Selecting text past the visible viewport in the terminal emulator could be improved

[Curculigo]

OK, it now works when selecting from bottom to top, but it doesn’t work when selecting from top to bottom.

Another fun observation: If the selected text fits within the visible viewport (so no autoscroll is needed), clicking inside the text block properly deselects it. However, if autoscroll is applied (when selecting text beyond the visible viewport), you need to click twice inside the text block to deselect. In both cases, a single click outside the selected text is enough to deselect.

[SpartanJ]

 OK, it now works when selecting from bottom to top, but it doesn’t work when selecting from top to bottom.

I cannot reproduce it, it works fine for me on both directions. Can you share a video or a screenshot doing selection? The only condition necessary on both directions is that the mouse must go outside the terminal view.

 Another fun observation: If the selected text fits within the visible viewport (so no autoscroll is needed), clicking inside the text block properly deselects it. However, if autoscroll is applied (when selecting text beyond the visible viewport), you need to click twice inside the text block to deselect. In both cases, a single click outside the selected text is enough to deselect.

True! I'll send a fix in my next commit.

[Curculigo]

OK, it now works when selecting from bottom to top, but it doesn’t work when selecting from top to bottom.

I cannot reproduce it, it works fine for me on both directions. Can you share a video or a screenshot doing selection? The only condition necessary on both directions is that the mouse must go outside the terminal view.

It doesn't work for me in the downward direction. I tried resizing the ecode window so the mouse is no longer stuck on the taskbar, but it still doesn't work. It seems that the mouse simply goes outside the ecode window, causing ecode to lose track of it.

[Curculigo]

Yeah, I can confirm this now. I resized the ecode window so it no longer occupies the whole screen. I opened a very long single line text with nano. I tried to select it from left to right, but as soon as the mouse goes outside the ecode window, everything stopped working.

[SpartanJ]

This feature cannot work with nano because it uses the alternate screen, there's no such thing as a screen buffer, nano doesn't even support mouse features. In alternate screen you need an editor with mouse support and the editor must implement this feature itself, micro does this. But this feature will mostly work on the shell. This is not my fault, it's how terminals work.

[Curculigo]

This feature cannot work with nano because it uses the alternate screen, there's no such thing as a screen buffer, nano doesn't even support mouse features. In alternate screen you need an editor with mouse support and the editor must implement this feature itself, micro does this. But this feature will mostly work on the shell. This is not my fault, it's how terminals work.

So my experiment with nano is faulty. But the original issue doesn't have nano involved. It's the output of the build system on the terminal emulator. The feature doesn't work for me in the downward direction.

My conjecture is still the same: the mouse goes outside of the ecode window and ecode loses track of it.

[Curculigo]

@SpartanJ I have tested with MSYS2 Mintty and other terminal emulators. I found that text selection works even when the mouse passes outside the terminal emulator window. Can you do the same with ecode?

[SpartanJ]

Can you help me understand what I'm doing differently, please?

simplescreenrecorder-2025-12-20_12.03.32.mp4

[Curculigo]

The issue was fixed in the latest nightly. I didn’t notice that you committed the new code during our previous discussion.

[Curculigo]

@SpartanJ I found a limitation in ecode's implementation. It requires continuous mouse movement even when the cursor is outside the ecode window. In other terminal emulators, this isn’t necessary. They automatically scroll and select to the end of the text as long as you have the mouse cursor outside the window and you still hold the mouse button. Could you look into improving this behavior?

[SpartanJ]

It requires continuous mouse movement even when the cursor is outside the ecode window.

It shouldn't, you can see in my previous video (recorded from Windows) that I stop moving the cursor can continues selecting, not sure why it's happening to you. This case has an explicit handling, so I'm unsure how it's not working in your case 🤷.

Linux neither has any issue:

simplescreenrecorder-2025-12-21_00.20.09.mp4

[Curculigo]

It's weird on my system. It stops not only when I stop moving the mouse, but also when I keep moving the mouse downward vertically. I have to keep moving the mouse cursor horizontally outside the ecode window to properly select the text.

[Curculigo]

Try it on Windows 11. I’ve upgraded to Windows 11 (LTSC). The taskbar on Windows 11 is annoying. I suspect it’s the culprit.

Update: Confirmed that it’s the Windows 11 taskbar. Everything works as expected if I resize the ecode window to leave space between it and the taskbar.

[SpartanJ]

Update: Confirmed that it’s the Windows 11 taskbar. Everything works as expected if I resize the ecode window to leave space between it and the taskbar.

Yes, I just reproduce it, you also need to not have the statusbar visible. I think I can fix it with an small hack but I don't have a proper development environment on Windows 11, so I'll push the tentative fix, it should be available in the next nightly build.