A modest defense of the rodent
So, Emacs and the mouse. This is an unexpectedly contentious topic, with discussions that end, at best, with careless dismissal. More often they turn into arguments with folks talking past one another.
The advantages of using the mouse for common actions in Emacs are immediate and obvious. Window selection is a natural extension of basic mouse usage. Resizing windows is a snap. Context (right-click) menus See context-menu-mode.
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.)
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.)