Subject: [PATCH] Rectangular region selection with mouse

From: Mattias Engdegård <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 22:55:26 +0100

This is a proposal to add mouse-selection of rectangular regions. It turns out to be useful; Emacs should come with the facility built-in.

The main problem is what to bind it to. The common modifiers (shift, control, meta) are already taken. Platforms have different "standard" modifiers: Option on macOS, Alt on Windows, Control in Gnome (?).

Assuming that the secondary selection is somewhat of an anachronism which is likely to be less used today than the rectangular one would be, the patch uses Meta as default modifier. Both secondary and rectangular mouse selection have defcustoms permitting easy change.

The defaults could be different, for example if secondary mouse selection turns out to be very popular.
There is no documentation yet.