Re: Suggestion for mouse-based cut/copy/yank

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> I often mark material with the mouse using triple clicks (whole
>> lines).  The double click right on the last line for deletion works
>> fine and intuitively and makes it easy to deal with whole lines.
>>
>> However, when yanking with a click, material is yanked right at point
>> rather than at the start of line.
>>
>> That is a nuisance.  So I think it would be nice to store the
>> "granularity" of a mouse click/mark away and use it to move to begin
>> of word/line before yanking.  Maybe the best way would be to use a
>> yank-handler property on the string in question.
>
> I disagree. Yank by mouse should occur at the pointer position. You
> should always be able to point and shoot.

So you are for disabling double and triple clicks for marking since
the don't require exact point and shoot?

> Direct access to any (visible) position is what a pointer device is
> all about.

Why do we then have triple clicks for marking?

> It is not always the case when you insert one or more whole lines
> that you want to insert the text at bol.

Then you could easily refrain from triple-clicks in order to mark your
text.

> You need to be able to specify the exact location using the mouse,
> and that location should not be limited by either what it is that
> was selected (e.g. whole lines) or how it was selected (e.g.  triple
> clicks).

We violate that rule already for right mouse clicks: if you have
marked a region with triple clicks, you can extend the region by
clicking once anywhere with the right mouse key.  According to your
logic, the right mouse key should only mark a partial line, then.

> You might propose that a `mouse-2' triple-click would yank at bol
> (and a double-click would yank at beginning of word), but I still
> think that this kind of thing is a bad idea.

Double click action must be an extension of single-click, since the
single click gets executed anyway.

>> It is likely that it is ok to have this work with
>> keyboard-controlled yanks from mouse-collected kill material, too.
>
> If you use the keyboard, then `C-a C-y' does what you want, no? Am I
> missing something, or would this just save you a `C-a'?

Correct, which is why this is less interesting for keyboard yanks.  So
one could well restrict this functionality to mouse-yank-at-click.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum