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

[Simon Josefsson]

"Robert J. Chassell" <address@hidden> writes:

>    Btw, do ANY other application have this mouse1 + mouse3 mark text
>    feature?  I haven't seen it before.
>
> You must have been using poorly designed applications.  The two button
> marking technique often makes it easier for people to mark a specified
> region than dragging.  (Sometimes dragging works OK -- it depends on
> the situation.)

If this is a good idea (I don't know--I've never used the technique)
perhaps it should be suggested to the GNOME people.  Right now the
GNOME Human Interface Guidelines [1] says something that doesn't fit
well with how Emacs behaves:

Recommendations:

+ The left button should be used for selecting, activating components,
  dragging, and the display of drop-down menus.

+ The right button should be used to display and select actions from a
  popup menu.

+ The middle mouse button should be used to paste the current PRIMARY
  (usually the last-highlighted) selection at the pointer position, as
  follows:
...

[1] 
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig/userinput.html#mouse-buttons

>    IMHO dropping this feature in favor of activating buttons and links
>    with mouse-1 is more user friendly ..
>
> We should never reduce the quality of the Emacs user interface just
> because other applications use worse interfaces.
>
> Please suggest to the developers of other applications that they
> improve their work.  (Besides improving the methods for copying,
> please ask these developers to implement incremental search, which is
> a highly comfortable and efficient way to navigate.)

The goal should IMHO be consistency within the GNOME desktop since it
is the GNU desktop, and Emacs can be a desktop application.