On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 1:31 AM Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net> wrote:

> >     > (setq mouse-wheel-tilt-scroll t)
> >
> >     I tried this, but still it doesn't scroll horizontally
> >     with the mouse wheel.  It seems this feature expects the
> >     mouse events mouse-6 and mouse-7, but scrolling the mouse wheel
> >     produces mouse-4 and mouse-5.
> >
> > FWIW, emacs uses the "original" (I think they started with XFree86?)
> > bindings that treat up/down mouse wheel as mouse buttons 4/5, while
> > left/right are 6&7, so this is working as (at least at one point in the
> > past) intended. There might be a communication issue around "by wheel"
> > here: are you using a mouse with a wheel that tilts to the left/right? I
> > believe that's what the OP had in mind.
>
> Do you mean a mouse with many additional buttons?  I heard such monsters
> exist, but never seen them.
>

On one hand, if you believe that mice should have exactly 3 buttons in a
manner perhaps similar to the Spanish Inquisition, then yes.

On the other, for mice with a physical wheel, on X11 and derivatives (but
neither windows nor mac), a physically rolling the wheel appears to the
window system (and thus to emacs) as mouse buttons numbered 4 and 5. If the
wheel also registers a tilt to the left/right, these appear as buttons 6 &
7. The former is very common; the latter seems to be uncommon these days.
Neither of these are the so-called "MMO mouse" (apparently now sometimes
"MOBA mouse") with 6-15 (yes, really) extra buttons that are *relatively*
common amongst hardcore PC gamers.  (For example:
https://www.howtogeek.com/403685/how-to-use-an-mmo-or-moba-mouse-for-productivity/)
I've
only tried one of these once, and at the time the extra buttons weren't
supported by X11, so I can't tell you if the mouse equivalent of the space
cadet keyboard is emacs nirvana, instant thumb-sprain, or just a waste of
plastic.

These days, trackpads/touchpads are very common, and most of them have a
scrolling feature that uses gestures to fake those 4 extra buttons. Emacs
master currently does the expected scrolling things for up/down but not
left/right nor shift-up/down.

Hope that helps,
~Chad