Add an option to disable right-click context menu

[lobre]

Problem

The right-click context menu in Terminal (which includes actions like Copy, Paste, and Show in Files) is useful in many situations.

However, some terminal applications rely on right-click input for their own interactions. In these cases, the context menu becomes intrusive. For example, in Kakoune, right-clicking is used to extend text selections. Currently, when doing so in elementary Terminal, the context menu still appears on top of the terminal, even though the click event correctly reaches the application underneath.

This dual behavior makes it inconvenient to use such applications with mouse input, since the menu partially obstructs the interface and must be dismissed manually.

There doesn’t seem to be a reliable way for Terminal to automatically detect when a running program expects right-click input, so a user-side control would help.

Proposal

Add a preference or setting to disable the right-click context menu.

Possible implementations:

• A toggle in Preferences (e.g. “Show context menu on right-click”).
• Alternatively, allow the menu to be triggered via an icon in the sidebar or Shift + Right-Click when disabled.

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

[jeremypw]

I am not sure whether the context should ever be shown on top of a running program, in fact. Some of the options would end the program so a confirmation dialog has to be shown. It would be simpler to just inhibit the context menu if any program is running? Or move it to the tab? In general we try to avoid adding settings/options unless really necessary.

[lobre]

It would be simpler to just inhibit the context menu if any program is running?

This seems the simplest option, and would avoid adding clutter to the preferences box. I was just initially wondering if it was easy for the terminal emulator to know whether something is running or not. But if it is, that is an elegant answer!

[jeremypw]

Yes, Terminal already knows when a foreground process is running.

[lobre]

Bear with me, this is the first time I've read and written Vala code, and I dig the elementary codebase! But I have given it a try. It is just that my build dependencies are not working yet, so I have not had the possibility to build the sources and try yet.