Re: mouse-1-click-follows-link

[David Abrahams]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>> There seems to be an increasing trend to make Emacs look and act like
>> a web browser in all contexts, making it frustrating to use for text
>> editing purposes.  Setting the point is basic functionality, and I
>> shouldn't have to cross my fingers, double tap, hold, turn around and
>> touch my nose to do it.
>
> I'm more and more inclined to agree.
>
> I think the mouse-1-clock-follows-link behavior should be used (by default)
> at most at a few well-tested placed.  E.g. custom (where it's already
> working this way in 21.4 AFAIK), help, info.  But not grep, not compile, ...
>
> The idea of having mouse-1-clock-follows-link activated by default is to
> make it easier for beginners accustomed to web browsers more than to text
> editors, and maybe that makes sense, but we shouldn't overstate this case
> either: the number of users we can expect to win thanks to this minor detail
> is likely to be vanishingly small.  It's not like the mouse-2-follows-link
> convention is the only "unusual" UI aspect of Emacs.
>
> So maybe turning it on for a handful of cases makes sense.  And keeping
> a more intrusive option may also make sense for people whose system makes it
> hard to generate a mouse-2 event.  But the current setup has tricked me too
> many times already.  I know I can turn it off, but we should be careful not
> to alienate our fervent disciples.

I have to say that I was surprised when I upgraded my Emacs and Gnus
started working that way... and I *still* haven't been able to figure
out why down-mouse-1 seems to act like down-mouse-2 but only
sometimes.

I was almost pleased -- because I find down-mouse-2 ergonomically hard
to access -- but it was too confusing.  I actually think supporting a
mouse-1 double-click to follow those links would have made a lot of
sense, though.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com