Bug#265133: xterm: horizontal scroll wheel causes beeps

[Andrew Pimlott <andrew@pimlott.net>]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2004 at 05:38:15AM -0400, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> It's easy enough to see if xterm is producing the beep (though a quick
> look through the source doesn't show me that it does).  Changing the
> control/middle-mouse menu to use Visual Bell would modify this to a
> flash if xterm is producing it, not if the library is doing it.

Boy, am I dumb.  The answer is right in the man page:

     <BtnUp>:select-end(PRIMARY, CUT_BUFFER0) \\n\\
   <BtnDown>:bell(0)

I got thrown off because I had been trying to override this by binding
<Btn6Down>, which as I discovered doesn't exist.  But the binding for
<BtnDown> does catch "unknown" buttons.  Overriding this binding to
ignore() fixes the beep as expected.

I assume the idea was to use extra mouse buttons to copy the selection
into a cut buffer, and the bell was just feedback that this had been
done (maybe it was slow on old systems?).  Given that the common meaning
of buttons >3 seems to have changed over the years, perhaps those
bindings should just be removed.  Or as a compromise, the bell could be
removed, since I doubt that copying to CUT_BUFFER0 does any harm, and I
doubt the feedback is critical for the three users of this feature.  :-)

Andrew