Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Xerox sues Apple!
Message-ID: <9361@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 19 Dec 89 23:57:44 GMT
References: <172@comcon.UUCP> <7326@ficc.uu.net> <9320@hoptoad.uucp> <1920@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 56

In article <1920@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM
(Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes:
>  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.

I've rarely observed this, but then, most Mac users I've dealt with
have in fact used it for twenty hours a week or more.  Double clicking
seems to be one of the things people catch on to almost immediately
after starting to use the Mac; shift-clicking, though, is not.  And
as for the distinction between shift, command, and option clicking,
forget it, even most power users don't know the difference.  (It doesn't
help that the Finder violates the standard in this regard, either.)

>  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.

So, let's see, the middle button is an actor, so I want to perform the
action of dragging the window around the screen, I use that.  The left
button's a selector, so I use it to pop up a menu that I want to select
from.  The right button is for the windows, so I use it to give any
menu commands that are specific to the window type.  The middle
button's an actor, so I use it to perform the action of giving menu
commands.  The right button's for the window manager, so I use it to
choose things in windows.  The left button's a selector, so I use it to
select the stretch/zoom state of my windows.  Your distinctions are
anything but clear; even if you could clear them up, only techno-jocks
would understand them.

>  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).

No, but it prevents such atrocious and vague interface features as the
ones you proposed above.

>  Your egregious insults (techno-nerd) emphasizes the paucity of
>technical merit in your argument.

Peter has called himself the same thing in the past and indicated that
he is proud to be a techno-nerd.  Therefore, my statement was neither
egregious nor an insult.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

Never ascribe to stupidity what can adequately be explained by malice.