RE: generate 3) S-mouse-2: follow link in new window

["Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> > Honestly, how many of you (not new users) keep the default value of
> > `mouse-1-click-follows-link'? Outside of Emacs, there is not the same
> > need for the normal use of `mouse-1' to set point.  Honestly,
> > pre-Emacs 22, did you ever run into a UI conflict between pasting and
> > following a link? And just as honestly, with Emacs 22 have you ever
> > accidentally followed a link when you just wanted to select a buffer
> > or window or move the cursor?
>
> I keep that default value without trouble.  I don't think I have ever
> wanted to mouse-paste into a link, but mouse-1 is certainly easier to use
> when one's mouse-2 is a wheel.

How so? Perhaps it depends on the wheeled mouse, but I've never had any
difficulty using the wheel as `mouse-2'. No doubt you have the same problem
yanking with the mouse? Or perhaps you don't yank with the mouse either?

> And I don't think I've ever accidentally
> followed a link, because I rarely want to set point in one (they're not
> often editable, for instance) and I rarely want to set point with the
> mouse anyway (with the exception of long, wrapped buffer lines where some
> short sequence of arrows, word motion, and C-a/C-e doesn't do what I
> want).

Fair enough. Consider people who do use a mouse to set point, particularly
those who have a click-to-focus window manager and who use multiple frames.

Perhaps using `mouse-1' to follow links is less annoying for folks who don't
use the mouse to set point ;-). I am curious, though, why you use a mouse to
follow links but not to set point.

Wrt wanting to set point in a link - I don't think that is so much the
question as wanting to set point (or just establish focus) and accidentally
landing on a link.

The place where I'm bitten most often (when I use emacs -Q) is clicking a
file name in Dired to then do something with that file. Drives me nuts that
it opens the file. (But I'm sure that, like Stefan, with time and patience I
could get in the habit of avoiding this annoyance much of the time.)

> If I did want to set point in a link, the same absurd amount of
> conditioning (in such places as web browsers) that produced the mouse-1
> suggestion in the first place makes me think twice about just clicking, so
> that I remember to hold the button for a bit without any trouble.

"Absurd amount of conditioning", indeed. ;-)

> (That said, I don't really care one way or the other about what mouse-1
> does on a link; it's not exactly hard to, after mouse-1 just sets point,
> move a finger by a centimeter and use mouse-2 instead.  I just don't think
> that the current default is a bad one.)

Yes, that is another argument for reversing the default behavior.