yes, right-mouse popup menus.
as for the mac version, we'll bind
that to control-click as john suggests :-)
> On a more serious note, having different mouse buttons having different uses
> can confuse new users very quickly. A (well designed) toolbar should have the
> capabilities that Other Wordprocessors put in the context menus.
i would agree there's a certain amount of redundancy here.
think about it -- first we (as an industry) had menu bars,
then came toolbars for "quick & easy" access to frequently
use menu items, then came context menus -- for even quicker
access to menu items **and** to certain toolbar buttons....
how much more lazy can we get... :-)
some of them are just gui-clutter (like copy/cut/paste), but
others (like a short list of suggested spelling corrections)
are actually better done on a popup than with a modal dialog.
we need to try to make an appealing product to a wide-range
of users and user-expectations -- from the hard-core emacs
veterans (like myself) to the very inexperienced casual users
(like my mother). besides, there's a significant number of
people who "just can't live without 'em" -- we've already had
some complaints because we didn't have them....
> I hope you're not just trying to clone the interface to M$ Word...
no, no. i can feel my blood pressure jump 10 points everytime
i launch that beast....
i want to create an application that "just works like you'd
expect it to". and a lot of people just expect the right mouse
to raise context menus -- whether we like it or not, M$ has set
that expectation in people. [that does not mean that we're
going to do auto-summarize or that paper-clip-pin-head -- we
might do a parody, though :-]
> PS. I hate having to hold the mouse button down to get a context menu. The
> very existance of a mouse slows down productivity enough as it is.
i understand, i've been using emacs far to long to ever consider
the mouse as anything other than a carpal-tunnel-inducing-rodent....
is there a precedent for a popup menu launched by a keyboard binding ??
jeff