GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 92127
useful selection method has vanished.
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
This is a matter of debate, but I feel very strongly about this issue. There are multiple ways of selecting text in xterm and there _were_ in gnome-terminal for Gnome 1.x. Most people use left-click and dragging. I use left-click, right-click. If you haven't met this, read http://www.linux.org.uk/~telsa/BitsAndPieces/googlizer.html#selection This easier method has vanished from gnome-terminal in Gnome 2. Or at least it has in the version shipped on RH (null) which uses vte. I am told it's not there in zvt versions either (can't check). I am unhappy about this. I don't know whether it's actually a standard thing, but it's in xterm, and gnome-terminal describes itself as an xterm emulator. And with a pointing device such as a stylus, it's much easier to use this second method. The only advantage I can see for this is that users will no longer get confused when they (erroneously) right-click for the context menu. It was always supposed to be control-right-click, but people tended not to know this. So this is hardly an advantage for me, but I can see it being so for some people. But gnome-terminal has always had different keybindings and keybindings switched off. (Just think of ^S and ^Q... :))
The problem is that it breaks the right-click menu, and is inconsistent with everything else. If we were going to do this for all text widgets and editors, then it might make sense, but it doesn't make sense to me to do it only for the terminal. The arguments for/against it are not terminal specific.
Personally I always got confused about why my right-click menu stopped working in old gnome-terminal. I just don't see how it makes sense to do this for terminal only, and not for other text controls. There's no terminal-specific rationale other than "xterm did it," and well, we've already deviated from xterm in many many ways.