multi-selection that works like wings3d

In Wings, pressing the 'switch to edge mode'-hotkey will go into Edge Mode, but turn off multi-selection. When you deselect, it turns multi-selection back on.
This makes for a every nice way of focussing your selection. Usually I just use multi-selection and click on whatever I want, but when zoomed out or with very dense geometry things can get in the way. It can become very difficult to select a short edge in between two vertices for instance.
This is when I'd press 2 and only get edges.

In addition to that, I'd also like to have one hotkey that basically switches between object mode and multi-selection, sort of like Blender does it.

I tried to set up the former idea with Composite Tools, but it was error-prone due to multi-selection being a relative toggle, not absolute.

Any news about this? I'd be fine with setting this up myself with Composite Tools or whatever, but that's not currently feasable.