Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!tness7!texbell!bigtex!milano!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!encore!bzs@xenna
From: bzs@xenna (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Mouse cord nuisance from lap (was Re: Monitors: What Next?)
Message-ID: <3954@encore.UUCP>
Date: 22 Oct 88 21:38:24 GMT
References: <15572@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <16891@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <5164@saturn.ucsc.edu> <3549@phri.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: bzs@xenna (Barry Shein)
Organization: Encore Computer Corp
Lines: 22
In-reply-to: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)


>ulmo@ssyx.ucsc.edu (scritzifchisted ulmo qzutvchsxik) writes:
>> Is there a way to move that rodent's tail away from the input to
>> all of my work?
>
>	If I was designing a mouse, I'd loose the tail completely.  Some
>kind of radio or infra-red data link sure would be nice.  Unfortunately,
>I just don't see any way to engineer it that it would work.  Radio would
>probably get the FCC all bent out of shape (and rightly so) and IR depends
>on line-of-sight, which is hard to maintain on a typical cluttered desk.
>I've seen sonic digitzers, but none that work reliably.

As long as we're speculating...

What if you put the "tail" on the mousepad instead of the mouse and
made the pad the active component, sensing the mouse's movements and
sending them. Seems that could be done with some sort of magnetic or
similar interface in the mouse, even a battery in the mouse would be
within the stated design parameters. The point is that the mouse
wouldn't be attached to anything.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||