Make multi-message selection easier
Selecting multiple messages for copy-pasting is part of my normal workflow dealing with chat partners. Simple direct selection with the mouse went away due to the move away from a single textbox. The issues with the new approach I'm seeing:
- What I was doing doesn't work anymore, with no solution apparent on first sight.
- I didn't notice the sandwich menu on mouse over, or subconsciously ignored it because I wanted to do multi-cell selection not do something with the particular cell that brought up the menu.
- After pointed out to me in the chat, going through the motions is massively slower than before: it went from simple select (selection alone is enough for middle click into the target app, hence 1 step) to a 5+ step process for copying (mouse over, hit the sandwich menu (which is very narrow), hit the "select messages" menu entry, hit cursor key multiple times to extend the selection, hit copy)
Description of the new feature
lovetox suggested to add a shortcut that enables multi-selection mode. That will reduce it down from the 5+ steps down to some fewer steps, but can't bring it back to 1 unless further changes are made.
My suggestion is:
- Activate multi-selection modes when the user clicks into a message then drags the mouse to other messages. Alternatively, when the user triple-clicks into a message then drags the mouse to other messages. Alternatively when the user holds down control then clicks into a message then drags the mouse to other messages. (Choose according to whether you want to keep some of those actions free for other uses, if there might be any.)
- Make the multi-selection an actual selection that can be copied via ctl-c or is in the X selection ready to be pased (the button to copy seems redundant and less practical to use).