Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!crackers!m2c!umvlsi!dime!dime.cs.umass.edu!nayeri
From: nayeri@cs.umass.edu (Farshad Nayeri)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: The Mouse -- What is its History?
Message-ID: <NAYERI.90Oct14232708@ibis.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 15 Oct 90 03:27:08 GMT
References: <21056@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1123@helens.Stanford.EDU>
	<9028@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <1990Oct11.174840.21598@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@dime.cs.umass.edu
Reply-To: nayeri@cs.umass.edu
Organization: Dept of Comp and Info Sci, Univ of Mass (Amherst)
Lines: 40
In-reply-to: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu's message of 11 Oct 90 17:48:40 GMT

In article <1990Oct11.174840.21598@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) writes:

   In article <9028@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> wilkins@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Mark Wilkins) writes:
   >  Here's my suggestion for a  standard mouse interface.  It includes 1 button, 
   >sometimes accompanied by a modifier key press.  In contrast with your
   >suggestions, there's no learning curve for existing Mac users, it provides
   >all the capabilities a Mac user needs, the hardware upgrade is free and
   >thousands of products already use the new standard, although their
   >developers didn't know it at the time.  Perfect, don't you think?

   Using modifier keys is not much better, worse, or different than having
   multiple buttons on the mouse, if done properly.  "Properly" I would define
   as pretty much what an earlier poster said:

   Left button, click
   Right button, shift-click


   Finally, the Mac user community would be protected from zilly-uns of hardwa
   and software developers who think that extra mouse buttons should be used
   for Bolden-and-Italicize-the-Object-Immediately-Above-and-to-the-Right-Of-
   the-Second-to-Last-Mouse-Click, unless the moon was full or it was Tuesday.
   Simplicity and elegance come as much from discipline and consistency as they
   do from creativity and freedom.

   Perfect, don't you think?  :-)

I would give Microsoft about 3 months to come up with a new version of word
that requires Shift-Right-button. Oh, yeah, of course there is no menu-bar
alternative that does that. And then what do you do? Can't press the shift key
twice, can you? Once again, this kind of thing happens a lot under X-Windows.
Go one-button mouse. For an example of much more consistent use of 3 button
mouse than Xwindows, look at (ParcPlace) Smalltalk. I think Xerox PARC had it
all before all of the other people.

--farshad
--
Farshad Nayeri                Object Oriented Systems Group
nayeri@cs.umass.edu           Dept. of Computer and Information Science
(413)545-0256                 University of Massachusetts at Amherst