Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[ndame]

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I don't use the mouse in emacs at all, but when browsing info mouse-2 caught my eye.

Why emacs calls these mouse-1, 2 and 3? Wouldn't it be more user friendly to say
left mouse button, middle mouse button and right mouse button?

I checked what terminology Gnome uses:

"Press the right mouse button on any local folder"

https://help.gnome.org/users/shares-admin/stable/tool-getting-started.html.en_GB

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Zach Pearson]

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Some people use the buttons in reverse order or otherwise don’t have mice that conform to the standard that wording would expect. I don’t think it takes too much cognitive overhead to map 1/2/3 to left/right/middle for users of those kinds of mice. 

> On Apr 25, 2020, at 12:45 PM, ndame <ndame@protonmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> I don't use the mouse in emacs at all, but when browsing info mouse-2 caught my eye.
> 
> Why emacs calls these mouse-1, 2 and 3? Wouldn't it be more user friendly to say
> left mouse button, middle mouse button and right mouse button?
> 
> I checked what terminology Gnome uses:
> 
> "Press the right mouse button on any local folder"
> 
> https://help.gnome.org/users/shares-admin/stable/tool-getting-started.html.en_GB

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Po Lu]

> Why emacs calls these mouse-1, 2 and 3? Wouldn't it be more user friendly to say
> left mouse button, middle mouse button and right mouse button?

Mouse-1 is the first button on a mouse from the left.
Mouse-2 is the second (scroll wheel) button on a mouse from the left.
Mouse-3 is the third, and so on.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Po Lu]

Zach Pearson <zach@zjp.codes> writes:

> Some people use the buttons in reverse order or otherwise don’t have mice that conform to the standard that wording would expect. I don’t think it takes too much cognitive
> overhead to map 1/2/3 to left/right/middle for users of those kinds of mice. 

Actually, 1/2/3 is left/middle/right

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Tim Cross]

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Also, some mice have more than 3 buttons - mine has 5 for example.

On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 at 14:12, Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> > Why emacs calls these mouse-1, 2 and 3? Wouldn't it be more user
> friendly to say
> > left mouse button, middle mouse button and right mouse button?
>
> Mouse-1 is the first button on a mouse from the left.
> Mouse-2 is the second (scroll wheel) button on a mouse from the left.
> Mouse-3 is the third, and so on.
>
>

-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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RE: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Drew Adams]

> > Why emacs calls these mouse-1, 2 and 3? Wouldn't it be more user
> friendly to say
> > left mouse button, middle mouse button and right mouse button?
> 
> Mouse-1 is the first button on a mouse from the left.
> Mouse-2 is the second (scroll wheel) button on a mouse from the left.
> Mouse-3 is the third, and so on.

Just a nitpick:

Not necessarily.  And "and so on" isn't really the case.

`mouse-4' and `mouse-5', for example, can have different
meanings for different mice.  And "and so on" would mean
that additional buttons were farther and farther to the
right, which isn't the case, in general.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Po Lu]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> > Why emacs calls these mouse-1, 2 and 3? Wouldn't it be more user
>> friendly to say
>> > left mouse button, middle mouse button and right mouse button?
>> 
>> Mouse-1 is the first button on a mouse from the left.
>> Mouse-2 is the second (scroll wheel) button on a mouse from the left.
>> Mouse-3 is the third, and so on.
>
> Just a nitpick:
>
> Not necessarily.  And "and so on" isn't really the case.
>
> `mouse-4' and `mouse-5', for example, can have different
> meanings for different mice.  And "and so on" would mean
> that additional buttons were farther and farther to the
> right, which isn't the case, in general.

My bad.  I apologize for the mistake.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[tomas]

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On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 05:30:04PM +0800, Po Lu wrote:
> Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:
> 
> >> > Why emacs calls these mouse-1, 2 and 3? Wouldn't it be more user
> >> friendly to say
> >> > left mouse button, middle mouse button and right mouse button?

[lots of explanations...]

> My bad.  I apologize for the mistake.

No need to apologize. It was a genuine question, and that's the
way we all learn. I'm sure quite a few people here learnt from
your question and all the answers given. So keep those questions
coming :-)

And no, nothing is bad.

Cheers
-- tomás

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[ndame]

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 6:09 AM, Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Zach Pearson zach@zjp.codes writes:
>
> > Some people use the buttons in reverse order or otherwise don’t have mice that conform to the standard that wording would expect. I don’t think it takes too much cognitive
> > overhead to map 1/2/3 to left/right/middle for users of those kinds of mice.
>
> Actually, 1/2/3 is left/middle/right


This exchange also raises the question: is there an advantage
of naming mouse buttons with numbers, instead of using the established
terminology what pretty much all  maintream tools use?

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Pip Cet]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 9:42 AM <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 05:30:04PM +0800, Po Lu wrote:
> > >> > Why emacs calls these mouse-1, 2 and 3? Wouldn't it be more user
> > >> friendly to say
> > >> > left mouse button, middle mouse button and right mouse button?
>
> [lots of explanations...]

As far as I can tell, we're missing one explanation: mice might be on
their way out, people use touch-sensitive surfaces (both the sensible
input-only kind and the silly kind where you can't see what you're
interacting with because your finger's in the way) and a single-finger
tap (on whatever) stands for mouse-1. In my case, double and triple
finger taps translate to mouse-2 and mouse-3 (but I think the more
usual mapping is for a long tap to mean mouse-3 and no mouse-2), and
that's easy enough to remember.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[tomas]

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On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 09:45:44AM +0000, ndame wrote:
> On Sunday, April 26, 2020 6:09 AM, Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > Zach Pearson zach@zjp.codes writes:
> >
> > > Some people use the buttons in reverse order or otherwise don’t have mice that conform to the standard that wording would expect. I don’t think it takes too much cognitive
> > > overhead to map 1/2/3 to left/right/middle for users of those kinds of mice.
> >
> > Actually, 1/2/3 is left/middle/right
> 
> 
> This exchange also raises the question: is there an advantage
> of naming mouse buttons with numbers, instead of using the established
> terminology what pretty much all  maintream tools use?

What is the "established terminology"?

Cheers
-- t

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[ndame]

> What is the "established terminology"?

Left button, middle button, right button. I know no mainstream tool
which calls the left button mouse-1, etc

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[tomas]

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On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 10:37:24AM +0000, ndame wrote:
> > What is the "established terminology"?
> 
> Left button, middle button, right button. I know no mainstream tool
> which calls the left button mouse-1, etc

Then your world is too small :-)

X has always called those buttons 1, 2, 3. And for good reasons,
as this thread has shown...

Cheers
-- t

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Andreas Schwab]

On Apr 27 2020, ndame wrote:

>> What is the "established terminology"?
>
> Left button, middle button, right button. I know no mainstream tool
> which calls the left button mouse-1, etc

What is the left button for a left-hander?

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 7578 EB47 D4E5 4D69 2510  2552 DF73 E780 A9DA AEC1
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[ndame]

>
> What is the left button for a left-hander?
>

Yet, Gnome docs use the terminology left and right button:

"Press the right mouse button on any local folder "

https://help.gnome.org/users/shares-admin/stable/tool-getting-started.html.en_GB

Windows, too and other mainstream tools.  I guess left handers who
switch the buttons are still able to interpret the instructions when
reading the documentation.

The whole point is trying to move emacs terminology nearer to mainstream
usage by eliminating arbitrary differences.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[ndame]

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> Then your world is too small :-)
>
> X has always called those buttons 1, 2, 3.

User usually don't deal with X directly, but with KDE, Gnome, etc

And they don't call it mouse-1, they use the more established

terminology.

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[ndame]

>
> What is the left button for a left-hander?
>

BTW, you can ask Emacs too about this. :)

Here's Info:

"To activate a link, either move point onto it
and type ‘<RET>’, or click on it with ‘mouse-1’ (the left mouse button)."

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[tomas]

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On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 10:47:44AM +0000, ndame wrote:
> >
> > What is the left button for a left-hander?
> >
> 
> Yet, Gnome docs use the terminology left and right button:

[...]

> The whole point is trying to move emacs terminology nearer to mainstream
> usage by eliminating arbitrary differences.

Like a friend of mine said the other day: "why do the people have to speak
constantly English and don't speak German, as everyone else does?" :-)

Hmmm.

Cheers
-- tomás

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Po Lu]

ndame <ndame@protonmail.com> writes:

> This exchange also raises the question: is there an advantage
> of naming mouse buttons with numbers, instead of using the established
> terminology what pretty much all  maintream tools use?

The advantage is that you do not break every package in existence that
has numbered mouse clicks like that, and that you do not break existing
people's experience.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Po Lu]

ndame <ndame@protonmail.com> writes:

> Left button, middle button, right button. I know no mainstream tool
> which calls the left button mouse-1, etc

Emacs is older than the so-called "mainstream tools", and Emacs programs
and users are used to said terminology.  If it were to change, many
packages would break, and many users habits would have to break too.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[ndame]

>
> The advantage is that you do not break every package in existence that
> has numbered mouse clicks like that, and that you do not break existing
> people's experience.

You don't have to break anything. 'mouse-left' could be used instead of 'mouse-1'
while also keeping 'mouse-1' as an alias for it for backward compatibility.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[ndame]

> Like a friend of mine said the other day: "why do the people have to speak
> constantly English and don't speak German, as everyone else does?" :-)

Yep. It's like saying Emacs doesn't need to adapt, if someone wants to use it
then learn the emacs terminology.

There were other threads about making emacs easier to use, less alien. Little
arbitray differences from mainstream systems add up and make emacs less familiar
for no good reason.

An other example is the window/frame  vs pane/window difference, though I realize
that's much harder to change, considering that all of emacs uses it. That may be
too much work and may not be worth the effort to change it.

But if smaller differences which may not need much work can be eliminated then
they should be.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[tomas]

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On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 11:23:47AM +0000, ndame wrote:
> > Like a friend of mine said the other day: "why do the people have to speak
> > constantly English and don't speak German, as everyone else does?" :-)
> 
> Yep. It's like saying Emacs doesn't need to adapt, if someone wants to use it
> then learn the emacs terminology.

If you want Emacs to adapt in this point, it's on you to convince Emacs people
that this change is important.

You haven't managed to convince me, at least (I'm not an important "Emacs
people", just a happy user, mind you). Mentioning the alternative spellings
in the documentation and in the help, yes, by all means. But changing the
names in the code... not for me, at least.

There are far more important usability tasks, in my view.

Cheers
-- tomás

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Po Lu]

ndame <ndame@protonmail.com> writes:

> You don't have to break anything. 'mouse-left' could be used instead of 'mouse-1'
> while also keeping 'mouse-1' as an alias for it for backward compatibility.

It would still be a major change, complicating maintainence and
potentially leaving decades of documentation and advice invalid.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Mon, 27 Apr 2020,   wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 10:37:24AM +0000, ndame wrote:
>> > What is the "established terminology"?
>> 
>> Left button, middle button, right button. I know no mainstream tool
>> which calls the left button mouse-1, etc

> Then your world is too small :-)

If Emacs will ever be localized for a language with an absolute
reference frame [1], then it would be "east button" for mouse-1 and
"west button" for mouse-3, when the user is a right-hander looking
south. :-)

> X has always called those buttons 1, 2, 3. And for good reasons,
> as this thread has shown...

SCNR,
Ulrich

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_spatial_cognition

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 27.04.2020 13:37, ndame wrote:
>> What is the "established terminology"?
> Left button, middle button, right button. I know no mainstream tool
> which calls the left button mouse-1, etc

I personally would support the change, but it doesn't sound urgent: the 
new user is likely to meet this peculiarity later than other known 
annoyances, and what mouse-1 is is fairly easy to guess, at least.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[ndame]

>
> I personally would support the change, but it doesn't sound urgent:

No, it's not urgent, more like yet another peculiarity.

What's more important, for example, is working language servers out of
the box, as other threads discussed. User opens a file in a particular
language and emacs automatically offers downloading and installing the
language server client and server, sets it up, sets company up and
as the user starts typing it works instantly. This is how VScode does
it.

If this worked out of the box then minor peculiarities like mouse-1
wouldn't matter at all.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Clément Pit-Claudel]

On 27/04/2020 07.11, Po Lu wrote:
> ndame <ndame@protonmail.com> writes:
> 
>> Left button, middle button, right button. I know no mainstream tool
>> which calls the left button mouse-1, etc
> 
> Emacs is older than the so-called "mainstream tools", and Emacs programs
> and users are used to said terminology.  If it were to change, many
> packages would break, and many users habits would have to break too.

What packages would break, exactly?
I haven't seen anyone suggest a breaking change.
Besides, Emacs users are also used to the mouse-left / mouse-right terminology, since most of them use more than just Emacs.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Clément Pit-Claudel]

On 27/04/2020 07.31, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 11:23:47AM +0000, ndame wrote:
>>> Like a friend of mine said the other day: "why do the people have
>>> to speak constantly English and don't speak German, as everyone
>>> else does?" :-)
>> 
>> Yep. It's like saying Emacs doesn't need to adapt, if someone wants
>> to use it then learn the emacs terminology.
> 
> If you want Emacs to adapt in this point, it's on you to convince
> Emacs people that this change is important.

FWIW, I don't find the comparison to speaking German very convincing either.

> You haven't managed to convince me, at least (I'm not an important
> "Emacs people", just a happy user, mind you). Mentioning the
> alternative spellings in the documentation and in the help, yes, by
> all means.

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), but I haven't seen much of an argument in support of 1, 2, 3 except "that's how Emacs does it.

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).

> But changing the names in the code... not for me, at least.

Concretely, what does changing the names in the code mean?  Changing the docstrings?  Or changing the spelling in keymaps?

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 27.04.2020 16:36, Clément Pit-Claudel wrote:
> 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

I still have to use 'C-h k' to remember.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[tomas]

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On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 09:36:41AM -0400, Clément Pit-Claudel wrote:
> On 27/04/2020 07.31, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

[...]

> > If you want Emacs to adapt in this point, it's on you to convince
> > Emacs people that this change is important.
> 
> FWIW, I don't find the comparison to speaking German very convincing either.

All metaphors suck in some way. My point is... I've seen all
too often this antipattern: some enters an existing culture
and shouts into the room "hey, why are you doing this in such
a weird way? Come do it this other way I propose, it's much
better!".

I think if you want to convince people, you might want to go
a bit smarter about that :-)

> > You haven't managed to convince me [...]

> Neither have you managed to convince me that mouse-1-2-3 is valuable. 

Fair enough.

Cheers
-- t

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Clément Pit-Claudel]

On 27/04/2020 10.08, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 09:36:41AM -0400, Clément Pit-Claudel wrote:
>> On 27/04/2020 07.31, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>>> If you want Emacs to adapt in this point, it's on you to convince
>>> Emacs people that this change is important.
>>
>> FWIW, I don't find the comparison to speaking German very convincing either.
> 
> All metaphors suck in some way. My point is... I've seen all
> too often this antipattern: some enters an existing culture
> and shouts into the room "hey, why are you doing this in such
> a weird way? Come do it this other way I propose, it's much
> better!".

Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
Hopefully the Emacs culture is richer than our outdated terminology ^^

> I think if you want to convince people, you might want to go
> a bit smarter about that :-)

I'm not sure (besides, I'm not sure "smarter" is the right word here).  Sometimes just asking "why" is enough to trigger interesting discussions.  If we don't have a good answer to "why?" except "that how we've always done it", then maybe that's a sign that we're not doing it optimally.  (for example, the other thread on Emacs looking square has yielded valuable new ideas).

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[tomas]

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On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 10:26:41AM -0400, Clément Pit-Claudel wrote:
> On 27/04/2020 10.08, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 09:36:41AM -0400, Clément Pit-Claudel wrote:
> >> On 27/04/2020 07.31, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > 
> > [...]
> > 
> >>> If you want Emacs to adapt in this point, it's on you to convince
> >>> Emacs people that this change is important.
> >>
> >> FWIW, I don't find the comparison to speaking German very convincing either.
> > 
> > All metaphors suck in some way. My point is... I've seen all
> > too often this antipattern [...]

> Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

[...]

I think we're going in circles. For me, we passed the point of
diminishing returns, so I'll stop here.

Cheers
-- t

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 27.04.2020 16:27, ndame wrote:
> What's more important, for example, is working language servers out of
> the box, as other threads discussed. User opens a file in a particular
> language and emacs automatically offers downloading and installing the
> language server client and server, sets it up, sets company up and
> as the user starts typing it works instantly. This is how VScode does
> it.

Baby steps. I really doubt we'd have it exactly like that anytime soon, 
but gnu-elpa can be a step toward that. As well as a short and 
easy-to-use official guide on "How to get IDE features".

We don't exactly have to reach the VS Code level of ease of use. Even 
closing the distance somewhat will be a win in my book.

> If this worked out of the box then minor peculiarities like mouse-1
> wouldn't matter at all.

I still think we should take care of "papercut" bugs like that. After 
all, an editor that "makes sense" to you right away tends to leave much 
better impression.

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Stefan Monnier]

> As far as I can tell, we're missing one explanation: mice might be on
> their way out, people use touch-sensitive surfaces (both the sensible

It's more than that: while over the years there have been many different
kinds of "mouse" device in use.  The terms `mouse-N` aren't wrong:
they're just too low-level.

In xmodmap's terminology, `mouse-1` is basically a "keycode", i.e. an
internal number used to uniquely identify a particular event.

Sadly, X11 has never developed any layer on top of that to give
meaningful names (aka "keysyms" in xmodmap's terminology) to
those numbers.

Emacs could invent its own mouse-button-naming layer (so I could name
my mouse-4/5 as scroll-wheel-up/down and my mouse-1 as mouse-left, and so
people who use a different device could name them differently).
We already have the underlying mechanism for that:
`input-decode-map` could be used to map `mouse-1` to `mouse-left` (and
we could use `function-key-map` to give a fallback default to remap
`mouse-left` back to `mouse-1` for backward compatibility).

But it's fundamentally a failing of X11, AFAIK.  This said, I'm not at
all up-to-date on the input-device layers of Linux/X11/Wayland, so maybe
there is a good solution out there.


        Stefan

RE: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Drew Adams]

> 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").  

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.

RE: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Drew Adams]

I meant to include this nifty reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location#Standard_anatomical_position

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[chad]

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If we're going to talk about common terminology, then it seems wrong to
ignore the fact that the majority of UI guidance talks about "click" and
"alt-click" far more than they talk about numbered mouse buttons. This has
been true since macs went to 1 button, since laptops with 3 buttons became
very hard to find, since mice with 5-12+ (yes, really) buttons because
available in every mainstream computer store, and since laptops with 2
buttons became virtually impossible to find -- to name just a few major
inflection points. At this point, the most common interface device has 0.5
buttons -- the "tap/click/etc" action of trackpads. Mice (and their related
desktop bretheren) have bifurcated between 2 buttons plus a
sometimes-clickable scroll wheel (ubiquitous in lower-cost setups) and
devices with many physical "buttons" (typically, 2 "main" buttons, a
clickable wheel, and at least 2 other buttons). If this doesn't match your
intuition, I invite you to do an internet search for "computer mouse" and
then for "gaming mouse".

This change to "click" is not an accident: naming the concept after the
action rather than the tool has been recommended practice from UI/CHI
researchers since at least the early 90's. UIs generally can't count on 3+
buttons, and most users don't internalize that many simultaneous modes
anyway, so "click" and "alt-click" are defacto standards. Even now, the
"alt click" is losing its hold, since touch-based interfaces are the
baseline for many users' experince, and alt-tap is cumbersome for most of
those.

To put this in more concrete terms: the last 3 devices I've used as my
daily driver, covering 15+ years and a solid 5-digit hours of computer use
have been incapable of directly producing a "middle mouse click", even with
modifier-chording tricks that belie the term "emacs pinky". The same is
true of nearly all of my peers and coworkers over that period, including
programmers, prose writers, and "creatives".

~Chad

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Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Michael Welsh Duggan]

ndame <ndame@protonmail.com> writes:

> I don't use the mouse in emacs at all, but when browsing info mouse-2
> caught my eye.
>
> Why emacs calls these mouse-1, 2 and 3? Wouldn't it be more user
> friendly to say left mouse button, middle mouse button and right mouse
> button?
>
> I checked what terminology Gnome uses:
>
> "Press the right mouse button on any local folder"
>
> https://help.gnome.org/users/shares-admin/stable/tool-getting-started.html.en_GB

It comes straight from X11 terminology.

1 = left
2 = middle
3 = right
4 = scroll wheel up
5 = scroll wheel down
6 = scroll wheel left (yes, really)
7 = scroll wheel right
8 = 4th button (browser back)
9 = 5th button (browser forward)

In point of fact, Emacs's first scroll-wheel support was on Windows.  I
know because I wrote it at the time.  (This was in the '96-'97
timeframe.  I didn't even have a mouse with a wheel at the time.  I had
to borrow a coworker's in order to test the code.)  At the time, I used
a new event, mouse-wheel, for the mouse-wheel event.  I don't know if
X11 supported a mouse wheel at this time.  Mainline (X11) emacs did not
need to change to support a mouse wheel once X11 had support for it: it
was just a new button number.  The symbol was just a concatenation of
"mouse-" and the button number.  Later work was done to unify NTEmacs
and mainline emacs, and the Windows-specific stuff changed to be more
like the X11 version.

One major advantage of the numbered naming system is listed above: the
code in emacs didn't need to change in the slightest when new buttons
were added.

-- 
Michael Welsh Duggan
(md5i@md5i.com)

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > If Emacs will ever be localized for a language with an absolute
  > reference frame [1], then it would be "east button" for mouse-1 and
  > "west button" for mouse-3, when the user is a right-hander looking
  > south. :-)

Aside:

I wonder how those people would express directions if walking around on
Boston streets -- or inside the Pentagon.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

As long as Emacs is designed to use multiple mouse buttons, the
terminology for UIs with only one button -- or for touch screens -- is
not pertinent to documenting Emacs.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Tim Cross]

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The mouse button number verses left, right middle button highlights one of
the limitations with adopting 'popular' terminology. Many of these other
applications have limited facilities for binding mouse buttons. Often, if
you have a mouse with more than 3 buttons, you can't use them or you have
to go to weird nonintuitive lengths to use them. Emacs does not suffer from
such a limitation. and the binding mechanism is the same regardless of the
button. Using left, middle and right is in fact a very poor choice because
it falls down as soon as you have a mouse with a different form factor, use
the mouse in the left hand instead of right or use a device like a touch
pad, foot peddle/pad or one of the many adaptive technology devices used by
someone with a disability. meanwhile, mouse-1, mouse-2, mouse-n remain
clear and unambigious.

On Tue, 28 Apr 2020 at 12:52, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> As long as Emacs is designed to use multiple mouse buttons, the
> terminology for UIs with only one button -- or for touch screens -- is
> not pertinent to documenting Emacs.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
>
>

-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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RE: Why mouse-1/2/3 ?

[Drew Adams]

> It comes straight from X11 terminology.
> 
> 1 = left
> 2 = middle
> 3 = right
> 4 = scroll wheel up
> 5 = scroll wheel down
> 6 = scroll wheel left (yes, really)
> 7 = scroll wheel right
> 8 = 4th button (browser back)
> 9 = 5th button (browser forward)
> 
> In point of fact, Emacs's first scroll-wheel support was on Windows.  I
> know because I wrote it at the time.  (This was in the '96-'97
> timeframe.  I didn't even have a mouse with a wheel at the time.  I had
> to borrow a coworker's in order to test the code.)  At the time, I used
> a new event, mouse-wheel, for the mouse-wheel event.  I don't know if
> X11 supported a mouse wheel at this time.  Mainline (X11) emacs did not
> need to change to support a mouse wheel once X11 had support for it: it
> was just a new button number.  The symbol was just a concatenation of
> "mouse-" and the button number.  Later work was done to unify NTEmacs
> and mainline emacs, and the Windows-specific stuff changed to be more
> like the X11 version.
> 
> One major advantage of the numbered naming system is listed above: the
> code in emacs didn't need to change in the slightest when new buttons
> were added.

Excellent.  Thanks for reporting this, as the logic
behind this and as history.