This is the first step only. I remember in 1995 Stallman wanted Emacs to be "like Microsoft Word" with varying fonts and other formatting shit with hidden Tex-coding. Do it.
So like LyX?
Or perhaps TeXmacs?
Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
41–50 of 99 posts
Re: Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure this is true. Emacs is fundamentally command driven - everything is a command, and can be invoked, edited or replaced the same way. What triggers those is obviously key bindings for a lot of people but it's not really what makes Emacs powerful or extensible. People have diverse needs when it comes to wanting to interact with a computer, and it's great that Emacs's flexibility allows them to.
I agree. Vim is inherently keyboard-focused. That Emacs is not, and instead focuses on the command as the fundamental unit driving everything, is its primary strength. This is what makes Emacs more flexible than Vim to the point where there's a very faithful reimplementation of Vim for Emacs. Couldn't do the opposite, even if you wanted to.
> This is what makes Emacs more flexible than Vim to the point where there's a very faithful reimplementation of Vim for Emacs. Couldn't do the opposite, even if you wanted to.
This claim seems at least suspect to me. Vim scripting isn't fun, and vim certainly isn't centred around it like emacs is, but it's possible. Usually making this claim would challenge people to solve it themselves, but I suspect that vim users care significantly less about welcoming emacs users into their environment than vice versa.
(Also, the various vim implementations in emacs are almost-but-not-quite there, to the point that I believe really experienced vim users fall into an uncanny valley.)
Re: Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
#43One of the things that drew me to emacs initially was that I could customise it to reduce or, in most cases, eliminate mouse usage. Toolbars, scroll bars etc. were the first things to go. Just taking those away makes emacs must more attractive for me.
Re: Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
#44I think this is solving several different problems: 1) I would love to have a better way to manage tabs and multiple files in emacs. This piece seems awesome! 2) Good context menus aren't as important, but a definite win! emacs is useless here. But I'm not sure your context menus are the ones I want. 3) As someone who's used emacs for a long time, I would hate to have my emacs shortcuts replaced by standard ones. I d…
Hi - Mousemacs author here.
There is a way to pick and choose :)
The context menu in Mousemacs is a couple of dozen lines of Elisp and would be simple to rewrite. You can simply create your own context menus.
Re: Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
#45Kinda strange. Emacs is so inherently keyboard-focused that I fail to see the point of this... nor the need for it?!
I have Emacs pinkies - I see the value in similar efforts. I will try this out for some time to see if it actually helps. But muscle memory is a thing for me, it is hard to undo 20 years of Emacs habits.
I always remap Caps-Lock to be an extra Control key; this has really helped me avoid repetitive stress injuries over the years.
Re: Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
#46Re: Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
#47I think this is solving several different problems: 1) I would love to have a better way to manage tabs and multiple files in emacs. This piece seems awesome! 2) Good context menus aren't as important, but a definite win! emacs is useless here. But I'm not sure your context menus are the ones I want. 3) As someone who's used emacs for a long time, I would hate to have my emacs shortcuts replaced by standard ones. I d…
> 3) As someone who's used emacs for a long time, I would hate to have my emacs shortcuts replaced by standard ones. I don't want to remap my brain.
As someone who's used Mac for a long time (and now Linux desktop, with similar shortcuts, plus spending most of my time in a browser like Chromium or Firefox), I chose other editors like Sublime and now VS Code partly because they use shortcuts that feel normal on those platforms so I didn't have to remap my brain. (More like my thumbs I think.) So to me the shortcuts changes in this project may be the most interesting part!
Re: Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
#48This is the first step only. I remember in 1995 Stallman wanted Emacs to be "like Microsoft Word" with varying fonts and other formatting shit with hidden Tex-coding. Do it.
I do not understand the want to stick with fixed-width fonts in this day and age. We do not use the editor to punch cards anymore, nor do we type text on a character-cell terminal or a typewriter. With the high-resolution displays, code we write should look more like one that is found in some nice programming books - complete with bold-faced reserved words, italicized comments, and even some mathematical typesetting.…
In future PyLyx-mode the code is monospace, but comments are assumed to be Tex-formatted. Imagine implementation of some mathematical formula. You can have the description with proper notation. It will be so beautiful that it brings tears to my eyes already.
Re: Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
#49Kinda strange. Emacs is so inherently keyboard-focused that I fail to see the point of this... nor the need for it?!
Emacs has thousands of shortcuts for every conceivable piece of functionality. Personally, I will remember shortcuts for commonly used things - and all the other functionality may as well not exist if it is not easily discoverable. A gui is a nice way to make a lot of functionality discoverable.
If you hit `C-h b` you get a list of all the current keybindings. `C-h m` lists the keybindings focused on the active modes. You can search either for the functionality or binding you're looking for. Also, `C-h k` followed by any keybinding will describe the keybinding. If you get the documentation of a function or command with `C-h f`, it'll also mention the keybindings it's bound to, if any. All these `C-h` help keybindings are described if you hit `C-h C-h`, and they're also mentioned in the tutorial that's linked to when you start up emacs for the first time on default configuration.
These helps are also available in the GUI menu bar, for example Help > Describe > List Key Bindings, which also mentions the keybinding `C-h b` to the right of that.
How is discoverability of keybindings lacking?
Re: Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure this is true. Emacs is fundamentally command driven - everything is a command, and can be invoked, edited or replaced the same way. What triggers those is obviously key bindings for a lot of people but it's not really what makes Emacs powerful or extensible. People have diverse needs when it comes to wanting to interact with a computer, and it's great that Emacs's flexibility allows them to.
I agree. Vim is inherently keyboard-focused. That Emacs is not, and instead focuses on the command as the fundamental unit driving everything, is its primary strength. This is what makes Emacs more flexible than Vim to the point where there's a very faithful reimplementation of Vim for Emacs. Couldn't do the opposite, even if you wanted to.
It is true that commands are at the heart of Emacs but as soon as you move beyond very basic use, invoking commands in ways other than through the keyboard becomes impractical. I'm not only talking about keyboard shortcuts but also about the fact that a lot of these commands actually take parameters that would be difficult to provide by mouse.
Emacs out of the box comes with a menu system. This is very good and useful for newcomers because it not only gives a familiar feel, it also helps discovering functionality. However, it is no coincidence that a lot of power-users turn off menu and toolbar, as evidenced e.g. by Steve Yegge's "effective emacs" tips (https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs#it...). Now, not every user is a power-user, there is of course a spectrum, but to me it is fairly clear that the way Emacs is designed, mouse-based usage would be a limiting factor.