editor. The second \ is needed to escape, because it is an active character.
str = arr.join('') This line joins the array in one string (using the empty string '' as delimiter) and places it in str.
c.insertText(str) This line simply inserts the text in str.
c.moveTo(c.lineNumber(),c.columnNumber()-str.length+1) This line places the cursor to the position right after the \. The function c.moveTo takes two arguments, the first being the line number, and the second the column number. For the column number I used the current column number, minus the length of str, plus one to account for the \.

Answer 2

If the command that you want to insert is recognized and offered by the TXS autocompleter, the canonical solution is to

i) highlight the part you want to be enclosed in brackets,

ii) type the command (with the command appearing in the autocompleter), and then

iii) pressing Enter.

Additional note:

• if there is only one word you want to highlight in step (i), you can just use the Ctrl+D shortcut.

• as @samcarter mentioned, having font styles like \textbf, \emph, \textit are already available as keyboard shortcuts. Highlight the desired content to be emphasized, then apply the keyboard shortcut, e.g. Ctrl+B etc.

It also works for sub-/superscripts with their associated keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+Shift+D / Ctrl+Shift+U).

• If the command you selected has multiple arguments/placeholders, your selected text will be entered into the first placeholder (see gif).

• the latest version is 2.12.10, do update if it's available as an option to you.