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From: REM%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: Re: Of Mice and Touch Screens
Message-ID: <15591@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Jan-84 21:27:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.15591
Posted: Mon Jan 16 21:27:00 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Jan-84 01:12:51 EST
Lines: 45

From:  Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>

Often in rapid typing I make many little typing erors like may occur
in this very sentence I'm typing I'll deliberatly wait until I'm done
befor going back tocorrect the errors, and deliberatly make a copy so
you can see the original and the final versio of this.

Often in rapid typing I make many little typing errors like may occur
in this very sentence I'm typing. I'll deliberatly wait until I'm done
before going back to correct the errors, and deliberatly make a copy so
you can see the original and the final version of this.

There, 3 errors corrected, all by string search instead of pointing
device. [Addenda, a fourth found on second reading just before
dispatching this message, also located by search, fine-adjusted by
incremental-cursor, see below, and corrected by auto-insert default
EMACS mode.] [Further addenda, a fifth found and corrected.]
The point I'm making is that whereas mouse is advocated as
useful for text editing (now called "word processing"), in fact most
of the time simple typos can be found and fixed by backwards string
search easier than by any kind of location-specific pointing device
such as mouse or cursor. Thus your advocating of a mouse in text
editing is a red herring. Furthermore, having used the string search
to get in the vicinity of the error, typically at the start or end of
the seach string depending on which editor is being used (in EMACS
backwards search puts you at start, but pressing ctrl-S can put you
immediately at end), you still need to step to the point of corrction
in the middle of the erroneous string, and for that I would think
incremental cursor controls would be much easier to use than a mouse
because you can step forward or backward N characters by pressing the
appropriate cursor-step key N times whereas with a mouse it's very
hard to quickly determine you're at exactly the correct spot instead
of off by one.

Thus for simple correction of typos, the most common thing done other
than straight typing, it seems you'll need incremental left/right
cursor commands in any case, even if you have a mouse, while the mouse
won't be used because it's dominated by searching and stepping.

[Addenda in second paragraph (third if you count both clones of first
paragraph separately) typed&inserted at this time, just before adding
CC:WORKS and dispatching. RMAIL is nice.]

[Further addenda in that same paragraph added now, on third reading,
after adding CC:WORKS, just before dispatching.]