bug#47360: 27.1; using 'bar cursor, mouseclick is rounded to the wrong char position

[Julian Rohrhuber via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

> On 24. Mar 2021, at 19:39, Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote:
>
>
> Julian Rohrhuber <rohrhuber@protonmail.com> writes:
>
>> But when in bar mode, it should jump to the right when the click is
>> right of the middle of the character, and only left when to its left
>> of the middle.
>>
>> Instead, it also jumps to the left.
>
> The cursor shape is purely cosmetic at present, I think.  Your
> suggestion to add semantics to the bar shape makes some intuitive sense,
> but I'm afraid that might leave us open to user interface
> inconsistencies unless considered carefully.

yes, I definitely see your point here. The concept of a bar is indeed more than cosmetic, even if perhaps the differences are easily taken into account.

For those who use other editors are habituated very deeply to a specific behaviour of the bar, and anything that deviates from this feels subtly but clearly broken.


> Are there other instances we might want to do something based on the
> cursor shape other than setting point with the mouse, I wonder?  Would
> "marking an area to the left" (i.e., clicking on a character and then
> dragging to the left) be handled differently?  In that case, dragging
> starting with the mouse at any point right of the bar cursor should
> perhaps include the character under point, and not just at the half-way
> point?

I've checked with some editors, e.g atom (using huge font is easiest), the selection works just like the jump (so it is a selection of zero length). When you click to the right of the middle of a character and then drag to the left, the character will be included. If you drag to the right it will not be included.