
Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs - s_brady
https://github.com/corvideon/mousemacs
======
rjeli
Nice, but this doesn't go far enough imo. I love emacs but keep using Sublime
on a daily basis because it has real, native[0] mouse handling and UI. My
dream editor would be a Sublime UI on top of embedded emacs. That means:

\- Native mouse selection of text, proper copy/paste, ideally with a "narrow
caret" instead of block cursor everywhere

\- Native graphical file tree with drag and drop

\- Native tabs with pretty drag and drop

\- Pixel-fine resizing of panes

\- Pixel-fine scrolling!!

[0]: Everywhere I say "native" above, I don't really care if it's GTK or
electron (provided it's snappy) or whatever. I mean the nebulous feeling of
having text areas work like every other text area on my desktop.

VimR ([https://github.com/qvacua/vimr](https://github.com/qvacua/vimr)) on mac
was the closest to this I ever got, and I love that editor, but I'm not on
macOS anymore.

edit: Oh g-----, I'm literally describing aquamacs. I wonder if anyone has
tried to run it on linux with GNUstep or something ;__;

~~~
solarkraft
> Pixel-fine scrolling!!

I don't see why software not having this is apparently acceptable. It's just
disorienting to have line jumps. That's not how the real world works.

Modern Linux software is pretty good at it (GTK, Qt) as is much Windows
software. However the only git GUI I otherwise enjoy using that has it is
Sublime Merge.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
Beyond 'pretty', how does this help the user in any way?

I'm an emacs user and love it but lack of fine scrolling is hardly it's worst
feature.

~~~
solarkraft
It's less disorienting. Humans are not built to track things that are at one
place at one point in time and instantly another at the next moment.

I guess it feels fitting when you use a mouse wheel that has jumps in it
anyway, but on a touchpad it feels highly unnatural.

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kleiba
Kinda strange.

Emacs is so inherently keyboard-focused that I fail to see the point of
this... nor the need for it?!

~~~
mrspeaker
I use Emacs as my primary... everything. But I totally see the point and need
for mouse-driven functionality. Emacs only works if you have two functioning
arms with hands on them. Put a coffee, a sandwich, a cat, a kid, a beer... in
one of your hands, and Emacs is unusable. If my cat wants some attention, I
can't keep typin' stuff.

Though, not sure why the mouse-driven features are also wrapped up making
shortcuts match VS-Code etc. That makes it a lot less useful.

~~~
kleiba
If you can't type, I'm not sure the mouse is going to get you much ahead
either ;-)

But it's true that there might be a certain class of users with impediments
for which a different input modality setup could be very beneficial. However,
note that standard Emacs already provides menus and mouse support, it's just
not what is commonly the focus of the editor.

------
acomjean
Mac has "Aquamcs" which is mac native emacs with a wierd blending of MacOS key
commands and emacs commands.

It works better than expected. Its not perfect but maintains the
recording/playback of macros I use all the time. The fact that mac shortcuts
use "Command" which emacs doesn't use natively helps.

[https://aquamacs.org/about.html](https://aquamacs.org/about.html)

Look forward to trying mousemacs out.

-A

~~~
sgillen
The official Emacs.app also supports using the Command shortcuts while keeping
all the normal emacs commands the same. In general I find that the app plays
nicely with MacOS and I prefer it over aquamacs since emacs.app is newer
(right now version 27 vs 25.) And I think looks nicer once I've removed the
menu bars.

~~~
m463
except for cmd-c (apple copy) and cmd-w (emacs copy)

but mostly macos works well with emacs because... macos uses the basic emacs
navigation and editing keys in all its text widgets.

control-a/e beginning/end of line

control-p/n previous/next line

control-k/y kill to end of line, yank

...

------
messe
Based on the title I hoped this was going to be emacs with acme-style mouse
chording.

[1]: [http://acme.cat-v.org/](http://acme.cat-v.org/)

~~~
klik99
I was about to say the same thing! I suggest the author of this digs into acme
(easy to run plan9 on a rpi!) and borrows some of the chording, because I'm
not crazy about the menu driven mouse commands shown in the repo examples.

An "acmemacs" would be amazing - might be the only thing that could tear me
from emacs at this point.

------
murgindrag
I 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 don't want to remap my brain.

I wish there were a way to pick-and-choose.

~~~
abrowne
> _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!

~~~
vaxman
Don't talk about politics, religion or text editors at work, son.

They used to ban people for starting rWars on USENET (that is, outside of the
forums specifically for rWars) back in the day.

~~~
murgindrag
I'm not sure anyone is actually fighting. We both like what we're used to, and
neither of us is claiming it's better. We're both just agreeing we don't want
to change.

People are allowed to like different things (except vi, obviously -- I hope we
can all agree to that).

As a footnote: I'm comfortable with mainstream keyboard shortcuts too, but not
in emacs. Those things do specific things in emacs, and would be a mess. If
you remap ctrl-k, I won't have a way to cut a line anymore! I need that.

~~~
abrowne
Hear, hear. Celebrate diversity!

FWIW, VS Code uses Ctrl+Shift+K by default for Delete Line. I'm used to it
enough that I sometimes try it in other apps, like Chromium text boxes …

------
nanna
The config files for this are well commented and explained. Great for someone
new to emacs. Which I suppose is exactly who Mousemacs is for.

------
timonoko
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.

~~~
Koshkin
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. This could even (re)open the path to the Holy
Grail of literate programming!

~~~
BeetleB
> I do not understand the want to stick with fixed-width fonts in this day and
> age.

Usually it involves alignment issues. Some people neatly align array entries,
etc, and variable width fonts makes this look ugly. Also, people often put
ASCII diagrams, etc in the comments, which are screwed up by non-monospace
fonts.

> This could even (re)open the path to the Holy Grail of literate programming!

The Leo Editor[1] is your friend. It's the only such editor that seems to do
it well. And by well, I mean "poor experience, but better than all the
others."

[1] [https://leoeditor.com/](https://leoeditor.com/)

~~~
Koshkin
> _diagrams_

It would seem that being able to simply insert an image (or some kind of a
link to one - similar to what you can do in HTML) would serve the purpose much
better).

~~~
BeetleB
It definitely does, and I can do this in Emacs with Org Mode. However, I
cannot convince the world to use Emacs and Org Mode. I appreciate Noah's
frustration.

------
MobileVet
This seems like a nice extension to Emacs for folks that want to use it but
are stymied by the steep learning curve.

Personally I think the learning curve is worth it... especially with an aid
like Spacemacs. It gives you the context and quick access without requiring a
mouse and thus results in faster and more efficient interaction in the long
run.

[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs](https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs)

~~~
s17n
I believe that all available evidence suggests that keyboard-only editing is
not actually faster or more efficient (I say this as a keyboard-only Emacs
user).

~~~
wtetzner
Any links?

For me it seems like (haven't measured) being only on the keyboard or only on
the mouse is faster than trying to switch between the two, if only because I
avoid the mental context switching.

~~~
s17n
I just googled and it looks like my statement is true, with the caveat that
"all the available evidence" is pretty much garbage.

I get terrible wrist pain when I even look at a mouse so editing speed is a
secondary concern for me.

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tenkabuto
Very cool! I don't understand the extent to which this changes Emacs under the
hood, though.

Do you think it'll still be able to run org-mode?

EDIT: Org-mode is working for me. I still don't know how to use it, but it's
nice to be able to navigate through it via the right-click menus.

------
hallqv
I see a potential future use case for this when human-computer interaction
will be done through brain interface. Will prolly be easier to integrate with
nervous signals from brain to one hand (mouse interaction) compared to two
hands (keyboard interaction).

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globular-toast
One 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.

------
seidman
Can we add clippy, too?

~~~
znpy
there you go:
[https://github.com/Fuco1/clippy.el](https://github.com/Fuco1/clippy.el)

~~~
s_brady
I am almost tempted to add this.

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newen
Would love a more GUI focused Emacs but don't change keyboard shortcuts I've
built into my muscle memory please.

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brodo
Has someone tried this together with spacemacs?

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vonwoodson
Thanks. I hate it.

------
lbj
Mouse-driven Emacs is like a feet-driven car. Fred would have loved to see
this.

