[comp.unix.i386] Running X11 with a 2 button PS/2 mouse

haugen@bulus3.BMA.COM (John M. Haugen) (09/27/89)

I currently have Interactive's X11 product running on a PS2 type machine.  The
mouse on the system is only a 2 button mouse, not a 3 button that X11 prefers.
Is there any way to map the third button to another key or a combination of
the other two mouse buttons?

Except for the mouse and the need to tweek some tunable parameters in the 
kernal, I am rather satisfied with the this product.

John M. Haugen             Domain:  haugen@BMA.COM
Bull Micral of America     UUCP:    ...!uunet!bulus3!haugen
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s32908a@puukko.hut.fi (Marko Puumalainen) (09/28/89)

In article <309@bulus3.BMA.COM> haugen@bulus3.BMA.COM (John M. Haugen) writes:
>I currently have Interactive's X11 product running on a PS2 type machine.  The
>mouse on the system is only a 2 button mouse, not a 3 button that X11 prefers.
>Is there any way to map the third button to another key or a combination of
>the other two mouse buttons?

Source: A Beginner's Guide to the X Window System (Version 11)
HP 9000 Series 300 Computers.

X11 in HP can also be used with two-button mouse. The middle button is
generated by pressing both buttons simultaneously. I'm not saying this
is going to work in your case but I quess it's worth trying.

		))Marko


That's an awful thought and in the daytime it seems wildly paranoid...
But, do you know, in the watches of the night it seems perfectly logical.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 Marko Puumalainen marko@otax.tky.hut.fi tel. (h) 4682378 (w) 4376597

madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) (09/29/89)

In article <309@bulus3.BMA.COM> haugen@bulus3.BMA.COM (John M. Haugen) writes:
|Is there any way to map the third button to another key or a combination of
|the other two mouse buttons?

Not under ISC 386/ix.  One thing that you can do is to use xmodmap to
toggle button 2 and button 3 bindings from the window manager:

	xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 3" # map button 2 to button 3
	xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2" # map button 2 to itself

This can be done manually, too, but I find that having it on my twm
applications menu works pretty well.

I spoke to the ISC person who did much of the mouse handling (sorry,
your name is at work an I'm not) and he said he'd experimented with
chording (multiple simultaneous buttons producing unavailable
buttons), but that this causes problems with some X applications.
He's right, of course, not to mention all the timing problems that
chording causes.  Not having the third button causes more problems,
though :-).

I think of this as an X deficiency; there really should be some way to
xmodmap any key/pointer combination to any other, allowing the user to
configure his/her system to allow rctrl-button-2 to mean button 3, for
instance.  Given the general response of the MIT people to my
complaints, don't look for this anytime soon.

A lot of people complain that we X applications writers should "do the
right thing" and use the database functions that X gives.  They're
right, of course, but speaking as an applications writer let me tell
you that X isn't the easiest thing to write a real application in in
the first place, much less to do right.  It should not really be up to
the application writer to handle this mapping anyway, but this kind of
gets back to the same arguments I have with the MS-DOS technique of
having each application handle globbing.

Good luck,

jim frost
software tool & die
madd@std.com