Re: finger-pointer curser as default for mouse-face text

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> What about using keyboard modifiers with mouse-1 on an active area (link,
>> button) to do what mouse-1 would normally do on an inactive area (e.g.
>> mouse-drag-region)?
>
>> The following are not defined by default, at least in most Emacs modes:
>> C-M-mouse-1, C-S-mouse-1, M-S-mouse-1.
>
> I think the effort required to remember such bindings, coupled with the fact
> that they'd only be used on relatively rare occasions, makes me think it's
> a bad idea.
> Especially since in all likely hood, after setting point in the middle of
> a button, you're going to do something with the keyboard rather than with
> the mouse, which makes me think that using the keyboard to move to that spot
> would work just as well.

Ah, but if you use cursor-left or cursor-right to move onto a preview,
the preview opens up into normal text (some sort of special
auto-reveal action).  So in the particular case of preview-latex, it
is not an alternative to click just before or after a preview and then
move onto it using forward-char or backward-char.

I am not claiming that this is the ultimate reason or whatever, I am
just pointing out that in this case it would be problematic.

In addition, we have to be aware that clickable fields are usually
implemented with keymaps.  And that means that there is no way to
magically change all buttons in all applications: it is a convention
rather than an API.  If we want to change to a different convention,
we first need to define an API where the current convention is
accessible to outside packages, then wait for a few releases with the
old convention in place, and then try changing the default and weather
the inconsistency storm from packages that have not yet adhered to the
API telling it what mouse buttons to use.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum