On Mon, Mar 24, 2025 at 23:00:54 -0400, Cindy Sue Causey wrote:

Hi, mick.. I was able to do what you're asking by using the CTRL key. I clicked CTRL then dragged the cursor to select 3 or 4 words as a
phrase. I was able to then choose a few more random snippets while
holding the CTRL key down the hold time.

For whatever it's worth, I can't duplicate your success in rxvt-unicode
or Brave in fvwm (X11), but I *can* get it to work in Firefox ESR in
the same session.

It's a little bit clumsy. If I select a word/phrase lower on the page
first, and then a word higher on the page second, the resulting paste
has the higher word first.

Also, double-clicking a word selects only that word, with no whitespace
before or after it, which is normally what you want. But in this case,
the lack of whitespace can be an issue. When you double-click several
words while holding Ctrl, you get allthewordsmashedtogether.

It would be interesting to know what Firefox ESR (or more likely, its underlying toolkit) is doing differently to enable this feature. And
which other programs/toolkits also do it.

If that doesn't work at all on any given webpage, it will likely have something to do with how the webmaster coded the page.

That may be theoretically possible -- I don't know for sure. But I'm
pretty sure this is a feature of the browser itself (or the toolkit
libraries it uses), not of the *page*.

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On Mon, 24 Mar 2025 23:00:54 -0400
Cindy Sue Causey <butterflybytes@gmail.com> wrote:

That worked, but it's hinky sometimes on webpages that are already
hard to copy a single block of text on. On those pages, I don't know
what the misfire is, but selecting text insists on copying huge,
unwanted chunks of a page, if not the whole page.

Look into clipman. It won't solve the problem but will make selecting,
copying and pasting disjointed phrases faster.

--
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

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On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 08:11:14AM +0000, mick.crane wrote:

On 2025-03-25 03:00, Cindy Sue Causey wrote:

On Tue, 2025-03-25 at 02:25 +0000, mick.crane wrote:

xfce4
In things that display text you can drag the mouse over to select
blocks
of text.
Is there some way by a combination of key presses/drag mouse to
select
separated sections of text?
eg.
alpha
beta
charlie
delta
select only "alpha" and "charlie" text with mouse drag and copy.

Hi, mick.. I was able to do what you're asking by using the CTRL key. I clicked CTRL then dragged the cursor to select 3 or 4 words as a
phrase. I was able to then choose a few more random snippets while
holding the CTRL key down the hold time.

[...]

Hi,
Doesn't work here, probably I should get a keyboard with more keys, see if
is different.
Mick

I think this depends more on the application itself than on the
keyboard. Some applications will support this, some not. And,
since there is no "standard" way to express a "multiple" or
"discontinuous" selection in the underlying windows system (it's
X, probably) -- applications will find diverse and creative
ways to pass that on, if at all.

Cheers
--
t

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On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 08:55:44AM +0000, Brad Rogers wrote:

On Tue, 25 Mar 2025 09:49:37 +0100
<tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

Hello tomas@tuxteam.de,

since there is no "standard" way to express a "multiple" or
"discontinuous" selection in the underlying windows system (it's

Use of <Ctrl> for discontinuous selection seems pretty much ubiquitous. <Shift> is usually associated with continuous selection.

I can think of no applications that I use that differs from those norms.

Try with xterm. Try with LO writer. They drop the selection
when you only think of starting a new one (well: xterm shows
you a menu when ctrl-left-mouse-ing, so no next selectio for
you ;-)

What you describe is a widespread behaviour of lists, but

(a) you can select (or deselect) only whole list entries
(b) you'll be surprised at the ideas the thing comes up
with when pasting into another application (we've had
some examples in this thread)

I tried with a browser's text entry and some web "application",
and there it kind of works (pasting things in Emacs or xterm
crunches all snippets together, no separator).

Cheers
--
t

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On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 08:55:44 +0000, Brad Rogers wrote:

Use of <Ctrl> for discontinuous selection seems pretty much ubiquitous. <Shift> is usually associated with continuous selection.

Only in Microsoft Windows, or in GUI applications that try to emulate
Windows behavior. And even then, the selection you're making isn't
generally text; it's files, or some other discrete objects, which you
will subsequently drag or "paste" into another file manager window,
which is understood to mean "copy these files to this other location".

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On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 07:07:16AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 08:55:44 +0000, Brad Rogers wrote:

Use of <Ctrl> for discontinuous selection seems pretty much ubiquitous. <Shift> is usually associated with continuous selection.

Only in Microsoft Windows, or in GUI applications that try to emulate
Windows behavior. And even then, the selection you're making isn't
generally text; it's files, or some other discrete objects, which you
will subsequently drag or "paste" into another file manager window,
which is understood to mean "copy these files to this other location".

I'd be curious whether you can do text multiselection there and whether
(and how) it works cross-application.

Cheers
--
t

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On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 18:41:29 +0000, mick.crane wrote:

I don't know why I don't seem to be able to replicate what people say they can do with my basic bookworm install, xfce4 and Vivaldi browser.

Because Vivaldi is Chromium-based, not Gecko-based.

Multiple selection ONLY works in Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers, apparently.

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On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 05:10:40PM -0000, Greg wrote:

On 2025-03-25, Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> wrote:

I was able to do what you're asking by using the CTRL key.

[...]

If that doesn't work at all on any given webpage, it will likely have
something to do with how the webmaster coded the page.

It is broken in the following cases:
- Tables are used for element layout and you are trying to select text

I doubt the utility to the OP of your exhaustive and irrelevant
commentary.

I enjoyed it. Max is always very knowledgeable.

Who the hell the mentioned copying tables, but you?

Grumpy today?

Cheers
--
t

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On Tue 25 Mar 2025 at 07:55:28 (-0400), Brad Rogers wrote:

On Tue, 25 Mar 2025 11:38:25 +0100
<tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

Try with xterm. Try with LO writer. They drop the selection

Fair enough. I rarely use either xterm or LO writer. Will give it a
try.

When I started using xterm, I couldn't copy with the mouse and drag past
the top or bottom of the screen. The workaround for me is to single-click anywhere in the terminal history, go where I want, then right-click once
and the whole area between clicks is copied.

I'm including my .Xdefaults in case you find something useful.

--
Karl Vogel I don't speak for anyone but myself

I've learned that our dog doesn't want to eat my broccoli either.
--Advice given by kids

! @(#)Xdefaults 35.1 94/09/01 OpenWindows Default X Resources
!
! $Revision: 1.21+9 $ $Date: 2023-02-17 19:56:10-05 $
! $Source: /home/vogelke/RCS/.Xdefaults,v $
! $Host: furbag.my.domain $
! $UUID: d96b735c-1cb3-455e-aa5a-ad499f3a3d84 $
!
!--------------------------------------------------------------------------
! OBSOLETE?
! Xmessage*font: -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--*
! Xmessage*nearMouse: True
! AcroRead.geometry: 1040x830-0+0

!--------------------------------------------------------------------------
! Xft: X Freetype.
! The more important font DPI setting can be configured by either changing
! the default Xft.dpi: 96 setting in /etc/X11/Xresources OR by creating
! a $HOME/.Xresources file with Xft.dpi: VALUE, for example:
Xft.dpi: 110

! How to fine tune TTF rendering in Xterm
! https://superuser.com/questions/867335/
!
! Xterm configuration colors work font size not
! https://superuser.com/questions/1167528/
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.autohint: false
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
Xft.rgba: rgb

! Use in combination with xrandr (must run twice for some reason):
! xrandr --dpi 110; xrandr --dpi 110

!--------------------------------------------------------------------------
! Xterm:
! Got some of this from clark.net distribution and FAQ list.

XTerm*internalBorder: 10
XTerm*highlightSelection: true
XTerm*VT100*colorBDMode: on
XTerm*VT100*colorBD: blue
XTerm*VT100*colorULMode: on
XTerm*VT100*colorUL: magenta
XTerm.VT100.eightBitInput: true
XTerm.VT100.eightBitOutput: true
XTerm*scrollBar: true
XTerm.VT100.titeInhibit: true
XTerm.VT100*colorMode: on
XTerm.VT100*dynamicColors: on

! scrollback buffer lines - 65535 is max on most machines (64 is default) XTerm*saveLines: 20000

! http://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.faq.html
! XTerm may show boxes instead of characters if the font that you have
! selected does not contain those characters. Normally you can fix most
! of that using the UTF-8 feature, with uxterm. However, your X resource
! settings may be the source of the problem.
!
! XTerm uses the utf8Fonts subresources to provide runtime-switchable
! fonts between IS0-8859-1 (Latin-1) and ISO-10646 (Unicode). Modifying
! the Unicode font to "fixed" will make most of the characters unavailable
! (i.e., shown as boxes). Use this to NOT modify the utf8Fonts value:

*VT100.font: fixed

! http://terrencemiao.com/Webmail/msg00726.html
! how to set up xterm to control your mouse double-click selection
! Terrence Miao
! Thu, 8 Jan 2004 03:17:50 -0500
!
! The string "33:48,37:48,45-47:48,64:48" indicates that the exclamation
! mark, percent sign, dash, period, slash, and ampersand characters
! should be treated the same way as characters and numbers:
! XTerm*charClass: 33:48,37:48,45-47:48,64:48
!
! ASCII table:
! Oct Dec Hex Char Oct Dec Hex Char
! ---------------------- ----------------------
! 040 32 20 SPACE 073 59 3B ;
! 041 33 21 ! 074 60 3C <
! 042 34 22 double-quote 075 61 3D =
! 043 35 23 # 076 62 3E >
! 044 36 24 $ 077 63 3F ?
! 045 37 25 % 100 64 40 @
! 046 38 26 &
! 047 39 27 single-quote 133 91 5B [
! 050 40 28 ( 134 92 5C \ '\\'
! 051 41 29 ) 135 93 5D ]
! 052 42 2A * 136 94 5E ^
! 053 43 2B + 137 95 5F _
! 054 44 2C , 140 96 60 `
! 055 45 2D -
! 056 46 2E . 173 123 7B {
! 057 47 2F / 174 124 7C |
! 175 125 7D }
! 072 58 3A : 176 126 7E ~
!
! To select all but space character (includes square brackets):
! XTerm.VT100*charClass: 33-47:48,58-64:48,91-96:48,123-126:48

! To select all but space, backslash and square brackets: XTerm.VT100*charClass: 33-47:48,58-64:48,94-96:48,123-126:48

! Some OS versions get this wrong.
XTerm.VT100*termName: xterm-color

! Xterm should do jump scrolling. Normally, text is scrolled one line
! at a time; this option allows xterm to move multiple lines at a time so
! that it does not fall as far behind. Its use is strongly recommended
! since it makes xterm much faster.
XTerm*jumpScroll: true

! An xterm should be a login shell that honors .profile and generally
! initializes the shell environment the way you expect. I have no idea
! why the default is to not do this.
XTerm*loginShell: true

! Xterm may scroll asynchronously, meaning that the screen does not have
! to be kept completely up to date while scrolling. This allows xterm to
! run faster.
XTerm*multiScroll: true

! Uncomment this to use color for underline attribute
XTerm.VT100*colorULMode: on
XTerm.VT100*underLine: off

! Uncomment this to use color for the bold attribute
XTerm.VT100*colorBDMode: on

XTerm.VT100*color0: black
XTerm.VT100*color1: red3
XTerm.VT100*color2: green3
XTerm.VT100*color3: yellow3
XTerm.VT100*color4: blue3
XTerm.VT100*color5: magenta3
XTerm.VT100*color6: cyan3
XTerm.VT100*color7: gray90
XTerm.VT100*color8: gray30
XTerm.VT100*color9: red
XTerm.VT100*color10: green
XTerm.VT100*color11: yellow
XTerm.VT100*color12: blue
XTerm.VT100*color13: magenta
XTerm.VT100*color14: cyan
XTerm.VT100*color15: white
XTerm.VT100*colorUL: blue
XTerm.VT100*colorBD: white

XTerm.VT100*cursorColor: blue

! stop chinese character mode?
! XTerm.VT100*eightBitOutput: false

! properly set erase keys; did not work. --KEV
!Xterm*ptyInitialErase: true

! Use this to change mappings; from rxvt distribution --KEV XTerm*VT100.Translations: #override \
<Key>Prior: scroll-back(1,page) \n\
<Key>Next: scroll-forw(1,page) \n\
<Key>Home: scroll-back(100,page) \n\
<Key>End: scroll-forw(100,page) \n\
<Key>BackSpace: string(\010) \n\
Meta<Key>Prior: scroll-back(1,line) \n\
Meta<Key>Next: scroll-forw(1,line) \n\
Shift<Key>Prior: scroll-back(3,line) \n\
Shift<Key>Next: scroll-forw(3,line) \n

! You can also change the pointer shape, but apparently only to shapes
! specified in the X cursor font, not to other icons loaded as part of
! a cursor theme.
! XTerm*pointerShape: double_arrow works, but is confusing when you try
! to lengthen a given window vertically.

XTerm*pointerShape: plus

! http://shallowsky.com/linux/x-cursor-themes.html
! Using and modifying X cursor themes for big and contrasty mouse cursors
! Tue, 8 Jul 2014 12:27:05 -0400
!
! But I did manage to make the I-beam cursor stand out quite a
! bit more, with these X resources:

XTerm*pointerColor: blue
XTerm*pointerColorBackground: red

!--------------------------------------------------------------------------
! Misc, may not need these any more.
! dt.obsolete: true
! EOF

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On Mon 24 Mar 2025 at 23:19:32 (-0400), Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Mon, Mar 24, 2025 at 23:00:54 -0400, Cindy Sue Causey wrote:

Hi, mick.. I was able to do what you're asking by using the CTRL key. I clicked CTRL then dragged the cursor to select 3 or 4 words as a
phrase. I was able to then choose a few more random snippets while
holding the CTRL key down the hold time.

For whatever it's worth, I can't duplicate your success in rxvt-unicode
or Brave in fvwm (X11), but I *can* get it to work in Firefox ESR in
the same session.

I think Cindy uses FF, though it might be a mozilla download.

It's a little bit clumsy. If I select a word/phrase lower on the page
first, and then a word higher on the page second, the resulting paste
has the higher word first.

I would imagine that is because Word, I am told, does it that way.

Also, double-clicking a word selects only that word, with no whitespace before or after it, which is normally what you want. But in this case,
the lack of whitespace can be an issue. When you double-click several
words while holding Ctrl, you get allthewordsmashedtogether.

OTOH, I understand that Word does not smash the words—in fact, I think
the disjoint selections are separated by newlines, perhaps even blank
lines.

When copying from a webpage in FF and pasting in xterm, pasting
" foo " and " bar " produces " foo bar ", not " foo bar ". However,
copying from a real text file like /etc/hosts, again in FF, the
behaviour is quite different: disjoint selections are separated by a
blank line when pasted into xterm. (If you don't use bracketed-paste,
I suggest you set it before trying this.)

Cheers,
David.

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On Mon 24 Mar 2025 at 21:14:47 (-0600), Charles Curley wrote:

On Mon, 24 Mar 2025 23:00:54 -0400
Cindy Sue Causey <butterflybytes@gmail.com> wrote:

That worked, but it's hinky sometimes on webpages that are already
hard to copy a single block of text on. On those pages, I don't know
what the misfire is, but selecting text insists on copying huge,
unwanted chunks of a page, if not the whole page.

I think that's sometimes caused by copying across a frame boundary (or
whatever they're called now), which can pick up the entire frame.

But for whatever reason, I've found it sometimes helps to start the
selection at the end of the text, and drag backwards.

Look into clipman. It won't solve the problem but will make selecting, copying and pasting disjointed phrases faster.

I often assemble disjoint text in the command line itself. Having bracketed-paste set is valuable here, as it prevents accidental
multiline pastes from triggering execution of unfinished text.

In more complex cases, I just assemble things in an emacs buffer.
It saves my having to learn a new application like clipman.

In both these cases, I rely for speed and reliability on pasting at
the cursor position, rather than wherever the mouse happens to be. Unfortunately, I don't know how to make FF do this, which can make it
tricky to append more text at the end of an already full address bar.
The same goes for many other GUIs, like LO, which is just one reason
why I don't use them for handling /text/.

Cheers,
David.

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On Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 01:38:55PM -0000, Greg wrote:

On 2025-03-25, <tomas@tuxteam.de> <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

[...]

Grumpy today?

Mildly irascible, let's say.

Happens to me sometimes, too.

Cheers
--
t

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