On 11-Sep-09 21:02:06, Patrick Connolly wrote: > On Fri, 11-Sep-2009 at 03:46PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote: > > [....] > >|> Well, not really!! My point (and certainly Charles Curran's point) >|> is that in touch-typing you know by proprioception and >|> neuromuscular coordination where your fingers are relative to the >|> keys on the keyboard, and what key you will press next, without >|> looking; and you can accurately press several keys in rapid >|> succession -- just as a pianist can play an arpeggio without >|> looking. > > [....] > > I was mostly kidding when I mentioned my guess at the reasoning for > the default settings. However, paradoxically, I mostly agree with > Ted and avoid using the mouse for every process *except* copy/cut & > paste. > It's a horses for courses thing. I use a bunch of other keyboard > shortcuts such as looking up help files in preference to using the > menu and mouse. Emacs users who choose to change the default setting > in question will be unable to use the ones I use and end up not > becoming aware of the nifty things possible. > > To that extent, I was not entirely joking. > > [...]
Point taken, Patrick! Indeed, well taken. Your mouse-usage preferences are very much the same as mine. When I'm developing R code, the left part of the screen is occupied by an R CLI window, and the right by a window in which I am editing a file of R code. When I think I've got something that might be right, I mouse-copy it to the other window and see what happens. At the end of the day the result can be made into an R script, or left as a file of R code chunks which are known to work for their respective tasks. Perhaps the main difference is that you seem to use EMACS/ESS. I use vim: all I need is the code. When it looks right I "mouse" it across. So I'm content with a good text editor. I don't need ESS-type interfaces with R, and I don't want to tangle with an editor which has its own ideas about how code should be laid out. (And don't ask about how close I once came to throwing my own computer out of a 2nd-floor window, while trying to clean up a student's thesis, written in Word ... talk about software which thinks it knows better than you do .... ). Cheers, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 11-Sep-09 Time: 23:11:36 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.