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From: new@udel.edu (Darren New)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Multi-button mice (Re: Xerox sues Apple!)
Message-ID: <6435@nigel.udel.EDU>
Date: 19 Dec 89 00:30:34 GMT
References: <172@comcon.UUCP> <7326@ficc.uu.net> <9320@hoptoad.uucp> <1989Dec18.081450.28019@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu>
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Reply-To: new@udel.edu (Darren New)
Organization: University of Delaware
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In article <1989Dec18.081450.28019@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes:
>Tim Maroney <tim@toad.com> wrote:
>> I have *never* seen a non-techno-jock user who could keep the mouse
>> buttons straight.  Multi-button mice are brain-damaged.
>
>The problem with multi-button mice is confusion of buttons.  My prime
>example is the game "xmille".  You click the left button on a card to
>discard it, the right button to play it.  Or is it the other way
>around?  Each button is used about equally often. 

Actually, I think the confusion is more from not having any standard for
which buttons mean what in X-windows (which I assume is what xmille
runs under).  In Smalltalk, I never get confused.  The left button is
like the button in text or graphics windows on the Mac -- selection.
The middle button pops up a pane-specific menu -- cut and paste for
text menus, and and remove for lists, and so on.  The right button
brings up the "view" menu -- open, iconify, quit, move, ....
I never get confused about what button I want, even though some
operations could be even more clear.

I remember reading that Xerox did an experiment (I think on the Star)
that concluded that two-button mice were best: one button for selection
and one for changing.  That is, click with the left button on a document
to select it and then use the right button to bring up a menu
of changable features.          -- Darren