Wow, I never thought to use mouse gestures in emacs.
I do use the keyboard more than most, but I’m definitely not a purist.
That reminds me - I need to add the NoMouse package on one of my installs. The trackpad on my laptop’s keyboard is too sensitive and does a “click” if my fingers are anywhere in its vicinity.
Check out wind-move and and frame-move. On a Mac I bind the right command key to “super” and use that the prefix. I can then use super-arrow to move between windows and even frames. Before that I had to use the mouse more but this significantly speeds up my day.
In the end it’s not about which is THE way. It’s about building enough options to build an effective and efficient workflow. I’m glad emacs has useful mouse built in. I’m glad emacs has useful keyboard support built in too.
Like the article mentions, gestures could be even more handy when used with a touch interface.
Such as the new Android port of Emacs, for example.
A shame that acme(1) only gets a passing mention when the original paper on acme’s predecessor help really drives the point home for having a mouse-friendly interface: https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/help/
Sam (and IIRC rio windows) use menus to get the job done which might be worthy of mention too.
Note though that in the computers that acme was used in, the mouse was like this: http://jfloren.net/b/2022/3/2/0
A shame that acme(1) only gets a passing mention when the original paper on acme’s predecessor help really drives the point home for having a mouse-friendly interface: https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/help/
Unfortunately it is uniquely difficult to make any nuanced point about mouse usage because of the inertial pull of the decades old keyboard vs mouse argument, and the equally vapid “use both” argument. Talking about Acme’s design would have derailed things further.
I wasn’t advocating for mouse-friendly interfaces at all, by the way. My goal was only to point out that (i) there are times when using the mouse with Emacs is natural, although the specifics depend on your use of Emacs, and (ii) Emacs includes some features to improve mouse expressivity (gestures, configurable drag-and-drop, etc.)
Unfortunately it is uniquely difficult to make any nuanced point about mouse usage because of the inertial pull of the decades old keyboard vs mouse argument, and the equally vapid “use both” argument. Talking about Acme’s design would have derailed things further.
I agree. The “keyboard warriors” always stick in their nose to boast about their keyboard-only workflow and how it is so-fast, etc., etc. while completely miss the point being made. I have seen this trend far too many times. OTOH, I am too biased to see acme not get the treatment (that I think) it deserves. :P
I wasn’t advocating for mouse-friendly interfaces at all, by the way.
Ah, by linking the “help” paper, I was hoping to make a point that having a fluid workflow that relies on the mouse is possible. Since every argument preaches that using the mouse introduces friction…
My goal was only to point out that (i) there are times when using the mouse with Emacs is natural, although the specifics depend on your use of Emacs, and (ii) Emacs includes some features to improve mouse expressivity (gestures, configurable drag-and-drop, etc.)
As a pretty mouse-heavy user myself [1], I agree. Using the mouse is simply better for certain tasks and I wrote a “cry-for-help” myself a while back [2] to see if I can improve my mouse usage in Emacs. To this effect, I ended up writing a (hacky) minor mode that implements acme’s tags but I could never bend Emacs’ window management to my will and eventually stopped working on it once my mouse was stolen. :-(
[ Without a scroll wheel that is easy to press, that workflow is annoying. ]
- The first response I give to people who ask about window switching, I say to turn on mouse-autoselect-window and use the mouse.
- https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/uxh0dy/a_mousedriven_emacs/
Very nice nice read, thank you.
Credit goes to /u/karthink
Noted
Look at mr. Galileo here saying the sun does not rotate around the earth!
lol jokes aside I had no idea this stuff even existed. I use the mouse sporadically to change window or tab, or ina messy files go to a specific point in the buffer, but this strokes stuff is something else. I have worked in computer vision, idk what they are using in the back but I guess it must be fairly rudimentary, I wonder if training a mainstream deeplearning CV model could provide better results after the user calibrates it… If anyone would be interested in working on it hit me up.
I use a mix of both, but as I use -nw a lot I keep my key skills up
Related (scrutinizes the same quote “y’all are going to send me emails linking to it otherwise”): https://danluu.com/keyboard-v-mouse/
karthink, you are making a lot of innovative stuff, always impressed