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

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

> > 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?
>
> The wheel is smaller than the (other) buttons,

Yes, it is.

> and takes some care to get just a mouse-2 and not a wheel-scroll
> then mouse-2 (which would paste somewhere else!).

No, that was fixed in Emacs 22, AFAIK.

> I don't yank much with the mouse (I can after all have
> C-y ready with one hand while the other just uses mouse-1), but I can; I'm
> not saying that wheels are impossible to use as buttons, just harder.
> (They might very well be unusable for someone who had impaired fine motor
> control.)

Any manipulation might well be unusable by someone with a corresponding
fine-motor control problem.

> > 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.
>
> It's not all that different: I use click-to-focus (largely because I
> sometimes like to shove the mouse out of the way), and at the moment I
> have a whole two Emacs frames open on each of two machines.  And, as I
> said, I do sometimes use the mouse to set point; it's just that that
> rarity combined with the rarity of wanting to set point in, say, *Help* in
> the first place that makes the whole thing a non-issue for me.

OK, we can count you as not having been (very) bothered by mouse-1 following
links, in spite of using click-to-focus.

> > 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.
>
> Because I typically want to edit (with the keyboard) after I set point,
> and not after I click a link (which corresponds to "browing" Help or Info
> or code, rather than editing same).  Links are often in other windows
> and/or are one of many similar choices, and I find them to be best
> selected with a pointer.
>
> > 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.
>
> My links are underlined, and my text in general is not, so I don't find
> myself unsure what will happen if I click;

Not in Dired. Not in *Buffer List*. The example I used of accidentally
hitting a link was Dired.

> I also automatically click in
> the blank space of a window to select it (to avoid activating anything in
> it), although this sometimes means that I need to go back to where I was!

Yes, and not only that. In Dired, as I said, you (or I, at least) might want
to put the cursor on a file or directory name, in order to do something with
that file or directory.

Of course, you can try clicking to the left or right of the file name,
but... That's the kind of workaround I want to get away from. And in my
case, I often have everything in Dired except the file names hidden
(dired-details.el).

> > 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.)
>
> I always use C-s ... RET RET in that case.

_If_ that window or frame is already selected. Or else you need to get to
that window or frame. In my case, it is usually a frame, and the mouse is
the quickest way to get there.

> But at this point we're just comparing usage patterns of two
> Emacs users,

I was going to say the same thing. You have described a pattern of use where
it doesn't bother you. So we can count you as someone whom it doesn't
bother.

> so if we are to continue we might as well take a real survey
> on the subject.

Hence my question (granted, a question posed here is not equivalent to a
survey of non-newbie users, but it's a start).