Re: Dired:: "mouse 1: visit this file in other window"

[Kevin Gallagher]

Richard Stallman wrote:
>     Perhaps there is a compelling reason to provide this new capability to
>     the left mouse button, such as an attempt to accommodate those with a
>     2-button mouse.
>
> The compelling reason is compatibility with lots of other applications.
> For that reason, the changes you've proposed simply won't do.
> They would break the compatibility we are trying to achieve
>   
I understand.  But it would be nice if one small customization option 
for this feature were added.

Among the many applications I use, which follow links with a single 
mouse-1 click, I recently observed that they fall into two groups, each 
handling this behavior in one of two slightly different ways:  (1)  
Follow link whenever mouse-1 is clicked while it is over link, with no 
exceptions;  or (2)  Follow link when mouse-1 is clicked while it is 
over link ONLY IF the window is the current selected window, otherwise, 
simply select the window.

Emacs 22 implements the first as its default behavior.  But I, and I 
suspect others, would prefer to have the option to customize Emacs to 
exhibit the second behavior.  (By the way, in Emacs, I'm using "selected 
window" to mean the Emacs window with the active cursor.)