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Mouse
Selection
Certain content areas represent their content in terms of textual objects like plain text, formatted text, text with embedded objects etc. Those areas should provide the following modes of text selection.
Left Mouse Button
| Single Click (SC) | Action |
| SC | All selections are unmarked. The caret is placed onto the click position if applicable. |
| SC + drag | Select from the pointer, extending selection by letters. |
| Shift + SC | Extend the end of the existing selection up to the pointer position.1 |
| Double Click (DC) | Action |
| DC | Select the targeted word.2 Existing selections will be unmarked. |
| DC + drag | Select the targeted word and continue to select by word as the pointer moves, selecting to the beginning and end of any word the pointer moves onto. |
| Shift + DC | Extend the end of the existing selection up to the cursor position, then extending the beginning of the selection to the beginning of the first word covered by the selection, and the end of the selection to the end of the last word.1 |
| Triple Click (TC) | Action |
| TC | Select the targeted row.3 4 Existing selections will be unmarked. |
| TC + drag | Select the targeted row and continue to select by row as the pointer moves, selecting to (inclusively) any line the pointer is dragged over. |
| Shift + TC | Extend the end of the existing selection up to the cursor position, then extending the beginning of the selection to the beginning of the first row covered by the selection, and the end of the selection to the end of the last row.1 |
- 1
- Using the shift modifier when no selection is existing behaves as if it were not pressed in the first place.
- 2
- The definition of word is not consistent and may need to be standardized elsewhere, but not here. Especially which characters to consider as a word boundaries are not subject to this style guide.
- 3
- A row refers to a displayed row of text, not to the underlying row up to the next line-break. This is not selection by paragraph.
- 4
- When selecting by row, the row size changes if the window is resized. In this case, keep the current text selected, even though it may no longer be a whole row. If the selection by row is further expanded by the user in a row-by-row manner, expand the selection to encompass every row it is a part of.
Right Mouse Button
The RMB is not intended to be used for text selection.
Applicability
Application types which this style guide is applicable to are text editors, word processors, visual user agents (web browsers), and any other application type that features displaying textual content.
