Re: [9fans] weird cursor motion

Re: [9fans] weird cursor motion

[rob pike]

Giving your right hand for a second mouse strikes me as a
philosophical conundrum. Or perhaps an opportunity for
creative input devices.

-rob

Input devices (Was: [9fans] weird cursor motion)

[Lucio De Re]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 05:51:50AM -0400, rob pike wrote:
>
> Giving your right hand for a second mouse strikes me as a
> philosophical conundrum. Or perhaps an opportunity for
> creative input devices.
>
Am I really that cryptic?  I thought I agreed to the above in my
original message :-)

To be sure, I think Palm have the right idea (I don't care that
3Com are in Boyd's bad books presently).  In fact, it's a pity Bell
Labs did not explore the graffiti input further with their bitsy
development, because to my mind there's room for shorthand (Pitman
style) as a form of text entry (but not within the scope of my
personal programming capabilities).

Of course, Apple was there before U.S.Robotics, and they failed to
capture the imagination of the marketplace with the Newton (more's
the pity, in  my opinion) presumably because learning oneself and
at the same time teaching shorthand to one's handheld would be time
consuming and hardly glamorous.  I'll refrain from stating here
what I think of managers turning into desktop publishers and other
unpublishable points of view on modern enterprise leaders, I do
not have the skills of Scott Adams (I hope I remember the right
name).

Yet it strikes me as self-evident that writing has become the
primary task of personal computing, and shorthand would not only
speed text entry considerably, but also eliminate to some extent
the need to remember the exact spelling of words.

I think the biggest obstacle is the need for a two-prong approach:
computing devices have to be taught skeletal shorthand and users
have to learn _and_ teach their particular fashion of shorthand to
their device.  In addition, one needs to somehow track the owner's
"vocabulary" so that it can be ported to new, different devices
(or should one have just a personal translator as the input device?
No, the market place wouldn't really permit this).

Just some lateral thinking that's been bugging me a while.

++L

Re: Input devices (Was: [9fans] weird cursor motion)

[matt]

Hello Lucio,


LDR> To be sure, I think Palm have the right idea (I don't care that
LDR> 3Com are in Boyd's bad books presently).  In fact, it's a pity Bell
LDR> Labs did not explore the graffiti input further with their bitsy
LDR> development, because to my mind there's room for shorthand (Pitman
LDR> style) as a form of text entry (but not within the scope of my
LDR> personal programming capabilities).

 From my personal use of a Palm I can write in graffiti (to the extent
that I wrote it on paper for while). But I found it was much quicker
to tap on the little virtual keyboard.

The shorthand idea is in MS word via intellisense except it uses
letter combos and not written shapes.

Just for fun I dictated this e-mail and had voice recognition
translate into text for me. No spelling mistakes and much easier my
wrist than typing.

have also being enjoying using the microphone to scroll up and down

--
Best regards,
 matt                            mailto:matt@proweb.co.uk

Re: Input devices (Was: [9fans] weird cursor motion)

[Boyd Roberts]

> To be sure, I think Palm have the right idea (I don't care that
> 3Com are in Boyd's bad books presently.

they have the wrong idea.  the solution is a network device with
an encrypted CDMA radio interface, data encrypted on a server
somewhere and a chunk of memory in the device.  it boots across
the radio link, caches data and programs and has a GSM style SIM.

so, the device is cheap and if you lose it you don't lose the data
'cos it's on a server.  call up your provider and get the SIM
killed and another one sent out and buy a new device.

the crypto secures the radio link and prevents the server/service
providor from seeing what you're data you're saving.

booting over the radio link would also allow the updates
and purchase of new applications.

now, this will involve ground based CDMA or sat based CDMA,
RF spectrum allocation, hardware, software and a company
like lucent to set it up.  no, you can't do it in your
garage.

sounds a bit like inferno, doesn't it?  it's totally doable.

i see the DoD have 'bought' iridium.

de vk2bhr

Re: Input devices (Was: [9fans] weird cursor motion)

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Boyd Roberts wrote:
> i see the DoD have 'bought' iridium.

Yup, apparently the current administration is more
concerned about our reliance on third parties for commo.

Re: [9fans] weird cursor motion

[Zoltan Jarai]

> I use a video card with S3 virge chip on. It mostly works fine in
> 1024x768x8, but has one annoying problem.
>
>  When acme automatically moves the cursor around, like when
>  searching for a piece of text or resizing a window, often times
>  (but not always) the cursor symbol on the screen stays where
>  it was, until I wiggle the mouse a little bit, then it immedately
>  jumps to where it is supposed to be. As if the cursor was
>  daydreaming... Has anyone seen this?

(See: http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=LPBBIBIIHKHEGDBPHBDOMEFNCAAA.kiwane%40dream.com)

I came upon this exact same problem and fixed it by adding a call to
s3vsyncactive() in /sys/src/9/pc/vgas3.c:/^s3move to wait for the card
a little.  I know, it's a hack.

diff -n /n/sources/plan9/sys/src/9/pc/vgas3.c /sys/src/9/pc/vgas3.c
/n/sources/plan9/sys/src/9/pc/vgas3.c:324 a /sys/src/9/pc/vgas3.c:325,325
> 	s3vsyncactive();

My card is an S3 TRIO 32 (PCI ID 5333/8811) and I use the TRIO 64
section of /lib/vgadb.  (I tried the ViRGE section as well, since
5333/8811 is mentioned there but the screen was flickering.)

ctlr
	0xC0044="Phoenix S3 TRIO32 Enhanced VGA BIOS. Version 1.3-08"
	link=vga
	hwgc=s3hwgc
	ctlr=trio64 linear=1
	link=ibm8514

Zoli

Re: [9fans] weird cursor motion

[Lucio De Re]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 12:26:59AM +0900, kazumi iwane wrote:
>
> When acme automatically moves the cursor around, like when
> searching for a piece of text or resizing a window, often times
> (but not always) the cursor symbol on the screen stays where
> it was, until I wiggle the mouse a little bit, then it immedately
> jumps to where it is supposed to be. As if the cursor was
> daydreaming... Has anyone seen this?
>
On that subject, if somewhat tangential: vncviewer is terribly
irritating (no matter what platform, I should imagine) when using
"wily".  The cursor motion is entirely defeated by the viewer's cursor
position :-(

Just an amusing discovery.  There had to be some place where
vncviewer wasn't going to work properly.

And on a related note, I had at least one instance where I would have
given my right hand for a second mouse, while using acme.  Well, not
that a second mouse would have been terribly useful to a one-handed
person, but you get my drift...

MS Windows (I've tried '95, '98 and NT) responds quite well to two of
the rodents (yes, I have no idea if they are mice or mouses, like
mongoose) but with only one cursor.  I should imagine that grafting a
second mouse channel on Plan 9 would be easier (at the filesystem
level, coercing the software to use it would be a different
challenge).

++L

Re: [9fans] weird cursor motion

[forsyth]

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i did see that when i had an s3 card but not since (i use an ati card now).

i could be wrong, but i'd have guessed
it is more likely to be an oversight in vgas3.c or
some other problem in the kernel's vga or mouse handling,
not aux/vga's fault, because it doesn't seem to be
the initialisation but rather the dynamic adjustment of
the cursor position in response to writes to /dev/mouse


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To: <cse.psu.edu!9fans>
Subject: [9fans] weird cursor motion
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 00:26:59 +0900
Message-ID: <LPBBIBIIHKHEGDBPHBDOMEFNCAAA.kiwane@dream.com>

Hello 9fans,

I use a video card with S3 virge chip on. It mostly works fine in
1024x768x8, but has one annoying problem.

When acme automatically moves the cursor around, like when
searching for a piece of text or resizing a window, often times
(but not always) the cursor symbol on the screen stays where
it was, until I wiggle the mouse a little bit, then it immedately
jumps to where it is supposed to be. As if the cursor was
daydreaming... Has anyone seen this?

I think I should tweak aux/vga a little... Any clues, please?

[9fans] weird cursor motion

[kazumi iwane]

Hello 9fans,

I use a video card with S3 virge chip on. It mostly works fine in
1024x768x8, but has one annoying problem.

When acme automatically moves the cursor around, like when
searching for a piece of text or resizing a window, often times
(but not always) the cursor symbol on the screen stays where
it was, until I wiggle the mouse a little bit, then it immedately
jumps to where it is supposed to be. As if the cursor was
daydreaming... Has anyone seen this?

I think I should tweak aux/vga a little... Any clues, please?