double click to select phrase

[Don Christensen]

Olivier Fourdan wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Anthony Ewell wrote:
> [...]
>>     In the gnome terminals and the raw terminal (no GUI), I
>> noticed that double clicking on a phrase will highlight the
>> entire phrase.  Where in XFce, I only get a single word
>> highlighted.  (I then paste with the middle mouse button.)
>>
>>     For instance, in gnome or raw terminal, double clinking on
>> the "Try" of the phrase "Try_and_copy_me", highlights
>> the entire phrase, where in XFce, I only get the "Try"
>> highlighted.
> 
> Humm, the standard way is double click == select word, triple click ==
> select line, quadruple click == select all text (not all apps allow that
> though).
> 
> Gnome and the console just work like that, and so does Xfce. Nothing
> different here. Maybe a difference in the double click timeout
> (settings->Mouse settings->Double click speed)

I would suspect that the issue has to do with the "word separator"
characters (called "Select-by-word characters" in gnome-terminal).
Double-click is usually defined to select a "word", but the definition
of word varies and is sometimes configurable.

For me, gnome-terminal is set to use -A-Za-z0-9,./?%&#:_ as word
characters, so anything with letters and underbars is considered a
single word for selection purposes.  Contrast this with, for example,
XEmacs, which considers _ as a word separator, so a double-click
selection will stop at the underbars.

Check very carefully to see what terminal app is running in the
various situation where it works and does not work, then see if
you can configure the app(s) that don't work properly.

-Don

-- 
Don Christensen       Senior Software Development Engineer
djc at cisco.com         Cisco Systems, Santa Cruz, CA
   "It was a new day yesterday, but it's an old day now."