I tend to work rapidly on objects, large groups of objects, and many layers. Many times I'll accidentally double-click objects while manipulating them. This results in a change in my selection, or other alteration that interrupts my workflow.

I understand this is a feature that many users find helpful, but I'd like to disable double-click detection in the drawing area as I don't need the functionality.

Can it be done?

I've never heard of anything like that. But we might be able to suggest a different workflow that might help.

Double-click does different things with different tools. Which tool or tools does this happen with?

GammaLogic wrote:I tend to work rapidly on objects, large groups of objects, and many layers. Many times I'll accidentally double-click objects while manipulating them. This results in a change in my selection, or other alteration that interrupts my workflow.

I understand this is a feature that many users find helpful, but I'd like to disable double-click detection in the drawing area as I don't need the functionality.

Can it be done?

There is a way, but it's not in Inkscape (that I know of). But you can use a program called AutoHotKey. It's free and it enables you to run scripts in Windows. One such script is a very simple script that blocks double-clicks. Look below for the code that you have to run with AutoHotKey. As you can see it's very simple. It's also very effective, it just works and easily turned on and off. Change the 500 value to something else to change the threshold for defining how speedy a double-click the script should block (ideally the same as your operating system has it set to. I like to use 500 ms for double clicks so I set it to 500). One issue is that the blocked double clicks are not converted to single clicks, so you will have to wait the 500ms before clicking again to have it register as a single click, or set the treshhold lower. To fix that you would have to write code that executed a single click when blocking the double click, but I have no idea how to do that ( I just snatched this piece of code from the AutoHotKey forums).



If you want to use this, go to http://www.AutoHotKey.com, download AutoHotKey and install. Then create a new textfile, and change the file extension from .txt to .ahk (the program adds an option to Windows RMB-context menu's "New" entry to create a AutoHotKey file with the correct extension, so you may also choose to do that instead). Then just paste the code above into the newly created file and save it. Then doucleclick the file and AutoHotKey should run it, and it should work. You can create and run the script from anywhere. To pause the script from running just right-click the corresponding green H-shaped icon in the icon tray and select "Pause Script" or "Exit" to stop AutoHotKey and unload the script entirely.

The script seems to block double-clicks globally in the operating system and it works for Inkscape. Not sure if it would work for any and all programs though.

This script could probably be modified further with a boolean flag (true/false) to easily hotkey a key to turn it on/off.

Double-click block script found here: http://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/8 ... ing-mouse/

@toxicgames

That sounds like a nice utility, but I'm a Linux system user. I might look into a similar workaround for Linux if nothing is available in the Inkscape application.

@brynn

Well, sometimes if I'm in say, the selection tool, an accidental double-click because I'm selecting quickly will select only one object in the group. Or worse, it will change my tool to the node path tool.

GammaLogic wrote:@toxicgames

That sounds like a nice utility, but I'm a Linux system user. I might look into a similar workaround for Linux if nothing is available in the Inkscape application.

@brynn

Well, sometimes if I'm in say, the selection tool, an accidental double-click because I'm selecting quickly will select only one object in the group. Or worse, it will change my tool to the node path tool.

Oh, didn't think of that anyway hope you find a good solution

With the Selection tool, when you double-click on a Group, you enter the group, so you can work on individual parts of the group. That sounds like part of your problem. And if you double-click on a path, it switches to the Node tool. There is another way to enter a group, and of course you can always select the Node tool on purpose. But it would take some time to go through Inkscape, and figure out every place where a double-click is used. If there is another way to do every single case, then one could conceivably disable double-clicking, and not lose features.

However, that still leaves the question how to do it. I really don't think it can be done through Inkscape. I'm pretty sure that's hard-coded in, to the very depths of the code.

Have you thought of trying another type of mouse? That problem controlling my click finger, in a traditional mouse, is the reason I stopped using a traditional mouse. If I set out to design the worst comfortable thing ever, it would be a traditional mouse! I use a touchpad mouse. It's similar to what you might use in a laptop computer, but mine's external, and has a lot more features. (I move the cursor with my finger, and click with my thumb. Or I can tap the mouse with my finger to click.) Or else, I've seen very large traditional style mouses and very small ones too. I don't know if they still make trackball mouses....I guess so. Maybe you could try a different mouse? There might even be a kind of mouse that would allow you to disable the double-click.

@toxicgames
Thanks for the suggestion anway.

@brynn
I was afraid it was hardcoded. I guess I was hoping to change a config file (such as an xml source file) or something, a global flag.

Using a different mouse never occured to me, but I'll consider it. Good idea! For now I'll probably just adjust the interval between double click detection system-wide as a quick workaround.