Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!mkent
From: mkent@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (Marty Kent)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: (INSTRUCTIONS FOR) moving mouse pointer under program control
Message-ID: <27930@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 7 Feb 89 19:02:42 GMT
References: <17871@gatech.edu> <6443@hoptoad.uucp> <1858@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mkent@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Marty Kent)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 41

There are so many good reasons for a program to move the mouse around, I'm
not going to waste time arguing about whether it's okay or not. 

I mostly work in lisp, so I'm not really familiar with the approved names
for the necessary globals, but I know their addresses ("true names") and
that's enough, eh?  Here's how I move the mouse to screen point PT, in
(what I hope is more or less) programming-language-independent
pseudo-code:

define constants	(these are the addresses of the necessary sys
globals)

MOUSE =	2096
MBUSY = 2253
RMOUSE = 2092
MTEMP = 2088
CNEW = 2254

to set mouse cursor hotspot to screen point PT

put-byte -1 @ MBUSY		(i.e. store the byte -1 at the address bound to
						 MBUSY - BASIC "poke" or C &MBUSY ...)
put-long PT @ MTEMP
put-long PT @ RMOUSE
put-long PT @ MOUSE
put-byte -1 @ CNEW
put-byte 0 @ MBUSY

This is a bit of an incantation to me, and I can't really explain how it
works, though I know it's necessary to store the -1 in CNEW to get the
system to redisplay the cursor image...  However, my friend Dave Haessler
used to say "understanding is the booby prize."  This technique works.




Marty Kent  	Sixth Sense Research and Development
		415/642 0288	415/548 9129
		MKent@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu
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Kent's heuristic: Look for it first where you'd most like to find it.