In an ideal world, we really should have had another button or key combo for "I want to select the text" that isn't overloaded on "I want to select in general."

In an ideal world, we really should have had another button or key combo for "I want to select the text" that isn't overloaded on "I want to select in general." The old way was fine when word processors and other apps were completely separate beasts, but the web has blurred all of that and we are unfortunately albatross'd to decisions made in the past. I want a fifth mouse button where 5-drag always means "select text" independent of all other UI content and as a result all text is selectable because text selection and other manipulations are totally different operations (at the event layer; "mouse down" and "mouse textselect" would be two different events). Wishful thinking; we're stuck with the UI we have.