Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt
From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: 3 button systems (was  A/UX window systems, Mac toolbox, etc)
Message-ID: <2691@dciem.UUCP>
Date: 23 Mar 88 23:49:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: dciem.2691
Posted: Wed Mar 23 18:49:17 1988
References: <9790@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <2290017@hpsadla.HP> <7660@apple.Apple.Com>
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 29
Summary: 


I use Sun (Sunview) and Mac both at my desk, and often simultaneously.
I intensely dislike the 3-button mouse, and frequently hit the wrong
button with sometimes nasty results. (I guess the causality should be
the other way round :-)).  The most non-intuitive thing to me is the
confusion I have between the right button, which gives the menu, and
the right (oh, no, it's the middle, isn't it) button that extends a
text selection.  If I have a right and left end to the text, normal
control-display relationship considerations tell me that the right
and left buttons should define it.  Even after more than a year of using
the Sun every day, I still make this error sometimes.  And I have no
real model of a generic thing the three buttons each do.  With the
Mac, I can generalize--one click to select, two to do something.
Option-click to specialize, command-click to generalize (more or less).
There are many things wrong with the Mac interface, from a theoretical
point of view, but it is much better than anything else around.

As for the distance of mouse movement, I have the non-linearity controls
set for both Sun and Mac so that I keep my wrist on the desk, and rarely
move the mouse more than an inch or two, no matter how far I want the
cursor to move on the screen.  No problem with the menu bar, except
that it is sometimes too short to contain what it should.
-- 

Martin Taylor
...uunet!dciem!mmt
mmt@zorac.arpa
Talk, n. To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse
without purpose. (Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914?, The Devil's Dictionary)