On: Setting up Emacs as a Ruby development environment...

[vbsteven]

If you use the gui version of emacs instead of the terminal version you can still use the scrollwheel.

I usually run 1 gui emacs instance with my main development environment and only use the terminal version when logged into remote machines.

[dhemmerling → vbsteven]

You can use the mouse + scrollwheel in the terminal as well. Eval (xterm-mouse-mode).

[alxp → dhemmerling]

I looked into those, but my preference for not ever leaving the home keys is trumping using the scroll wheel for now.

[dhemmerling → alxp]

You are right to not do so. Describing what is not impossible is hardly advocacy, however. There are a few uses for allowing mouse in terminal emulated emacs of varying utility. Same with the GUI version, but just to get basic mouse/wheel functionality is not one of them.