Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!ncar!ames!lll-winken!snll-arpagw!paolucci
From: paolucci@snll-arpagw.UUCP (Sam Paolucci)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Yet Another Entry In The 1.4 Wish List...
Keywords: RE: 1.4 Enhancement Wish List
Message-ID: <91@snll-arpagw.UUCP>
Date: 5 Apr 89 15:32:39 GMT
References: <504@morgoth.UUCP> <3453@amiga.UUCP> <505@morgoth.UUCP> <716@ibmpa.UUCP> <980@quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: paolucci@snll-arpagw.UUCP (Sam Paolucci)
Organization: Sandia National Labs, Livermore, CA
Lines: 73

In article <980@quintus.UUCP> pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) writes:
->Right.  The Amiga can do this with a clever program like DMouse.  X can't
->emulate intuition, though, because it is totally undiciplined about mouse
->buttons.  For example, you could write a window manager that put up all
->right gadgets, and used them to drag and reshape windows (though the close
->gadget would be pretty tricky).  But you couldn't make the right mouse
->button pull down a menu, because applications may need the right mouse
->button.  For example, xcalc can only be exited by clicking the "on" button
->with the right mouse button.  It's like it didn't occur to them that
->anyone would build a mouse with other than 3 buttons, and that different
->people might want different interpretations of mouse button-modifier
->key combinations.

This is all a bunch of baloney.  I suggest you learn about X a little
before making comments like the ones above.  You are mixing who is doing
what between X, the window manager (in this case uwm), and the client (
in this case xcalc).

First of all, even the humble uwm allows you to define what you want
it to do when you select any mouse button in the .uwmrc startup file.
You can specify what action is to take effect depending on three
fields: control keys, CONTEXT, and mouse buttons.  For the mouse
button field you can specify left, middle or right, and these can be
or'ed with the mouse actions of down, up, or delta (indicating that
the mouse must be moved the number of pixels specified with the delta
variable before the specified function is invoked).  In the control
keys field you can specify meta (or esc), ctrl, shift, lock, or null,
as modifiers to the mouse buttons; again these can be or'ed.  In the
context field you can specify icon, window, root, or null; root refers
to the background window, and they can be ored.

Now if an application makes use of the right mouse button, all I have to
do, for example, is move the mouse over the root window and get a popup
menu with the right mouse button, if I so choose to specify in my .uwmrc.
It's as simple as that.  I wish Intuition had that kind of flexibility.

Saying that you can't use the right mouse button for menus on xcalc is
analogous to saying that you can't use the right mouse button to paint
in some specific paint program, because the right button is used for
menus.  Come on, xcalc is just a program written by an individual.
He had to make a choice on which button to use to do specific functions.
Just because his choice does not agree with you, it's no reason to
castigate X Windows for it.

As far as killing xcalc, you can always move over to your xterm window
and type kill XXXX (xcalc's pid) and you've done it without using the
right mouse button.

And finally, X itself supports a pointing device with at least 5
buttons.  It's true that uwm only supports three, but uwm is only
another client, and only a simple window manager.  What does this
mean?  It means that there are a lot more sophisticated window
managers around that do a lot more than uwm, and it also means that if
you don't like the window managers you have, you can write your own,
as indeed some people have done.  Have you tried to write your own
Intuition lately?

Well, I did not intend this posting to be somewhat antagonistic,
especially towards Intuition, because I love my Amiga.  But it just
irritates me when people make blanket statements about things they
know very little about.  Besides, this kind of stuff does not belong
in comp.sys.amiga.

->-Peter Schachte
->pds@quintus.uucp
->...!sun!quintus!pds


-- 
					-+= SAM =+-
"the best things in life are free"

				ARPA: paolucci@snll-arpagw.llnl.gov