Using the Mouse

NEdit is one of the most mouse interactive text editors around, but you don't need to know all of the details below to be productive. You can get by with just the left mouse button, clicking to move the cursor, and dragging to make a selection.

This section will make more sense if you also read the sections, Selecting Text, and Cutting and Pasting, which explain the terminology of selections, i.e. what is meant by primary, secondary, rectangular, etc.

The general meaning of mouse buttons and modifier keys is as follows:

• Buttons
• Button 1 (left) Cursor position and primary selection
• Button 2 (middle) Secondary selections, and dragging and copying primary selection
• Button 3 (right) Quick-access programmable menu and pan scrolling.
• Modifier key
  • Shift On primary selections, (left mouse button): Extends selection to the mouse pointer.
    On secondary and copy operations, (middle): Toggles between move and copy
  • Ctrl Makes selection rectangular or insertion columnar.
  • Alt* (on release) Exchange primary and secondary selections.

 Left Mouse Button

The left mouse button is used to position the cursor and to make primary selections.

• Click Moves the cursor
• Double Click Selects a whole word
• Triple Click Selects a whole line
• Quadruple Click Selects the whole file
• Shift Click Adjusts (extends or shrinks) the selection, or if there is no existing selection, begins a new selection between the cursor and the mouse.
• Ctrl+Shift+Click Adjusts (extends or shrinks) the selection rectangularly.
• Drag Selects text between where the mouse was pressed and where it was released.
• Ctrl+Drag Selects rectangle between where the mouse was pressed and where it was released.

 Right Mouse Button

The right mouse button posts a programmable menu for frequently used commands.

• Click/Drag Pops up the background menu (programmed from
  Preferences->Default Settings->Customize Menus->Window Background).
• Ctrl+Drag Pan scrolling. Scrolls the window both vertically and horizontally, as if you had grabbed it with your mouse.

 Middle Mouse Button

The middle mouse button is for making secondary selections, and copying and dragging the primary selection

• Click Copies the primary selection to the clicked position.
• Shift+Click Moves the primary selection to the clicked position,
  deleting it from its original position.
• Drag
  1. Outside of the primary selection: Begins a secondary selection.
  2. Inside of the primary selection: Moves the entire selection by dragging.
• Ctrl+Drag
  1. Outside of the primary selection: Begins a rectangular secondary selection.
  2. Inside of the primary selection: Drags the selection in overlay mode (see below).

When the mouse button is released after creating a secondary selection:

• No Modifiers If there is a primary selection, replaces it with the secondary selection. Otherwise, inserts the secondary selection at the cursor position.
• Shift Moves the secondary selection, deleting it from its original position. If there is a primary selection, the move will replace the primary selection with the secondary selection. Otherwise, moves the secondary selection to to the cursor position.
• Alt* Exchange the primary and secondary selections.

While moving the primary selection by dragging with the middle mouse button:

• Shift Leaves a copy of the original selection in place rather than removing it or blanking the area.
• Ctrl Changes from insert mode to overlay mode (see below).
• Escape Cancels drag in progress.

Overlay Mode: Normally, dragging moves text by removing it from the selected position at the start of the drag, and inserting it at a new position relative to to the mouse. When you drag a block of text over existing characters, the existing characters are displaced to the end of the selection. In overlay mode, characters which are occluded by blocks of text being dragged are simply removed.
When dragging non-rectangular selections, overlay mode also converts the selection to rectangular form, allowing it to be dragged outside of the bounds of the existing text.

* The Alt key may be labeled Meta or Compose-Character on some keyboards. Some window managers, including default configurations of mwm, bind combinations of the Alt key and mouse buttons to window manager operations. In NEdit, Alt is only used on button release, so regardless of the window manager bindings for Alt-modified mouse buttons, you can still do the corresponding NEdit operation by using the Alt key AFTER the initial mouse press, so that Alt is held while you release the mouse button. If you find this difficult or annoying, you can re-configure most window managers to skip this binding, or you can re-configure NEdit to use a different key combination.