Pages release notes say "Press and hold the Command key to select noncontiguous words, sentences, or paragraphs”.
That's an original 1984 Macintosh feature.
@alexr So, I just fired up TeachText in System 1.0, and holding the Command key does not seem to let me select non-contiguous text. Would you mind giving it a try? I'm curious if I just didn't know how to do it at the time. https://infinitemac.org/1984/System%201.0
@alexr Yep, it's described in the 1992 HIG too (page 291), but I suspect that was intended to be more prescriptive for future implementations.
I can't even command-drag to select text non-contiguously in OS-level text fields in Sonoma, outside of the new Pages release. It would have had to be a custom text engine in MS Word or something.
@dbergey It’s how discontinuous selection works elsewhere like lists and Finder, etc. so laying down that that’s what Command is for also prevents apps using it for something else and creating confusion.
@dbergey Found it in the documentation fo the List Manager, so yes, it's been there since 1984, perhaps not in text (jury's still out until we can check the CoreEdit package and other text editors from the era).
Either way, it was a well-known modifier key usage for discontinuous selection dating to then.
It doesn't appear so; the behaviour is similar to, say, selecting multiple non-adjacent items in a Finder window in "List" view mode by holding command as opposed to shift.
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