Throughout this manual, the term click refers to the act of pressing
and releasing the leftmost mouse button (technically identified as
Button1, but your operating system may allow
this to be reassigned). This action is used to select objects, activate
buttons, turn choices on and off, pop up menus and so forth.
On touch surfaces, it also corresponds to a single, one-finger tap on
the GUI.
The term right-click refers to the act of pressing and releasing the rightmost mouse button (internally called Button2, but again your operating system may allow this to be reassigned). This action is used to pop up context menus (hence the term "context click", which you will also see). It is also used by default in combination with the shift key to delete objects within the editor window.
Mac OS mice sometimes have only one button. On Mac OS if you press and hold the Control key this is equivalent to right-clicking.
A middle-click refers to the act of pressing and releasing the middle mouse button (Button3, which may also be reassigned). Not all all mice have a middle click button (see the Mouse chapter for details). Sometimes the scroll wheel acts as a clickable middle button. This action is used for time-constrained region copying and mapping MIDI bindings.
A double click refers to two rapid press/release cycles on the leftmost mouse button. The time interval between the two actions that determines whether this is seen as two clicks or one double click is controlled by your system preferences, not by Ardour.
A drag primarily refers to the act of pressing the leftmost mouse button, moving the mouse with the button held down, and then releasing the button. On touch surfaces, this term also corresponds to a single one-finger touch-move-release action.
Ardour also uses the middle mouse button for certain kinds of drags, which will be referred to as middle-drag.
There are many actions in Ardour that can be carried out using a mouse button in combination with a modifier key. When the manual refers to Left, it means that you should first press the key, carry out a left click while is held down, and then finally release the key.
Available modifiers depend on your platform:
The following section is almost certainly wrong. Will need to be checked and rewritten asap.
Mod2 typically corresponds to the NumLock key on many systems. On most Linux systems, there are no keys that will function as modifiers Mod3, Mod4 or Mod5 by default, but they can be setup using xmodmap(1). This can be rather useful.
Ardour can make good use of a scroll wheel on your mouse, which can be utilized for a variety of purposes. Scroll wheels generate vertical scroll events, ⇑ (ScrollUp) and ⇓ (ScrollDown). Some also emit horizontal events, ⇐ (ScrollLeft) and ⇒ (ScrollRight).
When appropriate, Ardour will differentiate between these two different scroll axes. Otherwise it will interpret ScrollDown and ScrollLeft as equivalent and similarly interpret ScrollUp and ScrollRight as equivalent.
Typically, scroll wheel input is used to adjust continuous controls such as faders and knobs, or to scroll vertically or horizontally inside a window.