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From: grunwald@uiuccsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: mice, pens, and graphics - (nf)
Message-ID: <4418@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 10-Dec-83 20:28:24 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4418
Posted: Sat Dec 10 20:28:24 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Dec-83 03:10:39 EST
Lines: 47

#R:umcp-cs:-429100:uiuccsb:19000004:000:2461
uiuccsb!grunwald    Dec 10 16:49:00 1983

    I've recently been using an HP graphics tablet with a stylus for a VLSI
design class. Often times, one spends hours at a time sitting and
interacting with (read: screaming at) the workstations.

    Personelly, for this application, I would perfer a mouse. I've used a
Hawley mouse before, connected to a Cadlinc workstation (similar to Sun
workstations). I find that with a pen, I need to keep my arm off the tablet.
Otherwise, my arm affects the tablet in such a way that the cursor jumps all
over the screen. You don't have that kind of trouble with a mouse. I would
actually perfer an optical mouse since you don't have some of the problems that
you do with the Hawley mouse (the ball bearing slips sometimes, causing your to
lose tracking association with the cursor).

    Also, having two or three buttons available would be nice (although,
admittedly, the software would have to be changed to utilize them).

   I've found that when I use a mouse, I can rest my arm much more, and don't
get as tired. Also, the pens used on this particular graphics tablet don't
always actuate when you press down (this happens on all four workstations after
a while, so it'd not just a single bad tablet). This is annoying, and causes a
lot of frustration on the part of the user. I don't think that the mice on the
market suffer from the same problem.

   Also, the wire for the pen is awkward. It gets in your way, mainly because
it is so large. It needs to be shielded to get rid of interference from the
tablet. The mouse wires are usually much smaller and since for an optical
mouse, you only move it on a 4x5 inch surface, there's not much it can get
in the way of.

   Admittedly, this is a small sample size of tablets. I would hate to say that
all tablets are useless due to this one experuence. However, for this
particular application, I think it was the wrong choice.
   Where would I recommend tablets? Where people have hardcopy they want to
enter. A friend of mine works in a psych lab and uses a digitizer to enter
pictures of neurons for processing. They just lay pictures of the nurons on
the tablet and trace over them. That would obviously be a poor application
for a mouse (and even a pen -- perhaps a puck would be better). But for
applications where one draws "free-hand" (i.e. vlsi design) on the screen,
I prefer the mouse (so far).

Dirk Grunwald
University of Illinois
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