From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: rsc@swtch.com (Russ Cox)
Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 12:13:50 -0400
Subject: [9fans] evoluent mouse review
Message-ID: <20080524161806.B1B3B1E8C56@holo.morphisms.net>
Topicbox-Message-UUID: ac4cd492-ead3-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

Two months ago, in response to the mention on this mailing list, I
got an Evoluent 3 Rev 2 mouse, pictured at http://www.evoluent.ca/.
It is a USB mouse, and I've been using it with Plan 9 apps on Linux.
I can't vouch for how it works with Plan 9 natively.

At first I really hated it: it was too jerky and too hard to move
my hand to the mouse without moving the cursor.  Then I found that
there is a button on the bottom that cycles through 2600, 1800, 1300,
and 800 dpi.  The default is 1800, and I found that changing it to 800
cured the jerkiness.  It still took a while for my hand to learn how
to move from the keyboard to the mouse without looking down and to get
used to the buttons--I've always used my middle finger for both buttons
2 and 3, and I retrained my hand to give button 3 to the ring finger.
It took me a week of using the Evoluent to feel comfortable with it.

I had been using an Evoluent at home and an IBM at MIT, but I just got a
second Evoluent for MIT.  The Evoluent and the often-recommended IBM mouse
both suffer from "mouse creep", where the wire pushes the mouse after
you let go of it (this is particularly annoying when you've just put the
cursor in an acme tag), but the problem is much less pronounced on
the Evoluent.

Two caveats for the Evoluent.  First, in contradiction to the diagram
on the http://www.evoluent.ca/ page, the main buttons are numbered 132
not 123, so you have to remap them in software.

Second, the Evoluent slides very nicely, but the five hard feet it
has will scuff up low-quality surfaces like the crummy Staples folding
banquet table I use for a desk at home.  Even though it's an optical
mouse you might want a mouse pad.

All in all, though, I won't be buying any more IBM mice.  I'm tempted
by the wireless Evoluent but haven't tried it.

Russ


P. S.  As for software remapping, it appears that some versions of xmodmap
require you to give a remapping string with exactly the right number
of buttons, while others let you give too many or too few.  My Linux
system with the former behavior thinks it has 11 buttons (!), while
my Linux system with the latter behavior thinks it has only 9 buttons.
Thus, the following script works in both places:

	$ cat /home/rsc/bin/funnymouse
	#!/bin/sh
	xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 3 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11"
	$

but when you run it on the latter system, you get the amusing output:

	$ funnymouse
	Warning: Only changing the first 11 of 9 buttons.
	$