Re: mouse-1-click-follows-link

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> There seems to be an increasing trend to make Emacs look and act like
> a web browser in all contexts, making it frustrating to use for text
> editing purposes.  Setting the point is basic functionality, and I
> shouldn't have to cross my fingers, double tap, hold, turn around and
> touch my nose to do it.

I'm more and more inclined to agree.

I think the mouse-1-clock-follows-link behavior should be used (by default)
at most at a few well-tested placed.  E.g. custom (where it's already
working this way in 21.4 AFAIK), help, info.  But not grep, not compile, ...

The idea of having mouse-1-clock-follows-link activated by default is to
make it easier for beginners accustomed to web browsers more than to text
editors, and maybe that makes sense, but we shouldn't overstate this case
either: the number of users we can expect to win thanks to this minor detail
is likely to be vanishingly small.  It's not like the mouse-2-follows-link
convention is the only "unusual" UI aspect of Emacs.

So maybe turning it on for a handful of cases makes sense.  And keeping
a more intrusive option may also make sense for people whose system makes it
hard to generate a mouse-2 event.  But the current setup has tricked me too
many times already.  I know I can turn it off, but we should be careful not
to alienate our fervent disciples.


        Stefan