this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Karthinks - Different strokes for different folks (karthinks.com)
submitted 1 year ago by SaraBiYo@alien.top to c/emacs
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[–] _viz_@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] karthink@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.)

[–] _viz_@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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. ]

  1. The first response I give to people who ask about window switching, I say to turn on mouse-autoselect-window and use the mouse.
  2. https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/uxh0dy/a_mousedriven_emacs/