Changing default mouse bindings (was: poplife-mode)

[Alex]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>> AFAICT, it's the only way, with your approach, to see
>> the region you will act on get highlighted.  Are you
>> relegating your approach to menus that don't have items
>> that act on the region?
>
> My suggestion is for a context menu.  I.e. a menu of things to apply
> locally.  Nothing specifically to do with the region.  The region is but
> one particular kind of "local" thing (and the down-mouse-3 event is not
> necessarily placed near the region).  I don't expect that the region
> would/will be the main use of this functionality.
>
>
>         Stefan

Is it completely out of the question to just bind right-click directly
to this context menu by default instead of using double clicks or long
clicks?  If so, will it ever be considered?  It would be a shame if
Emacs is never able to shed some of its old baggage.

Drew mentioned that this context menu is shown only on mouse release in
Windows (it's on the down event on my GTK system), so perhaps it should
be dependent on the system?

I understand being hesitant to change longstanding default bindings, but
I would imagine that most people that use the mouse would prefer more
"standard" mouse bindings; though without conducting a poll, this is of
course wild speculation.

Here are the two main changes that I think would make sense:

1. (down-)mouse-3 should open a context menu.

2. S-down-mouse-1 should extend the region as it does in many other
programs.  If the non-standard kill behaviour is to be
kept, then S-down-mouse-1 could just be bound directly to
`mouse-save-then-kill', but it would have to be modified to handle a
down and drag events.

As for the old binding of S-down-mouse-1, its contents should probably
go in the menu-bar somewhere (perhaps in a new View menu as is common in
other programs).

Shift modified mouse clicks don't work in text terminals, so perhaps
this shouldn't happen in such terminals.

The above should still satisfy most use-cases that
`mouse-save-then-kill' satisfies (either with S-down-mouse-1 or by
dragging mouse-1 and selecting `cut' in the context menu), as well as
providing, with a "standard" UI, the common additional functionality
that context menus bring.