Subject: Re: Review of Kensington "MouseInABox Optical Pro"
To: None <port-macppc@netbsd.org>
From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel@eskimo.com>
List: port-macppc
Date: 01/02/2002 19:53:09
Following up to myself:
More bad features:
Scroll wheel support in MacOS is a hack (done by simulating a mouse click
in the scroll bar -- if you turn on proportional scroll bars, you also get
the arrows at one end (which is fascist); the top of the scroll bar becomes
the gray "page scroll" area and scrolling up with the wheel is much faster
than scrolling down)
Control panel is inflexible (a mouse button can't simulate a modifier key
alone, which the Oberon GUI requires; on the other hand, the "slow mouse"
and "axis" features can't be activated by mouse buttons but only by
modifier keys)
Control key still brings up contextual menus even with a multibutton
mouse (this is entirely Apple's fault; I just wanted to rant; they've
had a multibutton mouse protocol for years; Jobs supposedly admitted
that having a one-button mouse was wrong; they bought NeXT which at least
supports two buttons; they were wise to "borrow" the idea of contextual
menus from Windows; but they still couldn't bite the bullet and support
more than one mouse button in the OS or probably the library functions)
The jury's still out on NetBSD support.
-- Derek