From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Drew Adams Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: RE: Highway Musophobia Revisited [was: Speeding up Emacs load time] Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 10:24:21 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: References: <87r4ezdiiy.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> <87r4ez92ry.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> <87txjv7gen.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> <87r4ey3jjd.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> <87k3kqnup9.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> <87li56mbet.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> <871u6ym7xi.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> <871u6u4j28.fsf@wanadoo.es> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1374254683 3095 80.91.229.3 (19 Jul 2013 17:24:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 17:24:43 +0000 (UTC) To: =?iso-8859-1?B?03NjYXIgRnVlbnRlcw==?= , help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Jul 19 19:24:43 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1V0EQ6-0005RA-LZ for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 19 Jul 2013 19:24:42 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:34512 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V0EQ6-0002q8-8Y for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 19 Jul 2013 13:24:42 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:40093) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V0EPr-0002mr-Rz for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 19 Jul 2013 13:24:29 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V0EPq-00027j-8P for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 19 Jul 2013 13:24:27 -0400 Original-Received: from userp1040.oracle.com ([156.151.31.81]:38970) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V0EPp-00027Q-W9 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 19 Jul 2013 13:24:26 -0400 Original-Received: from ucsinet21.oracle.com (ucsinet21.oracle.com [156.151.31.93]) by userp1040.oracle.com (Sentrion-MTA-4.3.1/Sentrion-MTA-4.3.1) with ESMTP id r6JHONc5030847 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=OK); Fri, 19 Jul 2013 17:24:24 GMT Original-Received: from aserz7022.oracle.com (aserz7022.oracle.com [141.146.126.231]) by ucsinet21.oracle.com (8.14.4+Sun/8.14.4) with ESMTP id r6JHOMhF026674 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Fri, 19 Jul 2013 17:24:23 GMT Original-Received: from abhmt104.oracle.com (abhmt104.oracle.com [141.146.116.56]) by aserz7022.oracle.com (8.14.4+Sun/8.14.4) with ESMTP id r6JHOMFY015813; Fri, 19 Jul 2013 17:24:22 GMT In-Reply-To: <871u6u4j28.fsf@wanadoo.es> X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: Oracle Beehive Extensions for Outlook 2.0.1.7 (607090) [OL 12.0.6668.5000 (x86)] X-Source-IP: ucsinet21.oracle.com [156.151.31.93] X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.4.x-2.6.x [generic] X-Received-From: 156.151.31.81 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:92257 Archived-At: > >> I think the mouse is a killer. It is not productive, it is not > >> ergonomic. > > > > Any pointer device, and a mouse is one (among other things it can > > be), has this feature: you look at something, anywhere, you point ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I should have said "anything", not "something", to be even clearer. Anything you can see, that is. > > to it to do something with it or to it. End of story. >=20 > I beg to differ. A counterexample is ace-jump-mode. You look at the > word you wish to jump, A word is not just "anything". But it is certainly one kind of thing, so OK, even if what you say does not apply generally. > press the hotkey (Space in my case, with evil-mode), > press the first letter of that word, Which means you are NOT just pointing to something. You are analyzing what it is that you are seeing, and finding something about it that you can use to distinguish it, and then specifying that distinguishing property. This is no different in principle from describing the thing you want as "the third blue one to the left of the orange, square one". The fact that your interaction might be rapid is irrelevant to the point (my point). You are going to extra trouble to distinguish the thing you want, beyond just locating it directly by pointing to what you see. You might as well be giving its GPS coordinates. The only ambiguity in pointing is the precision of the pointer (and your eye & hand). If you do something other than point then you need to narrow things down in some other way until you have characterized the object you want uniquely. That's a lot more complex in principle, and often in practice too. > which is replaced by some other letter, you press that letter and the > cursor jumps. The whole process is faster than moving the hand from > the keyboard to the mouse, and much faster than moving the mouse > pointer to that position on the screen and clicking. Whether you can do something fast is irrelevant to the point I am making. Some people can type a whole paragraph before some other people can manage to get their mouse out of its holster and aim and shoot it and hit the target. Irrelevant. (That doesn't mean it is irrelevant to your personal choice of interaction.) > > Nothing beats that eye-hand direct-manipulation thing for what it > > offers. Neither text completion/search nor a command/key to go > > directly to the thing by name, number, description, whatever. Nada. >=20 > ace-jump consists on eye-hand manipulation using a keyboard, so maybe we > are in agreement after all :-) No, we are not in agreement, I'm afraid. The point is about directly pointing to something. Direct is the keyword. The time to execute the interaction is not relevant to my point. There are all kinds of keyboard interactions and shortcuts, including single-key go-to actions that take you directly to a particular object, where the distinguishing takes place in (a) the choice of which key to hit and (b) the code behind that key, which does the object locating. None of that invalidates my point. You must (consciously or not so consciously) (a) choose the shortcut (or in your case locate and analyze the target word and figure out its distinguishing prefix) and (b) effect it (hit a key or type some text to be completed etc.) That is not the same thing as locating the object visually and just pointing to it. Not at all. Regardless of which you might find faster to do in practice. It's about direct and simple and natural. It is not necessarily about speed. In particular, no one is arguing that pointing is always the best way to communicate. That would be equivalent to wishing us to drop language of any kind beyond the most rudimentary gestures. A baby pointing at an object is one way to interact, but not the only one. And in particular, there is the question of associating different actions and intentions with the object pointed to (want, don't want, eat, gimme, scares me, what is it?...). My point is simply that pointing devices can be useful, and a mouse is a handy pointing device. My second point is that there is more than one useful tool in life's tool chest. Nothing limits you to just a mouse or just a keyboard.