title: Atom Editor - How to select rectangle with multi cursor
body: <p>I have liked a feature very much in Notepad++, pressing <code>Alt</code> and selecting with the mouse enabled a rectangular selection, just like the selection on desktop...can not think of a proper term for it, maybe <code>rectangular selection</code> or <code>vertical selection</code> or <code>block selection</code>. The cool thing was that it worked also with blank line endings, it generated spaces automatically.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a similar functionality in Atom?</p>
  
  <p>So for example, an use case would be to extract a list of files with <code>tree</code> command : </p>
  
  <pre><code>.
  ├── element_portals_commands
  │   ├── depends.txt
  │   └── init.lua
  ├── element_portals_functional
  │   ├── portal_data_api.lua
  ├── liquid_portals
  │   ├── constants.lua
  │   ├── crafts.lua
  │   ├── depends.txt
  │   ├── sounds
  │   │   └── fireball_whoosh.ogg
  │   └── textures
  │       ├── ray_y_tile.png
  │       └── README.md
  .......
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>place the multi cursor at a fixed width (the last <code>|</code> for each line represents the cursor)</p>
  
  <pre><code>.                                       |
  ├── element_portals_commands            |
  │   ├── depends.txt                     |
  │   └── init.lua                        |
  ................
  │   ├── sounds                          |
  │   │   └── fireball_whoosh.ogg         |
  │   └── textures                        |
  │       ├── ray_y_tile.png              |
  │       └── README.md                   |
  .......
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and start typing </p>
  
  <pre><code>.                                       &lt;- |
  ├── element_portals_commands            &lt;- |
  │   ├── depends.txt                     &lt;- |
  │   └── init.lua                        &lt;- |
  ................
  │   ├── sounds                          &lt;- |
  │   │   └── fireball_whoosh.ogg         &lt;- |
  │   └── textures                        &lt;- |
  │       ├── ray_y_tile.png              &lt;- |
  │       └── README.md                   &lt;- |
  .......
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What I do now to achive this: </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Find and replace the end of line <code>\r</code> or <code>\n</code> with a lot of spaces <code>&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;\n</code></li>
  <li>Then <kbd>Ctrl</kbd> + <kbd>Click</kbd> my way out.</li>
  <li>Insert a char.</li>
  <li>Trim the end of the line.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I'm sure there is a better way. It is possible without any plugin? Do you know an alternative? </p>
  
  <h3>Update :</h3>
  
  <p>Some further research showed that </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Add selection below <kbd>alt</kbd>+<kbd>shift</kbd>+<kbd>&darr;</kbd></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>places another cursor beneath the current cursor... but it doesn't pad the lines with white spaces. Exists something that also pads the lines ?   </p>