Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:14014 comp.windows.misc:295
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!killer!tness1!nuchat!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: A/UX window systems, Mac toolbox, etc
Message-ID: <1574@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 14 Mar 88 05:08:02 GMT
References: <1710@ssc-vax.UUCP> <579@eplrx7.UUCP> <7550@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <1512@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 32
Summary: What Apple invented and what Apple borrowed.

There are two innovations in the Mac environment that rightly belong
to Apple. They're not a knock-off of anything Xerox did, and they're
both part and parcel of the one-button mouse.

They are pull-down menus and doubleclicking.

There are three things that are commonly done with a mouse in a well-designed
user interface. They are (1) selecting an object or objects (including
dragging them), (2) activating an object, and (3) bringing up a menu relating
to the selected object or objects if you want to do more than the default
action command.

The ideal situation would be to have three buttons for this. A SELECT button,
a DOIT button, and a MENU button. On the Mac all three of these are overlaid
on one button, so everything's jammed into the selection button. On the Amiga,
there's a SELECT button and a MENU button. DOIT could have been mapped into
holding down both buttons, but that was used for extended menu selections and
they copied doubleclicking for the DOIT action. Some systems have all three
buttons... and even use them this way.

Now then. It seems (based on this discussion) that the Sun uses the three
buttons as extra keys, with common commands mapped into them. This isn't bad,
if you can program them to behave in the fashion described above. It'd be
preferable if this was the default behaviour, and even that it was the only
behaviour.

After all, you don't reprogram the shift and control keys.

I hope.
-- 
-- Peter da Silva  `-_-'  ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter
-- Disclaimer: These U aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.