Why require ALT+right-click?

If you've used Acme before and are new to Anvil, you may wonder why the ALT key is used to modify right clicks. In Acme, clicking the right mouse button acquires the text directly: if the text matches a plumbing rule that rule is executed; if it is a file, it is opened; otherwise a search for that text is performed. To distinguish between the last two, Acme must check the filesystem to see if the text represents a file. If it does then it can be opened as a file, and if it doesn't then that text is searched instead.

In Anvil, though, the files being opened might be on the local computer or a remote one. If we were to distinguish between a file and a search the same way as Acme, that would require checking for the file over the network which can have significant latency. It would mean each search the user executed would have an observable delay at best, or a significant pause at worst. The experience would be very frustrating.

Granted, we could guarantee that the right-clicked text does not represent a remote file by checking if it contains a colon, but if the text does contain a colon we still can't tell if it's a search term or a remote file to be opened. In those cases the behaviour would be very irritating.