Pick node by middle click

[KenneyNL]

More detailed description: #2730 (comment)

In creative mode clicking a node with the middle mouse button will place it in the inventory and wield it. In adventure mode it would seek if the selected node is in the hotbar, select and wield it.

The middle mouse button would function similar to a color picking tool in photo editing.

Previous discussion:
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11034

[C1ffisme]

👍

[Wayward1]

That would be a great addition!

[est31]

Nice idea.

[paramat]

Mice with no middle button are very common though, neither of mine have one.

[KenneyNL]

I've just checked the shops and couldn't find a store that sold mice without a middle mouse button, so my guess is that they're slowly dying out,. Also, without a middle button you wouldn't really miss an important feature.

[est31]

Yes, it is definitely not something that mods should rely real features other than speed improvements on.
After all, Android doesn't feature even a right "button".
This feature should still be offered for our users with a middle button though, because of the same reasons we have shaders: people who have the hardware should be abled to use it.

[Zeno-]

I haven't seen a mouse without a middle mouse "button" (usually it's pressing the scroll wheel though) for about 15 years :/

[C1ffisme]

@paramat On some laptops, pressing the left AND right mouse buttons counts as a middle click.

[paramat]

Okay that's cool then, my experience is different because i only use trackballs and my last two have 2 buttons.

[celeron55]

This seems okay as a client-side-only addition. The server or mods don't need to know about this; it would simply be a convenience feature to those that aren't playing on laptops or using other kinds of limited pointing devices.

OK

[Wuzzy2]

The middle click in the inventory is already used for picking or “dropping” 10 items of an item stack. It also allows you to craft things very fast. :-)

What should happen to this feature, which I find very useful btw?

[est31]

Thats about the middle click inside formspec menus, the middle click for highlighted nodes is unnaffected from that, isn't it?

[Wuzzy2]

Oh, nevermind. It seems I have misunderstood this issue. xD

[MarkuBu]

That's exactly the feature I want to ask for. There should be a "on_middleclick" callback for nodes, then mods can add this feature if wanted

[infmagic2047]

@MarkuBu I think people are talking about adding it as client-side feature here, not exposing it to mods.

[MarkuBu]

Client side? That doesn't makes sense at all

[rubenwardy]

For setups with no middle click, you could use ctrl+click

[ghost]

Why not simply allow mods to register own actions so people can bind them to whatever button they want via the “Change Keys” dialog? (The dialog has to be completely revamped, of course.)

With this the whole discussion about trackballs (not widespread enough in the gaming scene to be relevant) or mouses without middleclick (virtually not existent anymore) will be irrelevant because, well, people can bind that function to whatever they want.

[paramat]

Any more comments? Is anyone interested in coding this sometime?

[ghost]

Any more comments?

Too bad none of the core devs cares about a proper input system.

[Fixer-007]

I'm interested in this, minetest has poor crafting usability.

[C1ffisme]

If this gets added, the blocks the player mines should not appear in the player's inventory when he is in creative mode. That means I can clear big patches of grass without having to worry about clogging my inventory with seeds.

[ghost]

Was that really necessary, @kilbith? While @paramat usually denies the reality the players are living in and usually he and me disagree completely on each others opinions I would never talk like this about him even if I don’t like him very much.

Oh, and yes. I guess everyone was able to see your code, but it will likely won’t be implemented anytime soon.

[kilbith]

Ad-hominem attacks are sometimes necessary to explain the "philosophy" that someone has...

[Megaf]

Gentlemen please, this is not the place for this kind of discussion.
GitHub is a public and somewhat professional place for software development.
Not for lectures about philosophy and personal "requests"

[kilbith]

I think you're biased because he introduced you in the core-team and there is also the common nationality... I don't share your observation and I have absolutely nothing to learn about human interaction from a very young guy.

Just ignore me and go ahead.

[kilbith]

I'd probably have an easier "life" among this community at some small particular place of the internet, which I don't really care about. You should be thankful already that I still give patches.

[HybridDog]

[…] it requires you to monitor player controls rather than having a callback. This is why it won't be included.

I assume before implementing this the input system should be reworked. kilbith's patch has lots of similar looking code, having so many functions only for three buttons looks wrong to me.

[Wuzzy2]

This is a fire truck: 🚒
It will end this flame war.
💧 💧 💧 😌

Regarding the middle mouse button: I am totally in favor, but it's not mandatory for the actual pick feature itself. Please note that the biggest problem with putting controls on the mouse is that they're not rebindable at the moment (which is, of course, bad). So if you insist on the middle mouse button, this issue depends on #4536.
As long this dependency is not resolved, you could temporarily choose any keyboard key as default, and change it later (when mouse is rebindable). I don't care a lot about default controls. Making controls rebindable is way more important. Religious wars about default controls are pointless.

Also, I have made a detailed writeup about the feature itself (note that this was originally an issue I posted). I was the first one to think about implementation details like what to do when you pick an entity etc. Can you please scroll back up and give your thoughts on this?

[ghost]

Making controls rebindable is way more important. Religious wars about default controls are pointless.

Quoted for emphasis.

[HybridDog]

Is it considered bad coding if you set a pointer to a function?
You could add a pointer to a function which is executed when pressing down a mouse button, in formspecs you let it point to some function which has to do with inventory movement, if no formspecs are opened, it points to something used for punching and digging, etc. Then you can bind some keypress to also execute this function.

[paramat]

It is your personal choice to use a trackball.

It's due to long term health issues, mice cause pain for me.

and 99.9% of mice sold in stores right now offer a middle mouse button

Yes, but not everyone uses a mouse, some devices have a workaround for middle-click that can be tricky or unpleasant to use, that was my point. Also keep in mind most MT players use smartphones.

As you have read @paramat doesn’t own a device with a middle mouse button. Thus middle mouse button won’t be the default ever.

Nah =) It's just one disapproval.
If the middle button can be rebound to a key this concept is acceptable and the default could probably be middle button.

[paramat]

I'm still 👎 for using middle button though for reasons above. Neutral on the feature.
Once we have the ability to rebind key actions to mouse buttons players can bind this to middle button if they want.

///////////

In case there is misunderstanding, and because my -1s seem to upset people, a disapproval does not subtract from approvals, so with the usual 2 required approvals this could still be merged. It takes 2-3+ disapprovals to delay or stop a feature, depending on how many approvals there are.

Core devs are powerless to do anything on their own, they can't merge something or stop something, all decisions are group decisions. You can disagree with their opinions, but blaming any one person for something not being added, or for certain types of features not being added, or for the general direction of MT, is irrational.

[MarkuBu]

just quote an earlier comment that hit the nail on the head

This feature should still be offered for our users with a middle button though, because of the same reasons we have shaders: people who have the hardware should be abled to use it.

So implement this feature until

we have the ability to rebind key actions to mouse buttons

[HybridDog]

So implement this feature until

#2730 (comment)

[Wuzzy2]

Why was this closed? There is a LOT of interest in the feature, kilbith even gave you code, so even “no dev interest” is clearly wrong.

[KenneyNL]

Today I implemented middle click in a game of mine, it took a few minutes to implement and is now in the patch release.

Total production: 1 day.
Middle clicking in Minetest production: Almost 3 years, and counting.

[rubenwardy]

Because the only person that cared enough to write some code didn't make a PR and didn't do it probably (ie: didn't support binding let alone), and got banned for repeated personal attacks

You're probably using Unity, which has a better control binding scheme - Minetest has something similar, but it doesn't support mouse events yet. I'm planning to work on this in the next month or so, at which point this could be included (but unlikely to be the feature as requested, that would be part of MTG's creative)

I'm about to solve one of my big 4 problems of Minetest, in my option: Ingame content browser
The input bindings is next up.

[paramat]

Looks like there is dev interest now :)

Wuzzy, the label refers to dev intention to work on it sometime, not player interest. est31 and c55 wrote it was 'nice' or 'ok' 3 years ago and est31 has left, since then no interest from devs.
After discussion with SmallJoker I created that label in order to be able to search for feature requests that are very old with no or little interest from devs, so that we can close them, without doing this issue number will never be under control. I judged 3 years as being a reasonably 'long time' in MT.

KenneyNL, no decision had been made on this feature and there has been little interest or support from devs, so it hasn't been worked on. It has not been in development for 3 years so can't be used as a way to briefly drop in here again to insult MT.

Just implement the damn thing, I've never seen development so butchered by endless discussions about what fancy keyboard you have or what pre-war era mouse you use.

If you only appear to insult MT then stay away.
Note that you haven't even created a voxel game yet.

[beyondlimits]

Come on. Assume Minetest is a voxel editor, and the feature wanted is a "color picker".

[paramat]

Please don't bump old issues by complaining about lack of action by others, you've done this before. We are open source so you are able to code it if you want it.
If you bump a topic, please write something useful and less rude.

[beyondlimits]

Please don't bump old issues by complaining about lack of action by others, you've done this before.

Sure, and I'll keep doing that on every stupid issue I find like this. We already have on_dig and on_rightclick and hey, we even got nice inventory item picking via mouse wheel, so I think it would take any of our core developers a little time to implement feature requested and it would be maybe a tiniest fraction of whole Minetest development but convenience of the feature would pay for itself.

We are open source so you are able to code it if you want it.

I'm not a C++ developer.

If you bump a topic, please write something useful and less rude.

https://github.com/beyondlimits/minetest/commit/394feedce58218f86c6e77050568d8520057b0af
https://github.com/beyondlimits/pick

That points out to be almost no different than kilbith's. It sucks as @rubenwardy said, but I think it's way better than 3 years of nothing from our core gurus.

[rubenwardy]

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/compare

Acceptance criteria:

• Needs to be rebindable on pc
• Needs to be usable on Android

[paramat]

Sure, and I'll keep doing that on every stupid issue I find like this.

Best not, as bad behaviour could have consequences.

I'm not a C++ developer.

That's irrelevant, the point is this is OSS so anyone is able to learn, code and submit.

You don't seem to realise how short we are on core dev time, and this is a nice idea but not high priority.
Please be more pleasant, you won't get anywhere or have the desired effect by having a bad attitude.
It's good to see you trying to code it.

[rubenwardy]

#9781