Selecting Text QPlainTextEdit

[smhall316]

I am trying to select text programmatically using the QTextCursor in QPlainTextEdit. I am trying to create my selection by using the mouse[Press | Move | Release]Event.

def mousePressEvent(self, event):
       pos = event.pos()
       cursor = self.cursorForPosition(pos)
       self.start_pos = cursor.position()
       cursor.setPosition(self.start_pos,QTextCursor.MoveAnchor)

def mousePressEvent(self, event):
       pos = event.pos()
       cursor = self.cursorForPosition(pos)
       self.start_pos = cursor.position()
       cursor.setPosition(self.start_pos,QTextCursor.MoveAnchor)

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def mouseMoveEvent(self, event):
       pos = event.pos()
       cursor = self.cursorForPosition(pos)
       cursor.setPosition(cursor.position(),QTextCursor.KeepAnchor)
       print unicode(cursor.selectedText())

def mouseMoveEvent(self, event):
       pos = event.pos()
       cursor = self.cursorForPosition(pos)
       cursor.setPosition(cursor.position(),QTextCursor.KeepAnchor)
       print unicode(cursor.selectedText())

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When I do this and try to select, it always prints an empty string.

I know by default that selections are already handled but I am trying to understand how to selections are done so that I can do some custom tasks. I have managed to get selections to work by using setPosition() followed by movePosition() but it would not highlight the selection. I determined that the selection was working by printing out the selected text.

My questions are, why doesn't my selection code for the mouse events work and second, when I do create a selection why doesn't it highlight the selection? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Scott