Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!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: Date: 17 Oct 90 04:00:15 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: 35 In-reply-to: barnett@grymoire.crd.ge.com's message of 15 Oct 90 21:41:10 GMT In article barnett@grymoire.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) writes: In article nayeri@cs.umass.edu (Farshad Nayeri) writes: | 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. It really bugs me when people knock X windows for the wrong reason. X Windows was designed to be policy free. it doesn't HAVE a user interface. Yes, you are right. X Windows is just a mechanism and no specific policy is specified. What I do know is that because of the lack of such user interface guidelines, every application handles the mouse interface the way it likes. For example, xterm uses control-middle-mouse-button for some menu, when gnu-emacs uses it for cutting text. I realize that there are interface guidelines around (e.g., motif), but because they are not heavily enforced. And I doubt it if all the interface wars will help the consistency all that much. I guess it takes a kind of dictatorship (like Apple Thought Police) to enforce these policies. What I meant by "X-Windows" was X Windows with the interface that is available when you download it from MIT, as well as mostly non-commercial packages out there like idraw, xfig, gnu-emacs. X windows is a favorite of mine among workstation (DEC and SUN) windowing environments. --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