On 24/08/2025 02:11, tomas wrote:
- Vi has lately changed its defaults for copy-paste (in an X terminal, at least). I always have to "set mouse=" to get my old behaviour back (and secretly curse at whoever had this brilliant idea).
I have "set mouse=" in my vimrc as well, but writing about the "hold Shift to select" trick in another message, I have realized that you may have another reason to dislike default behavior.
Are your complains related to selected text missed in PRIMARY selection (used by other applications) or you prefer to keep cursor in its position? In the former case, is vim package, you installed, compiled with enabled clipboard and "+,"* registers?
:echo has("xterm_clipboard")
Perhaps the snippet in /usr/share/vim/vim9*/defaults.vim (stripping
prior comments):
if has('mouse')
if &term =~ 'xterm'
set mouse=a
else
set mouse=nvi
endif
endif
may be extended to use has("clipboard_working") to enable mouse only if selected text may be put to PRIMARY selection.
Inconvenience of selection handled by terminal (with disabled mouse or holding Shift) is trouble with multiline text in vertically split window. For pasting text it is safer to avoid middle click and to use "*p or <C-R>* depending on current mode instead.