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

[Richard Stallman]

    Yes.  If you drag mouse-1 inside the current selection you get
    drag'n'drop, if you drag mouse-1 anywhere else it marks.

I don't think this would be hard to implement, so I suggest once again
that someone give it a try.  It is not necessary to know anything
special about GUI programming, it is only necessary to change the
command that is bound to down-mouse-1 so that in some cases it moves
the region text to where the mouse is.  It should try to do something
smart with the undo list so as not to accumulate things there
for the intermediate changes that were not really made.

What happens if you click within the current selection?
Does that cancel the selection and move point there?
Perhaps it should; that could help address Miles' complaint:

    For instance, when you select a region, and get the start wrong by 1
    character, you can't just redrag it, you have first get rid of the
    region by clicking (outside the region!), and _then_ redragg.