Hi!
First of all, I want to agree with
Jitri Petru that the speed issue is not that elemental to me either. Of course, if things run smoothly, they are fun, but that is not a major aspect.
For some actions, this may be true, but since it isn't true for all actions (or necessarily even most of them), "inherent" seems to be the wrong word in my opinion.
I agree with you there. Just as with the wooden training axes, they are superior when used in training but inferior when facing that goblin in iron full body armor: You want the right tool for the right job. (The dwarves happily using the training weapons when going to war does NOT seem to be a user interface issue as far as I have followed the reports/comments on that).
However, the job is defined in part by the user as well, and this is why I consider this entire discussion to be subjective. Some people don't have the patience to wait, and others want more time to think. And accordingly, they focus on different aspects of the user interface, and this may result in them favoring different solutions.
Moving around a 2D map can in many contexts be easier with a mouse, whether it be edge-scrolling, click and drag (the distance from the click point determining scroll speed), or especially use of a mini-map.
While I am fine with your general argument, I have to confess that I find that example extremely unfortunate: Map scrolling with the mouse, while maybe in theory a nice thing, seems to be implemented only in the most awful fashions possible. Whether it is an aggressive edge scrolling that does not allow you to click on the icon bar at the bottom of the screen, or whether the edge scrolling has so much resistance that you push and push until it jumps to the other corner of the map, or whether you get a tennis arm from moving the mouse back and forth to scroll using drag and drop because none of the possible settings for speed or sensitivity allow you to really enjoy this procedure, in my experience, all mouse based map scrolling has been a horrible nightmare. Merely jumping via the mini map or if you scroll one screen at a time by confirming with clicking have worked out for me personally. But the latter approach does not yield any advantage over simply pressing SHIFT + cursor keys as Dwarf Fortress currently does for map scrolling.
Mind you, I agree that there are things the mouse can do better, as there are those the keyboard can do better. I just needed to point out that you might wish to choose an example with a smaller subjective component (^_^;;
Besides, as I noted before, use of a mouse inherently provides context about which control the user wishes to manipulate simply due to the location of the cursor, whereas the keyboard inherently applies to the whole screen at once, which means that 1) it isn't immediately clear which screen element key presses will be routed to (they might not even be routed to a screen element at all, but some "invisible" element), and B) it becomes far more complicated to allow routing the key presses to different targets depending upon what the user wants. Every single screen in essence becomes a monolithic control, which I would imagine makes use, design, and modification harder.
Actually, that is more of an implementation question. Using marking, you can have very similar effects using the keyboard. When the subwindow or element that is currently being targeted is clearly marked, for example by a red frame (just a spontaneous idea), you can convey that information just as well as you can with the mouse. The web browser you referred to before also uses the "ants" to mark which element is currently subject to your next key press.
And even beyond that, I do not really see how the unity of the screen, so to speak, would inherently be more difficult to use or design. Regardless of what approach you choose, you have to think about how you implement or it will fail horribly.
At least that is the way I see it.
Deathworks
P.S.: Picking up the comment by
Jiri Petru, I want to mention that I am not using any outside tools while playing dwarf fortress (the game is already labelled as unstable, so I rather not mess around with it even further), the only outside tool I ever use being the map compressor for uploading the maps at the map archive.