Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!excelan!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Xerox sues Apple!
Message-ID: <1920@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 18 Dec 89 14:45:23 GMT
References: <172@comcon.UUCP> <7326@ficc.uu.net> <9320@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 40
Reply-exos:@crdgw1:To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)

In article <9320@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes:

| Spoken like a true techno-nerd, Peter.  I have personally observed
| highly intelligent and skilled UNIX programmers who could not remember
| from one minute to the next what each button on their three-button
| mouse did.  No doubt there are a few who have been able to commit it to
| memory somewhere in the world, but from what I've seen, they are the
| exceptions.  I have *never* seen a non-techno-jock user who could keep
| the mouse buttons straight.  Multi-button mice are brain-damaged.

  Overload clicks are like overloaded functions; neat concept but hard
to grasp. As I watch people use the Mac, unless they use it a lot, like
20 hours per week, they frequently single click, see that it doesn't do
what they want, and then double click. Less frequently vice versa.

  You can design a bad interface with ANY hardware, and certainly that
applies to both the single and multi button mouse. The advantage of the
three button mouse is that you CAN design a standard unambiguous
interface. For example: left button is a selector... marks the start of
text regions, selects stuff off a menu, etc. Middle button is an actor,
press and hold gives a menu, poke repeats the last action (or
appropriate action, such as paste after action cut). The right button is
reserved for window manager interface, click near a corner and you size,
near an edge and you stretch, on the scroll bar for scroll, on the top
for move, on the hot spot for iconize. Since this doesnt require being
RIGHT ON an edge to be unambiguois it reducesd the need for pointer
accuract and allows very narrow borders.

  Any consistent interface will be better than confusion, and I don't
think that the single button mouse, which substitutes multiclick for
button selection, in any way insures good selection of features (not
precludes it).

  Your egregious insults (techno-nerd) emphasizes the paucity of
technical merit in your argument.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon