[OT] Buttonless mice [was: Re: [plug] Good GUI Interface Design]

[Cameron Patrick]

On Sat, Dec 20, 2003 at 03:51:08PM +0800, James Devenish wrote:
| In message <20031220073642.GF1152 at erdos.home>
| on Sat, Dec 20, 2003 at 03:36:42PM +0800, Cameron Patrick wrote:
| > I would presume that on a system designed for a buttonless mouse, there
| > would be some kind of convention for pointing-related keys...  (Or in
| > true X11 tradition, every application could come up with its own.)
| 
| I'm probably not thinking laterally (maybe I'm not even recall things
| that I have done in the past), but the thought that came to mind mind
| was that you'd either need to reserve some keys for mousing or you'd
| need a modifier key for the mouse.

Probably.  I wasn't really thinking deeply about it, and I've no idea
what similar things people may have done in the past.

| > generally the convenience of being able to do copy - paste without
| > having to touch the keyboard outweighs this.
| 
| This is where our experiences differ.

So are you saying you prefer all-keyboarded copy/paste to X-style, or
that you prefer to use mixed mouse/Ctrl-C/mouse/CtrlV-style copy and
paste?  (And don't answer "yes".  I know you would given the chance.)

| > Actually it annoys me that vim and screen can't share their cut buffer
| > with X
| 
| Hehe, I routinely rely on that fact :)

I wasn't suggesting it be mandatory.

| But vim /can/ share the X11 buffers: try "*p to paste from the X11
| visual selection (see also ':help x11-selection' for other buffers).

Ooh, nice!  So that's why vim tries to connect to X every time it
starts.  I had wondered about that.  (Those with sufficiently slow
computers or a terminal emulator which restores the contents of the
screen after vim exits can demonstrate this by running vim as root.)

| > (Just like having a graphical/menu-y interface is more efficient than
| > the command line when you're only doing something occasionally and
| > can't remember the appropriate command.)
| 
| Get a zsh ;)

*pffft*  I might one day... or perhaps I'll find an even niftier shell
and use that, laughing at all you silly buggers stuck with zsh. :-)

Cameron.