Re: [usability] mouse-1 for performing actions?

[Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann)]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> "Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com> writes:
>
>> I do not understand:  I click mouse-1 to mark the beginning of a
>> region, move the mouse cursor, and then click mouse-3 to mark the end
>> of the region.  If the two commands are on the same button, and used
>> in the same context, how can Emacs distinguish between a click to mark
>> the beginning of a region and a click to follow a hyperlink?
>
> I didn't know about this feature.  When I mark text, I do it by
> holding mouse-1 down until I reached the end of the marked text.  Ok,
> so it is difficult to change the behaviour in a backwards compatible
> way.
>
> However, in some modes activating buttons is probably more common than
> marking text in this way, would it make sense to have the
> click-mouse1-to-activate-button in such buffers?
>
> Btw, do ANY other application have this mouse1 + mouse3 mark text
> feature?  I haven't seen it before.  IMHO dropping this feature in
> favor of activating buttons and links with mouse-1 is more user
> friendly (except for old time Emacs users) as it is consistent with
> how other applications behave.

Note that clicking mouse3 twice cuts the text.  Very nifty.  By
default, this feature is not available when dragging mouse-1.

But with mouse-sel enabled (I think that's the package), you can
press mouse-1, drag the mouse, then _also_ click mouse-3, then
release mouse-1, to effect a cut operation.  Even niftier :-)

Hm.

XTerm has this feature: if something prevents you from using mouse-1
for its normal function (for example when running Emacs with
xterm-mouse-mode enabled), then you can still use S-mouse-1 to get
the function.  I wonder if this could be translated to Emacs?  (Of
course, there is a binding for S-mouse-1 already.  This needs to be
dealt with.)

kai
-- 
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