From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Drew Adams Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: RE: Why mouse-1/2/3 ? 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List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:247941 Archived-At: > Neither have you managed to convince me that mouse-1-2-3 is valuable. > I've seen one moderately convincing point about this relating to left- > handed mice (suggesting that buttons should really be called inner, > middle, and outer), Which is "inner"/"outer"? Just as problematic, if not more so. Maybe use medical terminology, using anatomical terms of location - dorsal, ventral, proximal, distal, etc.? YAGNI. Not sure whether "molehill" or "rabbit hole" is the better label for this discussion now. But it's interesting, if only to consider whether those who adopted `mouse-[1|2|3]' for Emacs were thinking at all, or were just hopelessly un-"modern". > but I haven't seen much of an argument in support > of 1, 2, 3 except "that's how Emacs does it. So you would use `mouse-[left|middle|right]', not `mouse-[1|2|3]'. But you would continue to use `mouse-[4|5|...]'? Or would you try for helpful words for those too? Remember that 4 and 5 can be radically different things, depending on the mouse. How about this additional argument (which I thought was obvious, but it might help to make explicit): 1, 2, and 3 do not suggest as strongly that what's meant are left, middle, and right. And that's a plus as much as it's a minus. [1|2|3] is a minus for the very common case of a common mouse used by a right-hander. Yes, in that common case `mouse-left' etc. is easier to guess. [1|2|3] is a plus for the general case, which is also the case for Elisp programmers. The coupling in thought/language between those names and actual button positions is looser than the coupling from names like `left'. And this is presumably why sometimes the Emacs (but not the Elisp) doc says something like "`mouse-1' (the left mouse button)". (It should say "`mouse-1' (typically the left mouse button)" (or "often"). =20 The [1|2|3] names are more abstract. Yes, that presents a disadvantage as well as an advantage. If we were designing Emacs from scratch today, so that any arguments about legacy or backward compatibility were mute, would we choose to use [1|2|3]? I would. I think they make more sense for Emacs and Elisp, in general, than [left|middle|right], precisely because, even though they do serve well enough for guessing button position in the common case (IMO), they also suggest that such a mapping is just that - the names are to some extent arbitrary. This is analogous to using x1, x2, x3,... in math. Those names are essentially arbitrary, but an order, i.e., some mapping, is generally suggested. > FWIW, I've been using Emacs for 10 years, with 7 years spent almost > exclusively inside of it, and I don't find mouse-1-2-3 natural. Given > how uncommonly I use the middle and right mouse buttons in Emacs, it > actually took me years to remember whether mouse-2 was the right mouse > button or the middle one (it didn't help that one of my mice didn't > have a scrollwheel, so counting the buttons left to right gave the > wrong intuition, IIRC). I think you gave at least one reason you had so much trouble in that regard, for "years": you don't often use `mouse-2' or `mouse-3'. If you had used all three in Emacs, I'm betting you would have learned quickly, at some point during those "years", what each name stood for.