Node:Using the mouse, Next:Using the keyboard, Previous:Usage of ECB, Up:Usage of ECB

Working with the mouse in the ECB-windows

Normally you get best usage if you use ECB with a mouse. ECB distinguishes between a primary and a secondary mouse-button.

With the option ecb-primary-secondary-mouse-buttons the following combinations of primary and secondary mouse-buttons are possible:

• primary: mouse-2, secondary: C-mouse-2¹. This is the default.
• primary: mouse-1, secondary: C-mouse-1
• primary: mouse-1, secondary: mouse-2

If you change this during ECB is activated you must deactivate and activate ECB again to take effect.

The primary mouse-button

A click with the primary button causes the main effect in each ECB-buffer:

• ECB Directories: Expanding/collapsing nodes and displaying files in the ECB-Sources buffer.
• ECB sources/history: Opening the file in that edit-window specified by the option ecb-primary-mouse-jump-destination.
• ECB Methods: Jumping to the method in that edit-window specified by the option ecb-primary-mouse-jump-destination.

The POWER- or SHIFT-click

A click with the primary mouse-button while the SHIFT-key is pressed is called the POWER-click and does the following (depending on the ECB-buffer where the POWER-click occurs):

• ECB Directory: Refreshing the directory-contents-cache (see ecb-cache-directory-contents).
• ECB sources/history: Only displaying the source-contents in the method-buffer but not displaying the source-file in the edit-window. This means it opens the clicked source only in the background and shows all its methods/variables in ECB-Methods; the buffer of the edit-window is not changed! This is very useful to get only an overlook for a certain source.
• ECB Methods: Narrowing to the clicked method/variable/ect... (see ecb-token-visit-post-actions). But this works only for sources parsed by semantic, not by imenu or etags!

Per default the complete node-name of an item in a tree-buffer is displayed in the echo-area if the mouse moves over it, regardless if the related window is the active one or not. You get the same effect always after a POWER-click. In general: Via ecb-show-node-info-in-minibuffer you can specify in a detailed manner for every ECB tree-buffer when and which node-info should be displayed in the minibuffer.

The secondary mouse-button

The secondary mouse-button is for opening (jumping to) the file in the other window (see the documentation ecb-primary-mouse-jump-destination).

The right mouse-button

In each ECB-buffer mouse-3 (= right button) opens a special context popup-menu for the clicked item where you can choose several senseful actions.

With the options ecb-directories-menu-user-extension, ecb-sources-menu-user-extension, ecb-methods-menu-user-extension and ecb-history-menu-user-extension you can add new commands to the popup-menus.

With the options ecb-directories-menu-sorter, ecb-sources-menu-sorter, ecb-methods-menu-sorter and ecb-history-menu-sorter you can even re-arrange all the entries of the popup-menus.

Horizontal scrolling with the mouse

In each tree-buffer of ECB you can easily scroll left and right with the mouse if the option ecb-tree-easy-hor-scroll is not nil.

The reason for this is: XEmacs has horizontal scroll-bars so invisible parts beyond the right window-border of a tree-buffer can always made visible very easy.

GNU Emacs does not have hor. scroll-bars so especially with the mouse it is quite impossible to scroll smoothly right and left. The functions scroll-left and scroll-right can be annoying and are also not bound to mouse-buttons.

ECB offers three ways for smoothly hor. scrolling with GNU Emacs if ecb-tree-easy-hor-scroll is a positive integer-value S:

• In all ECB-tree-buffers the keys M-mouse-1 and M-mouse-3 are bound to scrolling left rsp. right with scroll-step S.
• Clicking with mouse-1 or mouse-2 onto the edge of the modeline has the same effect, i.e. if you click with mouse-1 onto the left \(resp right) edge of the modeline you will scroll left \(resp. right) with scroll-step S.
• Additionally C-M-mouse-1 and C-M-mouse-3 are bound to scrolling left rsp. right with scroll-step window-width - 2.

This is NOT done for XEmacs cause of its horizontal scrollbars. If you want scrolling left and right with the mouse in XEmacs then activate the horizontal scrollbars.

Footnotes

1. means mouse-2 while CTRL-key is pressed.