[HN Gopher] On Emacs 28' context menu and Unix mouse-usage in ge...
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On Emacs 28' context menu and Unix mouse-usage in general
Author : pcr910303
Score : 171 points
Date : 2021-12-30 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ruzkuku.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ruzkuku.com)
| alipang wrote:
| I'd imagine you can use a keyboard shortcut as well to open this
| menu, but based on the text cursor, rather than the mouse one.
|
| I do this a lot is vscode to auto-fix issues and automatically
| add imports for the identifier under the caret. It's however
| frustrating in that it sometimes uses the underlying platform's
| dropdown widget, which doesn't respect my key bindings (Emacs-
| like, using C-p, C-n for up, down etc).
| link0ff wrote:
| Indeed, you can use the keyboard shortcut Shift-F10 to open the
| context menu based on the cursor location.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| The best UIs IMO tend to be those that allow operation with the
| left hand on the keyboard home row, and the right hand on the
| mouse. Keyboard shortcuts should be preferentially towards the
| left side of the keyboard. Quite a bit of CAD & graphics software
| works this way.
|
| Keyboard-only is decent for text, and particularly good for text
| where everything that needs to be edited will be on the screen at
| the same time.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > The best UIs IMO tend to be those that allow operation with
| the left hand on the keyboard home row, and the right hand on
| the mouse.
|
| Which would suck for left handed people.
| throw10920 wrote:
| I was just about to write something like this.
|
| I call this model the "MOBA interaction model", because in
| those games (which include League, Smite, and Dota) you _must_
| place do exactly this.
|
| I, too, wish that more interfaces worked this way - but there's
| a fundamental problem, which is that many tools (including all
| Unix ones) are more efficient when you can _input text_ , which
| necessitates the use of both hands on the keyboard.
| hestefisk wrote:
| sulam wrote:
| I was hoping someone had made a context menu that is 28 feet long
| when you scroll through all the options. Sadly, no such hilarity
| presented itself. :)
| chungus wrote:
| Used to be the dogmatist: "mouse is bad!" Now I'm a pragmatist,
| do 90% of my work on a Thinkpad using keyboard shortcuts, but use
| the little red trackpoint mouse whenever it's more convenient. As
| long as I don't have to move my arms.
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| Yep ! The mouse isn't a mouse if it's on the home row. :) Not
| enough people got behind the trackpoint in its day and it makes
| me sad that it's not the default mouse input for programmers.
| Sanzig wrote:
| If you want to be "that person" in your office, Unicomp makes
| buckling spring Model M keyboards, and they have one model
| with a trackpoint (the Endurapro). Looks like it's out of
| stock until sometime next year due to tooling issues though.
|
| https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/SFNT
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| Even better -
| https://tex.com.tw/products/shinobi?variant=16969883648090
| - I've been using one of these since they came out and
| they're fantastic.
|
| I used to have one of the old thinkpad external keyboards -
| http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/lenovo-
| thinkpad... - and I used those until they broke and I
| couldn't find more.
|
| I haven't used the unicomp ones, but I can wholeheartedly
| recommend the shinobi.
| tgbugs wrote:
| This is a useful practical introduction to the new context menu
| functionality. Since power users rarely use the mouse or right
| click at all, I have found that context menus are a great space
| for making custom functionality accessible to semi-technical
| users on a file by file basis. Yes, this breaks all sorts of
| usability guidelines related to consistency. On the other hand if
| used judiciously it can save the user an enormous amount of time
| by giving the a single place to look for functionality that is
| relevant to them in a given context.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Oh absolutely, even as a 20+ year emacs user, if I don't use a
| package on a daily basis I keep forgetting how it works. I'm
| looking at you clj-refactor.
|
| Context menu is a great place for these things. If it's not in
| line with how out emacs overlords thought things should work,
| they should provide a better solution for it.
| DoctorNick wrote:
| I thought that said "28 foot context menu" and I was like, yeah,
| that sounds like Emacs.
| trabant00 wrote:
| > irrational fear of the mouse dominates amongst Un*x dogmatists.
| Be it because their tools don't integrate, or because it is a
| symbol or rebellion, a means to differentiate their prior
| ignorance from the enlightenment they have attained
|
| Or maybe we've learned something in the decades we've been
| working, since before you were actually born. Get off my lawn
| know-it-all college kid!
| narraturgy wrote:
| I'm relatively young, only 30, but I have the "privilege" to
| work on a variety of 90s-era windows-based systems. Everything
| is mouse-driven. When you have to use the mouse to navigate
| between multiple nested GUI pages, and each one has a couple
| seconds of load time, and the button to get to the next level
| is in another spot relatively to where the previous button you
| clicked was, it takes hours of your day just navigating between
| contexts over the course of an entire work day. People who
| think my fear/hatred of the mouse is irrational have never had
| to work on the irrational systems and terrible UX that the
| widescale prevalence mouse has enabled.
| microtherion wrote:
| Your youthful innocence presumably shielded you from having
| had to work with the corresponding keyboard driven text menu
| systems that preceded these mouse based GUI systems. I assure
| you that they could be far less pleasant to use.
|
| Granted, for any input modality, there are better and worse
| designs using it, but when designed properly, having an
| additional modality available can never be a disadvantage.
| When a newer modality replaces, rather than supplements, an
| older one, the benefits are often more debatable.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That's interesting, most of the accounts I've heard were
| that the text mode stuff was vastly superior, because once
| you knew the interface you could type ahead regardless of
| how slowly it actually loaded. Are you referring to the
| difficulty of picking things up in the first place, or am I
| unaware of some other difficulty that it had?
| daptaq wrote:
| I agree, but we might be imagining different things under the
| term "Un*x dogmatists".
| pjmlp wrote:
| Having started UNIX on Xenix, followed by DG/UX with twm like
| window manager, and an heavy XEmacs user during its heyday, I
| agree with the know-it-all college kid.
| trabant00 wrote:
| What exactly do you agree? That I'm not allowed to like my
| keyboard focused setup? That I can't avoid the mouse as much
| as I want? That he should be sarcastic with people who like
| to work a certain away after working for longer that he has
| lived?
| ebiester wrote:
| But that's the thing - the article author is talking about
| a context menu, which by default means that everything from
| the context menu can be done by keyboard means.
|
| As for me, I'm another greybeard that doesn't need a mouse,
| but defaults to using it over a keyboard-only setup.
| Keyboard shortcuts are great for things that are frequently
| done, but I'd rather not spend the time to remember rarely-
| used features.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| You're allowed to do _all_ of that.
|
| Just don't force others to have to do the same. And yes, I
| used mice at a time where the middle button actually had
| been a button ;).
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| My god, a mouse click which actually does something in a Terminal
| prompt! What a concept.
|
| /s
|
| But seriously though, if I could just ask for two things in
| emacs:
|
| 1. Enable mouse mode by default (Yes -- I love UNIX too, but this
| is ridiculous)
|
| 2. Give up on "yanking" and "killing" with only the keyboard and
| allow for text selection with the mouse. OP touches on this a
| bit, but why anyone should have to write their own functions to
| accomplish it is a bad sign.
|
| Because I know I will get yelled at for this - especially #2 - is
| this limitation due to the fact that emacs (and I guess, vi) act
| like a pager with distinct modes of operation? And, yes I know
| GUI versions exist, but I shouldn't have to switch to something
| else just because the canonical implementation is incomplete.
|
| /rant
| donatzsky wrote:
| Mouse selection works fine. At least if you use the gui. And,
| really, if you're using emacs in the terminal, you should
| consider switching, since it works much better in the gui.
| eatmygodetia wrote:
| I don't see why you wouldn't consider graphical Emacs to be the
| canonical implementation. It's part of the primary codebase,
| several features enabled by default rely on it, and it's what
| is started when you run emacs with no arguments.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Which is kind of ironic given the UIs of traditional UNIXes like
| CDE, NEWS, OpenLook and NeXT, with keyboard shortcuts alongside
| three button mouse usage.
|
| Somehow down the line the FOSS UNIX generation decided that the
| ways of twm were what one should aim for.
|
| I guess there is some romanticism to work as on the early UNIX
| years.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Not to mention IRIX's 4dwm. There was a different path
| available indeed.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| There are some exceptions to this though, e.g. Window Maker
| (which is what i use) feels like everything is made primarily
| to be used via the GUI and using a mouse (it even has a WYSIWYG
| global menu editor where you work with it by drag and dropping
| items on it instead of editing text files like you'd find in
| the vast majority of window managers or providing some
| barebones tree editor with add/remove/etc buttons like you'd
| find in most DEs - and AFAIK it is the only WM or DE to provide
| a WYSIWYG theme editor).
|
| I find it amazing that Window Maker is both among the most
| powerful window managers i've used and the most convenient and
| graphical (FVWM is probably more powerful but it certainly
| isn't as convenient to configure/set up).
| pjmlp wrote:
| No wonder given that it builds up on NeXT window manager
| concepts.
|
| It was actually my window manager of choice between 1998 and
| 2003 when on Linux distributions, and I had my collection of
| mini widget apps.
|
| Nowadays it seems mostly stable, to put it on a nicer way.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| It looks like NeXTSTEP but it isn't really following its
| concepts beyond those looks. I did use NeXTSTEP for a bit
| some time ago, after years of using Window Maker and
| NeXTSTEP's window management felt very primitive in
| comparison.
|
| > Nowadays it seems mostly stable, to put it on a nicer
| way.
|
| Sadly it has some bugs, though it is largely external stuff
| (RandR support was never implemented properly and is so
| broken that i don't think it is even compiled in by
| default, mouse settings do not work since it uses some old
| APIs, EWMH support is buggy/incomplete and some
| applications that assume it is always there have issues
| under it), but UI-wise it is stable (in that it doesn't try
| to reinvent itself - a 1997 screenshot of WM looks pretty
| much the same as a screenshot from a current PC, aside from
| increased resolutions, at least unless you are on a cheap
| laptop :-P).
|
| I do try to fix some bugs myself and implement features
| whenever i get too annoyed by something though.
| tsuru wrote:
| If hands-on-keyboard-and-mouse (HOKAM?) is important, I would
| suggest looking at the digital content creation apps like Blender
| and Maya context menus and pie menus for inspiration.
|
| I know with my use of Emacs, I'd probably use or configure it
| like a fancy which-key: use the mouse to navigate / filter the
| available choices but then use the keyboard for final selection.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Why was the title edited here? Disappointed not to find an
| article about a 28-foot-long menu...
| lolcowe wrote:
| You guys should update to emacs 1000 (vim)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| vim isn't even the same class of tool; vim is a text editor,
| emacs is a lisp environment that implemented text editing (in
| between an email client, web browser, git frontend, task
| tracker, ...). And I say that as a vim user.
| User23 wrote:
| In a lot of ways, GNU Emacs is the last life raft from the
| MIT AI Lab and its Lisp Machines.
|
| I'd still love to see a Linux/SBCL Lisp Machine. I wonder to
| what extent such a thing is possible.
|
| On another tangent, I'd love to see an Elisp compatibility
| package for Common Lisp, which would essentially be GNU Emacs
| with the C bits replaced with Common Lisp.
| michael-ax wrote:
| I'm in the middle of redoing my 5 yo config from the ground up
| for emacs'29 to take advantage of byte code compilation* -- and
| there's a lot happening in that accessibility of features space!
|
| there are new better completion frameworks and new better ways of
| handling, thinking about and using key-maps .. so it look as if
| we're just one breakthrough away from having keymaps and menus
| attain some kind of parity with what M-x and M-: can deliver.
|
| my emacs, being more of a computing environment than an editor,
| had 11 k org'd loc. I'm dumping that for small elisp files
| editable with outshine so i can nimbly add customizations to
| these menus and the other three dozen breakthrough (for me)
| packages that have appeared over the last few years.
|
| this is all very exciting!
| zbobet2012 wrote:
| Can you give a bit more detail on the byte code compiler and
| autocompletes you're looking at? I've not redone my .emacs
| since 2011...
| txru wrote:
| https://www.ruiying.online/post/2021-07-02-install-and-
| use-e...
|
| The byte code compiler uses gccjit to compile elisp to elf
| files. That, in conjunction with the use of libjansson for
| json handling, makes emacs substantially, noticeably faster
| for lsp (language server protocol, which most editors at
| least have support for now).
|
| If you haven't looked at lsp yet either, I'd highly recommend
| it. It provides a common set of language server apis so you
| can have a unified completion experience between languages. I
| can remember all the unpleasant tricks to getting jedi mode
| for python, meghanada for Java, and having to memorize two
| totally separate apis. This is so much nicer.
| taeric wrote:
| What are the new better completion frameworks? And in contrast
| to which older one? (Asking as a helm user.)
| jonpalmisc wrote:
| I only got into Emacs last year or so, but I've never used
| anything but company-mode. I'm also curious if this is what
| they are talking about or if there's something else I'm
| missing.
| yepguy wrote:
| The newest kid on the block is vertico - commonly used
| together with consult, embark, marginalia, and orderless to
| replace helm or ivy.
| loopz wrote:
| F10 brings up Global Menu, so you can turn off menu in GUI.
|
| I just found out earlier today after looking for context-menus.
| Kessler83 wrote:
| Hahaha, like you are some sort of brave free-thinker for using
| the mouse! There are tons of reasons for preferring the keyboard,
| one of which is to alleviate the hand and shoulder pains
| resulting from pointing and clicking with a mouse for 35 years
| ... Go into any work place where people work with mouse-heavy
| applications all day, and count the number of employees who have
| had to resort to special solutions, like trackballs, trackpoints
| or roller-bars. I'm not saying you can't get pains from a
| keyboard---not least from Emacs unless you switch capslock and
| ctrl. But the intro to this article is kinda silly I think. It's
| not a statement to use the keyboard, and you certainly aren't a
| rebel if you don't.
| throw10920 wrote:
| I've been using Linux, traditional Unix editors like vim and
| emacs, and other keyboard-driven tools for the past decade with
| very little mouse use, and I'm starting to get RSI as a result.
| Singling out mouse-use for this is a wild claim, especially
| because typing on a keyboard involves far _more_ RSI-inducing
| motions (many tiny repetitive finger-motions) than using a
| mouse.
|
| Also, the author is specifically speaking about "Un _x
| dogmatists " (not programmers in general), where using the
| mouse absolutely _does* make you a rebel.
| Kessler83 wrote:
| What part of "I'm not saying you can't get pains from a
| keyboard" is unclear, would you say?
|
| As you seem to have missed it, the author isn't positioning
| himself as a dogmatist using the mouse. He is calling Unix
| users who don't use the mouse dogmatists.
| daptaq wrote:
| > As you seem to have missed it, the author isn't
| positioning himself as a dogmatist using the mouse. He is
| calling Unix users who don't use the mouse dogmatists.
|
| Not quite, I want to say is there are Unix dogmatists, that
| don't use the mouse because of what they think the right
| way to use a Unix-like system is, not that preferring to
| use a mouse or not makes you a (Unix) dogmatist.
| Kessler83 wrote:
| Oh, come on, did you mean to be polemic or not? :) I
| think it's a hard sell to claim that the article was
| actually directed at a small, perhaps barely existent,
| group of Unix users who seem to be either afraid of the
| mouse (!) or proud not to use it.
|
| I'll rather accept what you said earlier in this thread
| (the "I wrote this mess ..." post): that you simply meant
| to be provocative. That's OK in my book, even when it
| doesn't turn out all that great. Nothing wrong with the
| rest of the article, either.
| daptaq wrote:
| Ah, I didn't think about it that way, and I understand
| what you mean, but yes, my polemics were directed at a
| very specific, rare kind of user that I used to associate
| with. The reason I call my article a mess is that I don't
| proof read anything I write, so I just assume there are
| mistakes all over the place.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I've been using Linux, traditional Unix editors like vim
| and emacs, and other keyboard-driven tools for the past
| decade with very little mouse use, and I'm starting to get
| RSI as a result.
|
| Eh - it's well known in my company where some jobs are mouse
| heavy and some are more keyboard heavy. Both camps get
| ergonomic pains, but it is more common with the mouse heavy
| folks.
|
| Typing can affect hands, wrists and forearms. Mousing affects
| neck/shoulder/side more.
|
| People who get it with typing tend to get it after extended
| use (years). People doing mouse heavy CAD work often get it
| quickly (1-2 years) unless they're aggressively trying to
| mitigate it.
|
| Contrary to what I just said, I do think they are equally
| prone _assuming equal usage_. The reality is that a lot of
| programming jobs do _not_ require a lot of continuous
| keyboard usage - you spend a fair amount of time thinking. It
| 's why I get more ergonomic issues when typing emails or
| writing documentation than when programming.
|
| Mouse heavy jobs, OTOH, often involve continual mouse use. So
| they automatically are more at risk.
| fatbird wrote:
| A 28 foot context menu is obviously going to be a UX problem.
| Avshalom wrote:
| You say that but the 28 foot context menu with every possible
| action from every application in Windows' File Explorer (and in
| file selection dialogs) is _the_ thing I miss in Linux.
| kfarr wrote:
| Also coming here for expectations of a "stadium UI" ;)
| somat wrote:
| Disagree highly, the x11 select/middle click paste is the best
| way to copy/paste by far. To the point I start to get visibly
| upset when trying to copy and paste on windows. you would think
| ctrl+c ctrl+v is easy and simple, but it is infuriatingly slow
| compared to the x11 method.
|
| To really throw gasoline on the mental fire, middle click on
| window usually puts you in some sort of stupid alternate scroll
| mode.
| LightHugger wrote:
| Sharing middle click between paste functionality and it's other
| popular functions makes it error prone and impractical at least
| for me. Copy paste is faster in a vacuum but the overall
| experience is worse. I think using thumb mouse buttons is more
| practical, and auto copy is better just avoided altogether.
|
| Autoscroll is great by the way.
| lvass wrote:
| Maybe that's why the "Un*x dogmatists" avoid adding
| functionality to mouse buttons. Middle click already has a
| great X11/Wayland feature and should stay that way.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Wayland tried to kill middle click paste.
| boogies wrote:
| What do you mean?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > and auto copy is better just avoided altogether.
|
| Why? It's not costing anything, action-wise
| cnity wrote:
| I may have something on my clipboard already. I
| "compulsively" highlight things as a reading aid and it's
| frustrating when I lose trust in my clipboard because it
| always contains fragments of text I don't care about.
| taeric wrote:
| But, the selection buffer is not the same as the
| clipboard. Is it?
|
| That is, even in the paradigm of middle click to paste
| the last selection, you still have a clipboard, don't
| you?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I'm somewhat sympathetic, but I'm not sure that "I want
| to be able to give the machine input without it reacting"
| is a great objection to doing something with that input.
| daptaq wrote:
| FWIW I agree when it comes to copy/paste, because there
| select/middle click is established. The context menu comes in
| handy for those operations that are just used seldom enough
| that you don't want to waste a single click on them, but often
| enough that you'd like to have an easy way to use it. For me
| these are mainly stuff like calling occur on a word, jumping to
| a reference, opening a dictionary definition, etc.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I had a mouse where middle-click
| wasn't really awkward to use. Probably in the time before
| scroll-wheels, when there was an actual middle button that was
| just a button.
|
| Trying to click the mouse scroll-wheel is on par with the "push
| the joystick straight down" click mode that some modern game
| controllers have in awfulness.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I swear by the Logitech MX Anywhere 2. So much so that I
| recently hacked in usb-c support to my ancient ones.
|
| It has a scroll wheel, which if you press down toggles
| between free-wheeling and line-by-line scrolling. It also has
| a physical middle mouse button just below the scroll wheel.
| yingbo wrote:
| I don't like the select = copy idea. When I browsing, I'd like
| to select a few words for no reason (well, more like a hight
| light, or reminds me to focus on them). I just want to select
| it, not copy them at all. And mid click paste? Little hard to
| control somehow: looks the mouse easily move a little when I do
| so.
|
| I do like the context menu way.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm also a compulsive highlighter, but fortunately x11 has
| distinct concepts between "primary selection" and "clipboard"
|
| middle click is "query for the most recently selected thing
| and paste" while the clipboard requires an explicit copy
| action. In vim (even terminal vim) with X support they are
| the '"' (double quote) and '+' (plus sign) registers
| respectively. Most other applications let you copy and paste
| with CUA (or for terminals shift-modified CUA) keybindings.
|
| So for something I plan on pasting longer term (or multiple
| times) I will typically use the clipboard. For quick "this
| thing needs to go here" with the mouse I use the primary
| selection.
|
| I also agree that middle-click is nearly useless on a
| scrollwheel. Many mice have more than two buttons these days
| so you can always remap a function button though (as I
| mention in another thread, my trackball actually has 3 legit
| full-size top buttons, but prior to that I remapped the
| "browser forward" button to be middle).
| maskros wrote:
| That's probably because you don't have a "real" middle button
| and are trying to use the awkward to click scroll wheel
| instead.
|
| If you want to go real old school and have a proper middle
| button, get an HP DY651A optical 3-button USB mouse (no
| scroll wheel).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| IBM scrollpoint nice have a real middle button without
| giving up a scroller.
| yingbo wrote:
| I prefer to just use a normal mice (In fact mine is not
| that normal because it is vertical). I'm on macOS and why
| bother to shop an old school one for rare usage? That's why
| I prefer the context menu too.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I use the elecom EX-G trackball[1] for this reason. The
| default button mapping is middle-click on the scroll-wheel
| but it has 3 full-sized buttons on top as well and
| remapping is easy. There's nothing worse than middle-
| clicking to paste and having the scroll wheel scroll the
| screen slightly.
|
| 1: http://xahlee.info/kbd/elecom_trackball_ex-g.html
| somat wrote:
| For me it usually goes, select some text, try and paste, get
| a stupid scroll mode, try ctrl+v don't get what I want, go
| back to original document, select the text agian try and
| paste...
|
| Eventually I remember to ctrl+c but it just flows so well,
| select then paste that it feels like a real step backwards
| going to a system that does not have it.
|
| I do agree that the middle mouse button should be divorced
| from the scroll wheel.
| loopz wrote:
| You can bind C-S-c and C-S-v and other keystrokes, to get
| similar to what you get in a terminal.
| yissp wrote:
| I find I only use SELECTION if I'm going to paste whatever I
| copied immediately, but in those situations I do think it's a
| bit faster. If need to do anything else between copying and
| pasting I'll use CLIPBOARD instead.
| taeric wrote:
| I think this is the key insight. The old way makes
| selection a first class citizen of the windowing
| environment. If you view it not as copying, but taking
| advantage of the last selection, it makes a whole lot more
| sense.
|
| This is not to say that explicit actions on the clipboard
| aren't useful. But, as an emacs user, I'm used to way more
| control over the kill ring than I typically see exercised
| on the clipboard.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| Are the commonly used file explorers also using this method to
| copy/paste files? If not, I wonder why.. </sarcasm>
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I disagree when a trackpad enters the mix, because there are no
| clearly defined tap areas. I often copy a url, click in the
| navbar to select the current url, and paste in the copied url
| -- and nothing happens! That's because I unintentionally
| middle-clicked the navbar, clobbering the clipboard with its
| contents.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Originally in the 1990s when there were 3-button mice without
| scrollwheels, especially on Sparcs and whatnot, middle clicks
| were good.
|
| But then mice standardised on scrollwheels and the middle
| button being the depression of the scrollwheel - and it's not
| so good anymore. It's way too easy to accidentally scroll when
| clicking a mouse wheel, and few people would disable the scroll
| wheel or get 90's type straight 3 button mouse.
|
| The middle click in windows for "scroll mode" (or something) as
| you say, is useless. And I can only assume that's a mode that
| exists precisely because people without scrollwheels still need
| to scroll so it emulates the wheel. Poorly.
| heresathinf99 wrote:
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| > middle click on window usually puts you in some sort of
| stupid alternate scroll mode
|
| It's just badly implemented there. Internet Explorer had a
| completely brain-dead implementation, and every embedded
| webview inherited that.
|
| Firefox always had a very nice implementation of middle-click
| scroll. It may sound silly, but this one of the major reasons I
| always hated chromium-based browsers -- they do have it, but
| it's not nearly as nice (you can't, or at least couldn't easily
| scroll inside scrollable elements, the acceleration profile
| feels very weird, and other small things like that).
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| > Disagree highly, the x11 select/middle click paste is the
| best way to copy/paste by far.
|
| I prefer a right click. Mainly because middle click is
| _awkward_ using most laptops.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Why? You can tap with three fingers for the middle click. It
| may not be the default, though. Even my ancient HP ProBook's
| abysmal touchpda supports this.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| > You can tap with three fingers for the middle click.
|
| That's what I call awkward. Or Ctrl + right click, or any
| other solution.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| If you like tapping, one finger, two finger, and three
| finger taps seem pretty much equivalent. If you like
| buttons, clicking the left button, right button, or both
| buttons together seems about equivalent. What's awkward
| about any of this?
| somat wrote:
| The best thing on a thinkpad, is that they have three
| physical "mouse" buttons.
|
| I was not really paying attention and so did not expect it
| when I bought my first thinkpad, but it is so nice it has now
| become a must have for me.
| alkonaut wrote:
| The #1 reason to use a mouse for me is to do input you can't
| easily do any other way. The first is hover info for things that
| are't anywhere near the cursor. I don't want to move the cursor
| in order to hover an identifier 20 lines and 40 columns away.
| Because once I have hovered it for info, I still have the cursor
| in the right spot.
|
| BUT, that I can also do with a trackpoint/ball/roller/whatever.
| The most important mouse thing is for freehand input like
| drawing. It's just not ergonomical to do that kind of thing with
| a trackball.
|
| Using any kind of pointer to move a cursor in text or navigating
| to a different window or a different textbox isn't really a good
| idea. That's done better with a keyboard. But the thing most
| keyboard purists overlook is the thing they don't do at all
| (draw, hover), so they don't miss it.
| Spunkie wrote:
| I really consider context menus to be the most intuitive way to
| work with git.
|
| I made the switch to Linux earlier this year but I still miss
| tortoisegit literally every day.
| ltultraweight wrote:
| And I miss the speed at which magit works on Linux, when I have
| to use Windows for development.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Same. Apparently magit is somewhat faster in WSL2, and
| eventually we'll get magit-libgit, hopefully.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Surprised they don't have tortoisegit in Linux. Tortoisehg
| exists on both Windows and Linux.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| You might try SmartGit. I use it on Linux and Windows and love
| it.
|
| I especially appreciate the way it makes it easy and obvious
| how to do things that would be complicated on the Git command
| line. Some examples:
|
| Committed to the wrong branch? Drag the branch markers where
| you want them.
|
| Want to see a diff between the files in two commits, possibly
| on unrelated branches? Click one commit, Ctrl+click the other,
| and the file diffs are right there.
|
| Lost a commit and now you have to trawl through the reflog?
| Turn on the "Recyclable commits" checkbox and all those reflog
| commits show up as normal commits, complete with diffing as
| noted above.
| [deleted]
| bitwize wrote:
| Maybe it's because rat wrestling isn't nearly as efficient as
| it's made out to be, and not as efficient as a _good_ keyboard
| command set anyway. Mouse-driven UIs are great for beginners who
| are afraid of computers to find commands. They 're terrible for
| efficient workflows in the hands of seasoned workers because they
| insert a multi-step process of "acquire mouse with hand, acquire
| pointer on-screen, move pointer to target, click, optionally drag
| pointer to alternate target, etc." between you and whatever you
| want to do.
|
| Mice (or pointers in general) are absolutely essential in some
| applications: drawing and painting, CAD, 3D modelling, etc. There
| also hasn't been a better flow for web browsing than simply
| clicking on links. But making the mouse supreme has added
| friction to workflows in fields from programming to simple data
| entry.
|
| It's why I never could really get behind the Acme text editor, as
| cool as it is on principle.
| daptaq wrote:
| I wrote this mess, and didn't expect this to end up here. To
| clarify, I wrote the first section because polemics are fun, not
| because I am claiming to have discovered something radical. My
| imagined addressee is the kind of person who thinks that mice
| were a mistake, and keyboard-oriented terminal usage is the one
| and only truth. Partially a straw man, but a good enough
| approximation of some people I have met.
|
| The main intention is to demonstrate how context-menu-mode works,
| how to extend it yourself and call for people to test it before
| Emacs 28 is released. Having written a few forgettable articles,
| I ended up forgetting that intentional provocation attracts
| unintentional attention.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| If I may just say thank you for this section:
|
| > _The denunciation of the mouse usually involves invoking
| concepts such as the "home row", or the cumbersome migration of
| the hand between keyboard and mouse. These might all be well
| and good, if I were a typist and as such all I did was to type.
| But this isn't the case, I ponder and perceive, more than I
| write._
|
| This resonated so much with me :-) I still cannot believe how
| many people seem to think that the ability to type really fast
| is important to be a good coder, when we spend the vast
| majority of our time reading, re-reading and podering code
| instead of writing it.
| sameerds wrote:
| TBH, my first reaction to this comment was "somebody's wrong
| on the Internet". But luckily, reflection won over reaction,
| and gave me enough pause to realize what's really happening.
|
| I have no idea where this notion of "shunning the mouse" came
| from. The simple fact is that when you're "in the zone", the
| mouse gets in the way. After having read and re-read other
| peoples code, and occasionally also having read half a dozen
| research papers, you are finally ready to dump all the code
| that has been brewing in your head. At that point, you are a
| typist. All the for-loops and switch-cases and function calls
| are jostling around in your head, and you want to serialize
| them into source code as fast as you can. When you're doing
| that, forget the mouse even the arrow keys are too far away.
| All you want is "do what I mean" with "the thing at point".
| Everything else just disappears outside your region of focus.
|
| So yeah, the mouse is awesome when you're browsing and
| reading code. But when you're typing code, the home row is
| the fastest way to get it all out.
|
| EDIT: s/two/too/ far away
| ok_dad wrote:
| > The simple fact is that when you're "in the zone", the
| mouse gets in the way.
|
| On the other hand, I use the mouse a lot while coding and I
| would say you're wrong here, for me. I prefer the ability
| to not have to think about memorized keys when coding.
|
| I go into a state of flow based on what I believe is a
| combo between visualizing and imagining the code in an
| object form or something similar, so using a mouse is more
| natural since I'm still visualizing the mouse menu and the
| areas I have to click on instead of context switching into
| the mode where I try to remember keys I often look at the
| keyboard when typing, too, due to my way of flowing. I
| personally think it's because my brain works a bit more
| visually and my imagination is pretty good, so I am able to
| map the imaginary code flow in my mind to the text version,
| so using a mouse to me is like navigating between the two.
| My mind takes the logic and is able to translate that to
| mouse movements easily to reach the part of the code I'm
| thinking about abstractly.
|
| Personally, I've tried to be a better typist and tried to
| use emacs or vim, but I always go back to the way I do
| things and I've just decided my brain works a bit
| differently than many coders.
|
| To each their own, I say; so do whatever works for you and
| I'll keep using my way.
| seanw444 wrote:
| For me it's not going as fast as possible. The mouse just
| doesn't provide quick _and_ accurate text navigation at the
| same time, and the arm moving between the mouse and the
| keyboard is just a nuisance. Same reason I roll with a tiling
| window manager. Why manually resize and position windows (and
| have some buried underneath others), when I can have a couple
| simple keyboard commands to accomplish certain layouts.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > The mouse just doesn't provide quick and accurate text
| navigation at the same time
|
| It does both. And much faster than keyboard navigation if
| you're moving to a text at some distance away from where
| your cursor currently is. Mouse is literally a pointing
| device. If you need to go to a point in text 10 lines above
| your current cursor, moving the cursor there with a mouse
| is definitely faster than figuring out which of the ten
| arcane commands will get you there.
| kugla wrote:
| For me it is not about the speed of typing or not breaking
| the flow.
|
| But after experimenting with home row mods and (split)
| keyboards with multiple thumb keys, regular keyboard layout
| usage just feels terribly inefficient.
|
| While fast typing is not a bad thing it is definitely not
| necessary skill of good coder. But coding and using the
| terminal requires frequently using special keys and
| combinations, which on regular keyboard require constantly
| moving hands to access hard to reach keys.
|
| Using home row mods (with a special keyboard) the hands are
| almost resting.
| taeric wrote:
| For me, it is usually that the keyboard affords more symbolic
| exploration. And that is usually more inline with my
| thinking.
|
| A mouse can afford spacial exploration. Moving text from
| there to here, style thinking. Versus the keyboard of jump to
| there, copy text, jump back, paste.
|
| Hard to see either as superior for text. Hard to see how to
| use the symbolic for spatial data. (Images and such)
| worik wrote:
| I have been programming heavily on QWERTY keyboards for 30+
| years
|
| I still look at the keyboard to type. (Glances to ensure
| focus has not moved... Love emacs' case changing commands for
| when the caps-lock pressed)
|
| I have thought about learning to touch type - yes, one day.
|
| I have tried clisubg my eyues (that is "closing my eyes") to
| type....
|
| What is the use, really? I spend so much time thinking about
| and reflecting on code and so little actually writing it
| drekipus wrote:
| I couldn't imagine the additional mental load from having
| to glance back and forward between keyboard and screen, and
| finding each key.
| kbenson wrote:
| I think it's not really the ability to type fast, or that you
| need to be typing all the time, but that when you're in a
| state of flow, where you have what you want to accomplish and
| put down on paper/screen clearly in mind, a context switch,
| even as one as small as from keyboard to mouse, might be
| slightly hurtful to that state.
|
| When I'm in this state, I'm probably writing pseudo-code
| fairly close to the real language I'm working in, and not
| worrying too much about errors I'm not seeing, and just
| trying to quickly correct the errors I do see, such that I
| can express my intent on screen. Finding missed typos and
| other errors is for a second pass and with the help of a
| compiler/interpreter, for code I write in that manner. It may
| require some additional passes to tweak things that just
| don't work, as well, but that's fine. The point was to get
| what was very clearly in my mind transferred to another
| medium before something caused a corruption of my mental
| state.
|
| That's not to say that's the only way I write. I also often
| devote time to carefully pondering what's on the screen and
| how to best interact with it to change it in the way I want,
| or whether there is a better way to do it entirely and that
| code should be rewritten. But when I'm trying to get what's
| in my mind onto the screen, little things like auto-indent
| and being able to accomplish something while keeping my hands
| doing what they've been doing all add up to help in small
| ways.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's a valuable reason to have strong keyboard bindings.
| But there are many circumstances in which it is helpful and
| valuable to be in a state of float, observing your
| environment while allowing it to operate upon you until the
| merit of one direction clearly predominates over others.
|
| This is how tiny bacteria with flagella operate; they whip
| their hairs furiously when they want to zoom towards or
| away from a particular stimulus, but tumble idly in
| intermediate zones. Having only one mode of operation isn't
| adaptive.
| kbenson wrote:
| Definitely. There are advantages to both states, as
| they're optimized for different things. There are times
| for information gathering and eventually decision making,
| and there's times for acting on those decisions. While
| neither is generally a state of purely that type, there
| are reasons to believe that the optimal tools for one may
| not be the same as the optimal tools for another.
|
| In that respect it's not whether keyboard binding or
| mouse context menues are better, it's about providing
| tools to support both contexts, so the appropriate one
| can be chosen at the appropriate time.
| a9h74j wrote:
| FWIW, UX research (perhaps in the 1980s) also suggested
| that while many people reported "feeling faster" with
| particular input/editing actions (compared to e.g. using
| a mouse), in some case the operations were no faster as
| observed, but they apparently involved enough cognitive
| load to produce a _time blindness_ in the user.
| eddieh wrote:
| _> I wrote this mess_
|
| On the contrary, the simplicity of the styling and layout is
| honestly beautiful.
| daptaq wrote:
| Thank you, means a lot!
| MarcScott wrote:
| I don't really buy the home row argument very much. I get why
| if you can touch type, that this is important to some extent,
| but mostly I think that when you start having to find and click
| on icons, or navigate menus, there's an interrupt in your
| cognitive flow.
|
| Watching the graphic and motion graphics designers at work,
| they're dominant hand rarely leaves their mouse, while the
| other hand hammers at shortcut keys to switch tools. They don't
| care about the home row, just using the fewest actions to
| complete a task.
|
| When I'm using a piece software maybe a few times a month, I'm
| grateful for icons and menus to help me remember how to do
| anything. When I use a piece of software on a daily basis, then
| I learn the shortcuts until it's muscle memory, an keep my hand
| away from the mouse as much as possible.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I'm one of those people...
|
| It's simply about pointing devices hurting my hand, wrist, and
| arm.
|
| Keyboard use does not.
|
| Is that so hard to understand?
|
| This is what makes it an accessibility issue for me, not a
| preference.
| adambatkin wrote:
| I don't think the argumentative tone was warranted. No one is
| suggesting that anyone be forced to use a mouse or that
| accessibility solely using the keyboard be limited in any
| way. But there is definitely the appearance of an aversion to
| the mouse in some a older (and things that want to seem old-
| school) Unix/Linux tools.
|
| For _some_ people, the mouse is easier to use, so increases
| accessibility for _them_. I think the OP was implying that
| better mouse accessibility could be added on-top of the
| existing keyboard support.
| eddieh wrote:
| Does your keyboard have a num pad? If so, then you're likely
| extending your arm to to far, bending your wrist at an odd
| angle, and relying on your shoulder to bear the weight of
| your arm when you use your mouse.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The title, both here on HN and on the article is missing an s.
| Currently, it reads as "Emacs 28' context menu", which implies
| that the context menu is 28 feet tall. It is probably meant as
| "Emacs 28's context menu".
| bagels wrote:
| That is the only reason I clicked, to see a 28 foot menu. Was
| disappointed.
| daptaq wrote:
| For some reason I thought that you don't have to add a
| possessive "s" after 28 (in the same way you wouldn't after
| Emacs'). As I only use metric units, I would have never seen
| the "28 feet" thing. Thanks!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Was also expecting this to be about an absurdly over-
| populated menu, though if enough people act on the author's
| suggestions we might attain that goal.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _the cumbersome migration of the hand between keyboard and
| mouse_
|
| This is one of the reasons I love the TrackPoint and use it
| exclusively. There is no physical context switching between
| mouse and keyboard. If you are a touch typist, it is always
| right there on the home row.
|
| I am such a TrackPoint nut that on the rare occasions when I've
| had to work on a computer that is not a ThinkPad (a desktop or
| a different laptop), I use a ThinkPad wireless keyboard to give
| it a TrackPoint:
|
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/keyb...
|
| One job I had issued Dell laptops, and I found that I could put
| the ThinkPad keyboard right on top of the laptop keyboard. It
| even left the Dell's touchpad accessible. I do use two-finger
| touchpad scrolling once in a while.
|
| Something I don't like about modern ThinkPad keyboards is that
| they took away the Menu key and replaced it with a PrtSc
| (screenshot) key. The Menu key is such a nice way to bring up a
| context menu based on the current keyboard cursor location
| (rather than the mouse position). These AutoHotkey rules fix
| that: ; Remap the PrtSc key: ; PrtSc ->
| Menu (like an old ThinkPad keyboard) ; Windows+PrtSc ->
| Screenshot of all monitors ; Windows+Alt+PrtSc ->
| Screenshot of current window PrintScreen:: AppsKey
| #PrintScreen:: PrintScreen #!PrintScreen:: Send {Alt
| Down}{PrintScreen}{Alt Up}
|
| This is for Windows, of course. I imagine there must be a way
| to do something similar on Linux.
|
| Another tip for Windows users: if you have a keyboard with a
| numeric pad that you don't use much, enable MouseKeys in the
| Windows accessibility settings. This lets you use the numpad as
| a "keyboard mouse" for precise mouse movement. Or if you have a
| ThinkPad keyboard, try my JKLmouse program (another AutoHotkey
| script) which gives you MouseKeys-style mouse control using the
| IJKL or HJKL keys (and neighboring keys for diagonal movement).
| It will work on other laptop keyboards too, but you really want
| physical mouse buttons like a ThinkPad for it to be useful.
|
| https://www.jklmouse.com/
|
| (There is an installer, but I recommend downloading AutoHotkey
| and the jklmouse.ahk script from GitHub for the most
| flexibility.)
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Has anyone ever used blackbox or open/fluxbox? The context menu
| can be very amazing and minimalistic. I don't use those DEs
| today, but they did change my mind in terms of what is needed in
| a desktop for effective interaction.
| worik wrote:
| The thing I love about emacs is how extensible it is.
|
| The thing I hate about emacs is how extensible it is
|
| Emacs was invented in 1976. You think it would be stable by now?
|
| I filed a bug report for a sub-system I will not name because I
| think the developers are horrid people and the software fabulous,
| and I was abused, shouted at and called names for using an emacs
| distribution three years old (out of date they called it). That
| is I was using software that was forty four years old.
|
| I love you emacs - I hate you emacs -
| LanternLight83 wrote:
| With the pace of development, any given bug or issue could have
| been fixed within the past few years- I do see your point about
| Emacs's stability and dev-additudes, which can stand on it's
| own, but I usually do try to replicate an issue on a clean
| install (minimal config needed to reproduce the issue) of the
| latest (released) version before filing a report. Dev time is
| as scarce as our own. Additionally, if the amount of
| configuration needed to reproduce your issue is prohibitive,
| that sounds like it might actually be an emacs-distribution
| issue?
|
| I dont want to be too caught up in the cons. criticism- thanks
| for bringing it to someone's attention in the first place c:
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I find it's age awkward too. The terminology used (kill,
| buffer, window, etc) don't fit at all with modern desktop
| terminology. Keyboard navigation doesn't fit any modern
| standard either (cut/paste,etc) aside from linux terminals
| which have inherited it from eMacs.
|
| I've tried to (with some success) standardise keyboard
| shortcuts across my entire desktop (linux w/windows vms) but im
| forever in keyboard he'll.
|
| In addition, I have awkward performance in emacs - character
| movement triggers a buffer save which occurs in the main thread
| resulting in a pretty constant lag.
|
| Am I the only one that likes the emacs concept, hates lisp, and
| hates eMacs to the point where I think it should be rewritten?
| codesections wrote:
| > When debugging code or studying a program, it is quite
| comfortable to depend on only one hand, and have the other free
| to scribble or relax.
|
| I wonder if the OP is ambidextrous? If using the mouse gave me a
| hand free to scribble some notes, I'd be a much more enthusiastic
| mouse user. Alas, both writing and mousing require my right hand,
| and there aren't many good uses for my left.
| BeetleB wrote:
| It's easier to train your non-dominant hand to mouse than to
| write.
|
| It's awkward initially, but for most people takes only a few
| days to be comfortable with it. Then they switch back and forth
| easily (I do it several times a day).
|
| As an analogy, a lot of people (including me) started writing
| on a keyboard with only one hand (or at least hitting _most_
| buttons with one hand). We had to train our brains to use both.
| That was a lot more challenging than learning to mouse with the
| other hand.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Englebart's classic "Mother of all Demos" has him using a mouse
| in his right hand and a one-handed chording keyboard in his
| left hand.
|
| USB mice are cheap, plug two in, one on each side. Makes it
| easier to use non-dominant hand occasionally without having to
| move the mouse around.
| throw10920 wrote:
| I tried to train myself to become ambidextrous at one point.
|
| I failed, but in the process, I learned a few interesting
| things - one of which was that it was far easier for me to
| train myself to competently use my left hand for mousing than
| for writing.
|
| This might be the case for you, too - try using your left hand
| to mouse for a day or two and see if you can get the hang of
| it.
| lordgroff wrote:
| I'm left handed and use the right hand for the mouse. I can
| also use it just fine with the left hand but see no benefit.
| And yeah, writing is a different story entirely, although as
| another bizarre anecdote, I can write text on the chalkboard
| pretty much equally as well with my left and right.
| michael-ax wrote:
| EXACTLY! I just came back to add this observation. I started
| to code at 14.
|
| At 20 i was consulting and ran across my first system with a
| mouse. I quickly realized that there was no profit in using
| it with my right hand since that was needed for numpad and
| shift selects etc.
|
| So I moved the mouse to the left and never looked back. My
| hand just goes there when it makes sense -- never breaking my
| focus or the close-contact my right has with the keyboard.
| That has made this entire discussion about mouse good/bad a
| non-issue.
|
| It may take some time to train yourself if you're not a puppy
| anymore, but its worth stepping out of that argument and into
| something else.
|
| "for crying out loud", "they even moved the f-keys to the top
| row so that you can have the mouse on the left of your
| keyboard!" /<smiles>
|
| (p.s. op .. at 36 i learned to play the conga and that
| allowed me to go crazy with the ambidexterity like nothing
| else, ever. just buy a set and give it a go!)
| wcarss wrote:
| I often find when I'm not actively writing code and am just
| scrolling up and down reading, it's nice to just pick the mouse
| up off the table and sit or stand with my arm and hand in a
| more neutral position, with my finger somewhere near the
| scroll-wheel/surface. I'll sometimes even switch it over to my
| left and give my right a break.
|
| But also, as a left-handed person I still use my right for the
| mouse when using it more actively, so I could scribble thoughts
| simultaneously with my left if I wanted to. I think I might
| have only done that like, once.
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