Mouse Editing (was: Portability and the Ivory Tower)

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <6883 at cg-atla.UUCP> duane at cg-atla.UUCP (Andrew Duane) writes:
>We modified EMACS here to use the mouse to position
>around in the buffer and between windows. After a couple of
>weeks of playing with it ("Boy, isn't this NEATO KEEN!")
>everyone stopped using it. I don't even know if the mouse code
>is even compiled into it any more. The moral: I don't know
>what. But it certainly doesn't make sense to use the mouse for
>everything. VI's h/j/k/l sucks big-time, yes. Is a mouse the
>the answer, no.

Be careful to distinguish between a particular use of a mouse,
which may indeed not be advantageous depending on the particular design,
and use of mice in general.

I stopped using our EMACS editors for most purposes once Rob Pike's "sam"
editor became available.  Its use of the mouse is cleanly integrated into
the design of the editor's bitmap interface, not just tacked on as an
afterthought.  It makes a considerable difference.

Many of today's highly touted graphical interfaces strike me as atrocious,
but that doesn't mean that graphical interfaces are a bad idea.  I've seen
some excellent ones.  Unfortunately interface designers don't often seem
to have studied past good examples before setting out on their own, or
else they rip off the worst examples such as the IBM PC keyboard and the
Macintosh icon interface, rather than think about the design issues.