Re: Context menus and mouse-3 [was: Changes for emacs 28]

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2020 00:47:38 +0200
> CC: philipk@posteo.net, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>,
>  Göktuğ Kayaalp <self@gkayaalp.com>,
>  Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>, Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>,
>  Gregory Heytings <ghe@sdf.org>
> From: Ergus via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> On September 15, 2020 10:33:51 PM GMT+02:00, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:
> >> > read `Mouse Commands' if you haven't
> >> > already, and give it a try.
> >> 
> >> Mouse support is poor in Emacs, this is the reason
> >> why I don't use the mouse in Emacs.
> >
> >I disagree that mouse support is poor in Emacs.
> >
> So you are the only one I know so far with that opinion.

He's not the only one.

> This is the same problem than undo-redo. Maybe the features are actually better technically speaking or to whom knows all the tricks and trains himself for years; but it worth nothing if the users feel uncomfortable or don't values some of the details that justify complexity in others. (Like hiding the context panel with a control or not having a redo button or not deleting the selection) Or just don't need them.
> 
> There are some "standards" in mouse interaction determined/imposed by most of the gui programing interfaces from visual studio or java to qt5 and gtk. The developers of all the aplications have been following them for years and most of the user are used to them.

Emacs didn't invent the effect of the mouse gestures we have now, they
closely follow what X applications do, or at least did at the time.
Perhaps nowadays those applications and users who are used to those
effects are a minority (what with all the "modern" desktops so busy
copycat'ing MS-Windows' look and feel), but we still have many users
who have these gestures burnt into their muscle memories.  Wed cannot
just abandon them, even if they are a minority (which is not at all
certain).

What we _can_ do is to have 2 modes of operation, one each for every
one of these two groups of users.  This is easy to do technically, all
we need is "just" to have someone who'd sit down and design the
"other" mode of mouse gestures in some reasonable and logical way.

> So this is the "dilema". Or we change a bit (1 binding) to ease the user experience and learning curve OR we expect that all the potential users change their expectations, trainings and don't go to any other editor but use emacs because we pretend we offer a better functionality that they are not aware of and most probably don't need or never learn/use because is complex to remember.

There's no dilemma, we can have both modes.

> Simple is better than complex.
> Complex is better than complicated.

And the one you are used to is the best of them all.

> The emacs approach with mouse is indeed complicated.

I disagree that it's complicated.  But we don't have to agree, see
above.