None of what you're suggesting is possible in a way that would work reliably, sorry.
Then hire me - I would make it work.
Heck, I might even add that function using Autohotkey.
Sounds like what David would like is a way to enter inline rename with out reloading the viewer.
Would it be possible to make a long press (3-5 seconds) of the left button to not reload the inline viewer and enter in to inline rename mode?
I could see some value in this addition.
Why not just click the rename button on the toolbar?
First you would need to select the file. This would cause viewer to preview said file, causing the delay. Being able to long click, then after n seconds go in to inline rename before the mouse is raised. Is faster, prevents items previewing, and fell like it would be quite intuitive.
Why is rename so special that it needs a way to bypass the viewer? What if you want to copy or delete the file?
If you don't want to preview the file, close the viewer.
you don't think there is much value in the long click idea?
For completeness of information, there is this software named **plorer which also uses IE ActiveX in its preview pane. There, no matter which file type, e.g. also with Office 2003 or PDF files, the second click ALWAYS goes into inline rename mode
Actually there, the ActiveX viewer also can be seen to steal the focus away from the lister for a moment. However then, the lister actively and visibly grabs the focus back. Thus, there the second click (or pressing F2) always activates inline rename, whereas in Dopus, you have to click at least three times, in cases where the ActiveX viewer jumps in.
Thus there exist solutions to the discussed problem which are both viable and stable.
Opus also visually grabs the focus back from things that take it, where possible. Maybe the timing or threading (the Opus viewer panel runs on its own thread in Opus, in fact in a separate process for ActiveX controls; the other program you mention is written in Visual Basic 6 and thus is single-threaded) makes a different result for the specific inline rename case, or maybe inline rename is different in the two programs (with focus loss cancelling the timer). I don't know without spending a lot of time investigating. I don't have Office 2003 on a test machine so testing this exact case would take some setting up.
We are not spending time, taking time away from other work and potentially introducing bugs that will affect other users and take even more time to fix, on an issue which only affects one person by requiring extra mouse clicks when doing a very particular thing using an 11 year old copy of Office (which Microsoft no longer support even with security patches) when there are plenty of solutions and workarounds that already exist and let you avoid the mouse clicks.
Bumping the thread(s) will not change our minds. We've given lots of viable solutions and workarounds, but if you reject all of them and insist on changing nothing about your setup or workflow (as is your right) then you'll have to live with how things are.