"Select all" in xterm.

[grobbeltje]

I am doing my mail in an xterm. How can select all text in the
current open document, also text that is below the visible
terminal window? If I hold down the left mouse button the terminal
doesn't scroll when I get to the bottom of it. What I am looking for
is something similar to "Select All" in most editors and word
processors.

i think what you want is not possible through xterm.
xterm is just that, a terminal emulator for X, so all
it knows about is the lines that are on the screen
and maybe a scrollbackbuffer.
if you are lucky, perhaps your email client has an
option to copy everything to the xclipboard, but i have
never seen such a thing (never looked for it neither).

good luck!

[Reid Rivenburgh]

I am doing my mail in an xterm. How can select all text in the
current open document, also text that is below the visible
terminal window? If I hold down the left mouse button the terminal
doesn't scroll when I get to the bottom of it. What I am looking for
is something similar to "Select All" in most editors and word
processors.

I don't think it's possible to do something like "select all" in an
xterm. But what you can do is start a selection with the left button,
release the left button, scroll down as necessary, and press the right
button to extend the selection to wherever you clicked. It sounds a
bit complicated, but hopefully it'll become clear when you try.

reid

[Mike Castle]

Post by Reid Rivenburgh
I don't think it's possible to do something like "select all" in an
xterm. But what you can do is start a selection with the left button,
release the left button, scroll down as necessary, and press the right
button to extend the selection to wherever you clicked. It sounds a
bit complicated, but hopefully it'll become clear when you try.

One cool thing about this is that xterm will keep it's idea of selection
mode when you extend the selection.

If you single click, then extend, it stays is single char selection mode.
If you double click to select a word, then extend with the right click, it
selects the whole word your right clicked on (you don't have to be as
accurate).
And if you triple click to select a line, then the extended right click
will select the whole line.

Very nice once you get used to it.

As far as being able to select whole documents that aren't displayed fully,
you may wish to look at the tool `xselection'

I'm not sure if any distributions come with it, but it should be available
on ftp.x.org. Check groups.google.com for the necessary patch to build
against modern versions of X.

Cheers,
mrc