gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (10/10/90)
I thought the reason Xerox went to a two button mouse, was that "chording" (depressing two buttons at once) was a decent substitute for a 3rd button (assuming double-chording was not needed). It may be that Engelbrecht did not consider this trick, hence, the Xerox mouse is still a faithful incarnation of his ideas.
casseres@apple.com (David Casseres) (10/11/90)
In article <70500062@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > I thought the reason Xerox went to a two button mouse, was that > "chording" (depressing two buttons at once) was a decent substitute > for a 3rd button (assuming double-chording was not needed). It may be > that Engelbrecht did not consider this trick, hence, the Xerox mouse > is still a faithful incarnation of his ideas. That may have been Xerox's rationale, but I would think that the ergonomics would be rather poor. It's worth noting that Engelbart's mouse is an integrated part of a complete user-interface system that does not resemble the interface systems developed by Xerox, Apple, or anyone else. Engelbart's system does not use the mouse for selecting commands on menus, and even when it is used to select text it works very differently from other systems. David Casseres Exclaimer: Hey!
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (10/13/90)
Why not use three buttons for 3 mice pointers? Dedicate one button to each mouse. While using mouse A, clicking on button B or button C selects mouse B or mouse C. Then, buttons B & C control the action of pointers B & C. The mouse pictures could be different colors or shades to keep them distinct! You could have a marvelous time jumping back and forth across large screen displays!
jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (George Jefferson ) (10/13/90)
>Why not use three buttons for 3 mice pointers? Dedicate one button to
Why not have the three buttons randomly change function, based on
the phase of the moon and the time of day.
... just like X windows
:-)
.
--
-george @sol1.lrsm.upenn.edugillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (10/15/90)
/* Written 5:35 pm Oct 13, 1990 by rcpieter@svin02.info.win.tue.nl in m.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac.system */ /* ---------- "Re: The Mouse -- What is its Histor" ---------- */ > In all articles in this thread only two existing ways of using a mouse > have been discussed (Mac and Xerox) .... On this side of the ocean > however, another GUI exists on the Acorn Archimedes which incorporates > a three button mouse. For right hand users, the buttons are called > (from left to right) SELECT, MENU and ADJUST. Actually, none of the three mentioned interfaces are really different. The only difference is where you put the "MENU" and "ADJUST" keys -- on the mouse, or on the keyboard. I don't see that much of a difference. SELECT MENU ADJUST Comments Mac mouse-1 mouse-1 + shift+mouse-1 Pull-Down menus screen location Xerox mouse-1 mouse-1 + mouse-2 right button Viewpoint screen location underutilized Xerox mouse-1 mouse-1+mouse-2 mouse-3 2 buttons suffice XDE Acorn mouse-1 mouse-2 mouse-3 Many Xeroids work in & LISPm's (I think) Acorn / Palo Alto & many other systems... Labs It would be a neat hack to add pull-down menues to the Macintosh -- just write an INIT that looks for control-click in the finder, and then pops up a menu based on the menu bar. Don W. Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801 ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies
ml27192@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (10/17/90)
/* Written 2:57 pm Oct 14, 1990 by gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu in uxa.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac.system */ /* Written 5:35 pm Oct 13, 1990 by rcpieter@svin02.info.win.tue.nl in m.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac.system */ /* ---------- "Re: The Mouse -- What is its Histor" ---------- */ > In all articles in this thread only two existing ways of using a mouse > have been discussed (Mac and Xerox) .... On this side of the ocean > however, another GUI exists on the Acorn Archimedes which incorporates > a three button mouse. For right hand users, the buttons are called > (from left to right) SELECT, MENU and ADJUST. Actually, none of the three mentioned interfaces are really different. The only difference is where you put the "MENU" and "ADJUST" keys -- on the mouse, or on the keyboard. I don't see that much of a difference. SELECT MENU ADJUST Comments Mac mouse-1 mouse-1 + shift+mouse-1 Pull-Down menus screen location Xerox mouse-1 mouse-1 + mouse-2 right button Viewpoint screen location underutilized Xerox mouse-1 mouse-1+mouse-2 mouse-3 2 buttons suffice XDE Acorn mouse-1 mouse-2 mouse-3 Many Xeroids work in & LISPm's (I think) Acorn / Palo Alto & many other systems... Labs It would be a neat hack to add pull-down menues to the Macintosh -- just write an INIT that looks for control-click in the finder, and then pops up a menu based on the menu bar. Don W. Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801 ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies/* End of text from uxa.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac.system */