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5. Mouse usage
The mouse can be used to select (copy), and extend-select text, paste text from other terminals or applications, and bring up a menu.
5.1. Selection
The following assumes a standard three-button mouse that has not been made left-handed via the control center. Left-handed mice will of course work, but with the right button instead of the left one, and so on.
The left mouse button can be used to initiate a selection. If the mouse button is clicked once, and dragged, then characters are selected individually. If you drag past the vertical boundaries of the window it will scroll to keep up.
If the left mouse button is double-clicked, then the selection will be by word-characters. Hold the mouse button down on the second click to drag the mouse and enlarge the selection. The word-characters are defined in the General options tab of Preferences dialogue.
Finally, if the left mouse button is triple-clicked and held, whole lines are selected as you drag the mouse up and down.
The right mouse button can be used to extend the selection. Simply scroll to where you wish to extend the selection to, and click the right mouse button in the desired place. Again, single, double and triple clicks will result in by-character, by-word, or by-line selection.
For all cases, releasing the mouse button automatically copies the selected text into the clipboard, so that it may be pasted to other applications. Note that any screen output will clear the highlighting of the selection, but it will still be kept in the clipboard.
5.2. Pasting text
If the middle mouse button is pressed, then the current selection is pasted into the window. This can be used to transfer text from other applications.
If you only have a two-button mouse, then your X server probably has a method of emulating the middle mouse button. The most common method is to emulate the middle mouse button by simultaneous pressing of left and right mouse buttons. Refer to your X server documentation for further information.
5.3. Wheel mouse
If you have a wheel mouse (which sends mouse button 4 and mouse button 5 events), then you can use the wheel to scroll up and down through the scrollback buffer.
5.4. Control Menu
The pointer can also be used to bring up a control-menu, which can be used to reset the terminal or bring back the main menu bar, if it has been hidden. To invoke this menu, click anywhere in the terminal with the right mouse button while holding down the CTRL key.
5.5. Launching URL's
Gnome terminal can be used to select URL's (Uniform Resource Locators; most commonly, Internet addresses, such as http://www.gnome.org) from the text display, simply by moving the mouse over the URL text. The URL will be highlighted, by being redrawn with an underline, and the mouse pointer will change to a pointing hand.
Invoking the control-menu while over a highlighted URL will add a new option to load that URL into a browser.
Pressing the left mouse button, while holding down the CTRL key is a shortcut to launch the URL immediately.
5.6. Drag and Drop
Drag and drop can be used for a number of operations within the terminal.
- Dragging files
If files are dragged into the terminal, then their full filename is pasted into the window. URL's can also be dropped in this way.
- Dragging colours
A colour can be dragged from another gnome application, or from the colour selector into the display. If it lands on a character, it sets the foreground colour, otherwise it sets the background colour. Refer to the colour configuration section.