RE: [9fans] p9 mice

RE: [9fans] p9 mice

[Tiit Lankots]

> I have checked their product description for the non-wheel mice and
> it does not say that they are optical. Too bad, a non-wheel optical
> three-button mouse would be really nice.

Dammit, yes. It seems that it's a ball-mouse. I saw it on Amazon
where it claimed to be an optical one; I didn't verify that before posting
the link. Sorry. But still, it's a 3-button mouse that's being manufactured.
I thought they were extinct.

RE: [9fans] p9 mice

[Tiit Lankots]

I just found out that Labtec (http://www.labtec.com) does still make
a nice optical 3-button mouse. No scroll wheel. Costs $8 in U.S.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Nils M Holm]

On 2004-04-26, "Tiit Lankots" wrote:
> I just found out that Labtec (http://www.labtec.com) does still make
> a nice optical 3-button mouse. No scroll wheel. Costs $8 in U.S.

I have checked their product description for the non-wheel mice and
it does not say that they are optical. Too bad, a non-wheel optical
three-button mouse would be really nice.

Nils

-- 
Nils M Holm <nmh@t3x.org> -- http://www.t3x.org/nmh/

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[matt]

> So, $A instead of /this/long/path/to/where/I/start/working just gives
> me space I can use as scratch space without having to scroll in the tag.

if only you had per process namespaces huh! :)

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Axel Belinfante]

> > So, $A instead of /this/long/path/to/where/I/start/working just gives
> > me space I can use as scratch space without having to scroll in the tag.
> 
> if only you had per process namespaces huh! :)

yup!

[9fans] p9 mice

[Sascha Wildner]

Hi,

somehow my first post didn't get through...

What mice do you guys use for p9? Is there a good optical 3 button mouse 
available somewhere (I don't mind if it has a cable).

Sascha

-- 
http://yoyodyne.ath.cx

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Aki M Nyrhinen]

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Still, the button setup sounds like it'd make chording in acme
painful. Is it feasible to learn it (1-2,2-1,1-3,2-3,...) well,
or are you just not using chording?

	Aki

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From: Dave Lukes <davel@anvil.com>
To: 9fans <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] p9 mice
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 14:53:17 +0100
Message-ID: <1081950797.20600.265.camel@zevon>

> If you have a pointer to a 3-button trackball, let us know. 
> 
> ron

Ron,
The logitech has 4 buttons (3 under thumb position,
 1 under annular/little )
_plus_ 2 scroll buttons _plus_ a scroll wheel _plus_ scroll-lock.

I think it's called "overkill".

Xfree86 thinks that one of the thumb buttons is button 1,
the other two are both button 2, and the annular is 3:
I'm sure you could get at all 4 buttons independently
if you wanted to driver-hack.

Dave.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Dave Lukes]

> Still, the button setup sounds like it'd make chording in acme
> painful. Is it feasible to learn it (1-2,2-1,1-3,2-3,...) well,
> or are you just not using chording?

I'm not using plan9 at all yet ...

When I do, I'll either live with the buttons
(effectively, button1 under thumb, button 2 under index finger,
 button3 under annular finger), or I'll remap them in s/w somehow.

Also, note that,
firstly, a trackball doesn't "twitch" like
a mouse when you hit the buttons,
which makes accurate pointing a little easier
and secondly, although you tend not to notice so much with a mouse,
the usual sequence is
	move
	button(s) press/release/hold
	move
	...
i.e. the pointer doesn't move during button ops,
so all you do is reduce the pressure of your ball finger(s)
when pressing buttons, which is a lot easier than keeping a mouse still.

Cheers,
	Dave.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

the only reason i can see for a trackball is if yer flying
around in an E-2 hawkeye:

    http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/e-2.htm

or an E-3 sentry:

    http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/e-3.htm


     

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[9nut]

> the only reason i can see for a trackball is if yer flying
> around in an E-2 hawkeye:
> 
>     http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/e-2.htm

To be totally accurate, one of the pictures on this page, is that of
an S-2 (Tracker); this one:

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/us_mil_e2_02.jpg

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> To be totally accurate, one of the pictures on this page, is that of
> an S-2 (Tracker); this one:
> 
> http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/us_mil_e2_02.jpg

yes, it seems to lack a radome.  didn't you discard it as bogus?

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

chording is bad.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Rob Pike]

> chording is bad.

chording is good.

-rob

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[ron minnich]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Rob Pike wrote:

> > chording is bad.
> 
> chording is good.

I did a Karnaugh map. I used to do these all the time, when a kid, so it 
was easy. I worked out the entire map and came up with the following 
profound conclusion:

chording is

I hope that helps.

ron

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[9nut]

> chording is

Depends on what your definition of "IS" is.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Martin C.Atkins]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 17:09:13 -0700 Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> > chording is bad.
> 
> chording is good.
> 
> -rob

Since there doesn't seem to be a consensus, even amongst 9 fans,
would it be possible to conceive of a (non-limiting) non-chording
version of acme to keep the other half happy?

How would one do it without losing most of the (non-)ergonomics?
(the (...) depending on one's opinion)

Partly :-), but partly a serious question, since the "I hate
chording" topic seems to come up quite frequently. How constrained do
the non-chording folks feel by the current acme interface?

Martin

-- 
Martin C. Atkins			martin@parvat.com
Parvat Infotech Private Limited		http://www.parvat.com{/,/martin}

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Kenji Okamoto]

> Since there doesn't seem to be a consensus, even amongst 9 fans,
> would it be possible to conceive of a (non-limiting) non-chording
> version of acme to keep the other half happy?

I've never heard anyone else than boyd. ☺

Kenji

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> I've never heard anyone else than boyd. ☺

the solution is simple:  leave the code alone and i (and others) will stick
to sam.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Martin Wyser]

Kenji Okamoto wrote:
> 
> I've never heard anyone else than boyd. ☺
> 
> Kenji

Add me now.  There was the question of how constraining the current acme 
  interface is to non-chording users.  For me, there is only one 
constraint: when I saw that acme uses chording, I immediately and 
definitely lost any interest into it.  I do not see any reason to change 
the code - I am happy with sam until I will get emacs or vi.

Why I do not chord?  I use Plan 9 for maybe an hour a week.

Martin

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[a]

// I am happy with sam until I will get emacs or vi.

shudder. and we *have* vi. but i'm not sure i see the relevance... ;-)

// Why I do not chord?  I use Plan 9 for maybe an hour a week.

and, what, you don't want that hour to be more productive or interesting?
i can understand people not liking it, or finding it dificult given
physical limitations like RSI, but why on earth would chording as an idea
turn you off from the entire interface?
ア

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Martin Wyser]

a@9srv.net wrote:
> // I am happy with sam until I will get emacs or vi.
> 
> shudder. and we *have* vi. but i'm not sure i see the relevance... ;-)

vi? Where?

> // Why I do not chord?  I use Plan 9 for maybe an hour a week.
> 
> and, what, you don't want that hour to be more productive or interesting?
> i can understand people not liking it, or finding it dificult given
> physical limitations like RSI, but why on earth would chording as an idea
> turn you off from the entire interface?
> ア

How many hours will it take me get proficient with ACME?  I mean 
proficient, so I do not have to resort to my previous editor again.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[William Josephson]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 12:07:11PM +0000, Martin Wyser wrote:
> How many hours will it take me get proficient with ACME?  I mean 
> proficient, so I do not have to resort to my previous editor again.

My experience the summer I used Acme almost exclusively
was that I could be productive in about thirty minutes.
My real "problem" with acme was that after a day or two
using it I kept wondering why the mouse never worked in
X11 or Windows; it took me a while to realize that I was
trying to use the Acme mouse gestures in the old environment.
Were it not for the fact that I use the console because of
the larger fonts and general laziness, I'd use Acme under
Unix exclusively now.  In fact, when I use X11 for anything
other than web browser (rare), I do use Acme under Inferno.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[andrey mirtchovski]

> vi? Where?

in Plan 9 vi(1) is an instruction simulator of MIPS binaries.  the
emacs(1) man page is even more telling.

> How many hours will it take me get proficient with ACME?  I mean 
> proficient, so I do not have to resort to my previous editor again.

a week.  no, really.  much less time than it took me to learn vi
proficiently.

that includes chording :)

andrey

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[matt]

>How many hours will it take me get proficient with ACME?  I mean 
proficient, so I do not have to resort to my previous editor again.

you type, you press Put, you right click stuff, you middle click stuff

if you like you can chord 1-2 2-3 but it's not required

the rest is Acme independent

there is no search and replace, that's what sed is for (though you are free to use awk, tr, grep, etc.etc.)

the only other thing to learn is selecting using : , . n and //

but again, they aren't required as such

once you've used Acme you won't want to go back

m

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Brantley Coile]

> there is no search and replace, that's what sed is for (though you are free to use awk, tr, grep, etc.etc.)

There is Edit.

 Brantley

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[matt]

oh, I don't have Edit on my menus

I had regarded no search and replace as a feature not a drawback :)

One wish is that the blue bars would expand downwards instead of scrolling across so that really long commands were a bit easier.
I have got into the habit of using "<? # :2,  some long command here" as the first line of my php files

m

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Axel Belinfante]

> >How many hours will it take me get proficient with ACME?  I mean 
> > proficient, so I do not have to resort to my previous editor again.
> 
> you type, you press Put, you right click stuff, you middle click stuff
> 
> if you like you can chord 1-2 2-3 but it's not required

Wily (acme clone for unix) comes with a tutorial
that shows you (allows you to experience) the basic
editing operations/features.

I also do not use plan 9 for so many hours a day,
but have been using wily and 9term with chording daily,
for years. Still recall how amazed I was when I 'fully
automatically' without thinking used (tried, and failed, to use)
an edit chord in a different application no supporting chords.

 > there is no search and replace, that's what sed is for
> (though you are free to use awk, tr, grep, etc.etc.)

However, acme does have the Edit command that does allow search
and replace using (please correct me if I'm wrong) the same command
language as in sam.

Axel.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[ron minnich]

On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 matt@proweb.co.uk wrote:

> once you've used Acme you won't want to go back

that one I agree with. Acme really does feel like an editor that was built 
for a windows system; Emacs kind of takes me back to the VT-52.

ron

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> Emacs kind of takes me back to the VT-52.

you mean the cursor addressed version of teco ;)

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[plan9]

> How many hours will it take me get proficient with ACME?  I mean 
> proficient, so I do not have to resort to my previous editor again.

It took me about a week and a half real time (so, maybe 20 odd hours)
to get to the stage where using any other editor was a royal pain in
the arse.  That time did involve growing my own guide file and writing
a couple of "have to have" scripts for stuff like ctags and the like
(this was wily under Unix at the time).

Robby

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[ron minnich]

On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 plan9@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:

> It took me about a week and a half real time (so, maybe 20 odd hours)
> to get to the stage where using any other editor was a royal pain in
> the arse.  That time did involve growing my own guide file and writing
> a couple of "have to have" scripts for stuff like ctags and the like
> (this was wily under Unix at the time).

so how do I do ctags in acme? I still drop back into vi for the ^[/^t 
stuff (tags stack -- very handy for me anyway).

ron

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Sape Mullender]

> so how do I do ctags in acme? I still drop back into vi for the ^[/^t 
> stuff (tags stack -- very handy for me anyway).

All regular Plan 9 code is written in such a way that you can grep for
'^function\(' in the coe and find where that function is declared.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[plan9]

> so how do I do ctags in acme? I still drop back into vi for the ^[/^t 
> stuff (tags stack -- very handy for me anyway).

Oh crikey, now you're taking me back 7 years.  I haven't done much C
in recent years.  I shall see if I can dig around in my archives to
revive my ailing memory.  I think it might actually have been cscope
and not ctags that I used.

In the meantime, you can get very good mileage out of glimpse.  I use
it all the time to browse the multi-lingual source base I work on,
using nightly updated indices.

Robby

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Martin Wyser]

plan9@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
>>How many hours will it take me get proficient with ACME?  I mean 
>>proficient, so I do not have to resort to my previous editor again.
> 
> 
> It took me about a week and a half real time (so, maybe 20 odd hours)
> to get to the stage where using any other editor was a royal pain in

20 hours turns into 20 weeks at the rate I use plan9.  And if it makes 
other editors a pain in the ass, I may be too risky to learn - too much 
need of other editors :-) .

But I to admit that acme is powerful, once you are used to it, it looks 
like a powerful tool, and I will try wily, as suggested by Axel Belinfante.

> the arse.  That time did involve growing my own guide file and writing
> a couple of "have to have" scripts for stuff like ctags and the like
> (this was wily under Unix at the time).
> 
> Robby

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[plan9]

> 20 hours turns into 20 weeks at the rate I use plan9.  And if it makes 
> other editors a pain in the ass, I may be too risky to learn - too much 
> need of other editors :-) .
> 
> But I to admit that acme is powerful, once you are used to it, it looks 
> like a powerful tool, and I will try wily, as suggested by Axel Belinfante.

Admittedly, I was being a bit over the top.  I can still cope with vi,
and I could never get the hang of emacs in the first place.  One of
the first things I do on every machine I work on, is install sam (even
did that on a course on Java programming I took ages ago, the guy
teaching the course was slightly puzzled when he saw me not using the
IDE).

I would recommend trying out the new P9 port to Unix instead of wily.
The colour scheme alone is gorgeous.  Although, I can now no longer
easily distinguish my drawterm to my home machine from my work
desktop.

Robby

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[andrey mirtchovski]

> I would recommend trying out the new P9 port to Unix instead of wily.
> The colour scheme alone is gorgeous.  Although, I can now no longer
> easily distinguish my drawterm to my home machine from my work
> desktop.

that's why i've stuck with 9wm for now -- it got too confusing having
two separate desktops that look exactly the same (vnc)...

if i'm ever forced to live outside Plan 9 i know i'll be using
p9port's rio though :)

andrey

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Axel Belinfante]

> > I would recommend trying out the new P9 port to Unix instead of wily.
> > The colour scheme alone is gorgeous.

Agreed.

With my reference to wily I just tried to point out
(hmm... the obvious? oh dear... )
that chording and/or acme style editing can be used
(and learning investment pays back) also outside plan 9,
(and that this has been the case for a while).
With the new port this is even easier and, of course,
it makes the plan9 feel outside plan 9 much more complete.

the wily tutorial I mentioned might be helpful to
new acme users too, though (maybe slightly modified
for slight differences between the two)

Notwithstanding acme's nice colors, one wily feature
I may be missing in acme is the way wily allows
you to use variables to keep your tag names short
(reducing the need to scroll in tags).
If e.g. foo=/long/path/prefix is present in wily's environment,
all occurences of /long/path/prefix  will be replaced by  $foo
in tag names, and button3 click on $foo opens a window
on /long/path/prefix .
I'm sure this and other feature differences hava all been
discussed before, either here or on the wily fans list...


> > Although, I can now no longer easily distinguish my drawterm to
> > my home machine from my work desktop.
> 
> that's why i've stuck with 9wm for now -- it got too confusing having
> two separate desktops that look exactly the same (vnc)...

Hmm. maybe, but border dragging is something I do not want to miss
(gotten too used to it in rio and elsewhere to want to go back)

(typing this on a pc at home running plan 9
 (booted from the file server at work),
 in a vnc window connecting to a vnc server on the sun at work -
 in the vnc session I use the rio port, and type in vi in an xterm.
 wouldn't want to replace the vnc by an exceed session, though)

Axel.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

> Notwithstanding acme's nice colors, one wily feature
> I may be missing in acme is the way wily allows
> you to use variables to keep your tag names short

I've seen wily name your buffers $CWD/blah,
which is a nightmare. Same with other variables.
I was a fan of wily usage of environment variables
until it did bite me a couple of times with this issue.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Axel Belinfante]

> > Notwithstanding acme's nice colors, one wily feature
> > I may be missing in acme is the way wily allows
> > you to use variables to keep your tag names short
> 
> I've seen wily name your buffers $CWD/blah,
> which is a nightmare. Same with other variables.
> I was a fan of wily usage of environment variables
> until it did bite me a couple of times with this issue.

I use a  wrapper function to start wily; it explicitly undefines
those variables that bit me.  Then it works fine for me.

(apart from the fact that for buffers named as $VAR,
 button3 on .. would no longer take me upwards.
 Never took the time to look into that, though. )

I also liked the possibility to button3 on e.g. $PLAN9/src .
Hmm. could that be done via the plumber,
or would it need changes in acme?

Axel.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

> I also liked the possibility to button3 on e.g. $PLAN9/src .

This is different. (although we might have problems to plumb messages
that already include $). However, having wily on its own replace
/x/y/z with $A/z is something that bothers me. (I did also the trick of
undef PWD, but then other shells defined other variables, ... ugh).

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Axel Belinfante]

> > I also liked the possibility to button3 on e.g. $PLAN9/src .
> 
> This is different. (although we might have problems to plumb messages
> that already include $).

(to state the obvous: I like it because scripts, readmes and similar
 text may contain references just like that.)
I also have handful of variables for 'deep' subdirs I often visit.

> However, having wily on its own replace
> /x/y/z with $A/z is something that bothers me. (I did also the trick of
> undef PWD, but then other shells defined other variables, ... ugh).

I see your point.
I only use a few shells, and after a while you know what to undef.
The number of accidental replacements were in my case minimal.
Would you be happy if you could explicitly specify the replacements?
(or would that only increase complexity?)

Maybe my problem is that my dir/file names are longer than x, y or z,
(rooted path to home dir already takes 18 characters)
So, for me, the replacements save screen (tag) space.
Also, for the often-visited subdirs, the path represented by $A
is of no particular interest to me, the information is in the file/dir
name to the right of the $A/ (the z in your example).
So, $A instead of /this/long/path/to/where/I/start/working just gives
me space I can use as scratch space without having to scroll in the tag.

Axel.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 356 bytes --]

I thought about giving replacement strings to avoid those
long paths, but in a controlled way.

Eg, like saying 

	/a/long/path/imported/from/somewhere/else -> /alongpath

and then seing aroung /alongpath instead of the other and making
wily make the change.
Regarding acme, it doesn't bother me much as to like to change the
current behaviour.

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From: Axel Belinfante <Axel.Belinfante@cs.utwente.nl>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] p9 mice
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 10:29:33 +0200
Message-ID: <200404210829.i3L8TXI10302@zamenhof.cs.utwente.nl>

> > I also liked the possibility to button3 on e.g. $PLAN9/src .
> 
> This is different. (although we might have problems to plumb messages
> that already include $).

(to state the obvous: I like it because scripts, readmes and similar
 text may contain references just like that.)
I also have handful of variables for 'deep' subdirs I often visit.

> However, having wily on its own replace
> /x/y/z with $A/z is something that bothers me. (I did also the trick of
> undef PWD, but then other shells defined other variables, ... ugh).

I see your point.
I only use a few shells, and after a while you know what to undef.
The number of accidental replacements were in my case minimal.
Would you be happy if you could explicitly specify the replacements?
(or would that only increase complexity?)

Maybe my problem is that my dir/file names are longer than x, y or z,
(rooted path to home dir already takes 18 characters)
So, for me, the replacements save screen (tag) space.
Also, for the often-visited subdirs, the path represented by $A
is of no particular interest to me, the information is in the file/dir
name to the right of the $A/ (the z in your example).
So, $A instead of /this/long/path/to/where/I/start/working just gives
me space I can use as scratch space without having to scroll in the tag.

Axel.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Peter Canning]

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 07:20:51 +0000, Axel Belinfante wrote:

>> > Notwithstanding acme's nice colors, one wily feature
>> > I may be missing in acme is the way wily allows
>> > you to use variables to keep your tag names short
>> 
>> I've seen wily name your buffers $CWD/blah,
>> which is a nightmare. Same with other variables.
>> I was a fan of wily usage of environment variables
>> until it did bite me a couple of times with this issue.
> 
> I use a  wrapper function to start wily; it explicitly undefines
> those variables that bit me.  Then it works fine for me.
> 

I love this feature of wily.  I always start wily from $HOME, so $PWD is
always $HOME.

> (apart from the fact that for buffers named as $VAR,
>  button3 on .. would no longer take me upwards. Never took the time to
>  look into that, though. )
> 

I posted patches to the wilyfans list to fix this and a couple related
problems.

> I also liked the possibility to button3 on e.g. $PLAN9/src . Hmm. could
> that be done via the plumber, or would it need changes in acme?
> 
> Axel.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Peter Canning]

On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 19:15:51 +0000, Axel Belinfante wrote:
> Notwithstanding acme's nice colors, one wily feature I may be missing in
> acme is the way wily allows you to use variables to keep your tag names
> short

Actually the feature I immediately found myself missing (after building
plan9port and running acme) is wily's Dotfiles command that toggles
whether or not dot files are displayed in directories. Unfortunately, in
my typical unix home directory there are about twice as many dot files as
regular files.  Is there some way that I'm missing in acme to hide files
whose names start with dot?

I'm so psyched about having real acme in linux, I'm considering tackling
two enhancements:

(1) Using an XWindows resource to specify the size of the acme window.

(2) Providing a command-line parameter or XWindows resource to specify
swapping scrolling direction of mouse buttons 1 and 3 (to make it the same
as all the other programs I use).

After these two, my next one would probably be some way to hide dot files.

Any objections or recommendations for how to tackle these?

	- Peter Canning

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> After these two, my next one would probably be some way to hide dot files.

yeah, hack namei() to death on a per-foolishness basis.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[splite]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 11:01:24AM +0200, boyd, rounin wrote:
> > After these two, my next one would probably be some way to hide dot files.
> 
> yeah, hack namei() to death on a per-foolishness basis.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/humor/fionavar/globbing

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Charles Forsyth]

>>After these two, my next one would probably be some way to hide dot files.

i can see the problem, but
it's only relevant on unix (and even some real unix systems
sensibly stopped hiding them).
plan 9 tucks them away in lib and elsewhere.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Axel Belinfante]

> Actually the feature I immediately found myself missing (after building
> plan9port and running acme) is wily's Dotfiles command that toggles
> whether or not dot files are displayed in directories.

% cd $PLAN9/src/cmd/acme
% cvs log exec.c
[...]
----------------------------
revision 1.6
date: 2004/04/08 19:30:18;  author: rsc;  state: Exp;  lines: +18 -0

Let's try this - Dotfiles toggles listing of .* in directory listings.

[...]

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Rob Pike]

> Let's try this - Dotfiles toggles listing of .* in directory listings.
> 
> [...]

i don't understand this change. it fixes up only one directory in your whole
world: $HOME.  why hack acme for one directory?

instead, i'd write a trivial shell script called dotfiles or whatever
you want to
call it that just fixes up the display of the directory in which it's executed.
either that or have a file in $HOME that contains the Edit command to fix
it up. open that and run.

but to change the source of the editor for this???

-rob

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Russ Cox]

> Actually the feature I immediately found myself missing (after building
> plan9port and running acme) is wily's Dotfiles command that toggles
> whether or not dot files are displayed in directories. Unfortunately, in
> my typical unix home directory there are about twice as many dot files as
> regular files.  Is there some way that I'm missing in acme to hide files
> whose names start with dot?

Yes, it's called Dotfiles.  I feel bad about having done it,
but otherwise my home directory is twice as big and
has very long names in it.  As Forsyth says, it's only
relevant on Unix.

> I'm so psyched about having real acme in linux, I'm considering tackling
> two enhancements:
> 
> (1) Using an XWindows resource to specify the size of the acme window.

What do you mean by an XWindows resource?
Is this different from a command-line option?
(Sorry, I know very little about X even now.)

Clearly we need some uniform way to specify
window sizes for new windows.  One option is
to put a '-g' into every gui problem to specify
geometry.  Another option, which requires
no changes to the gui programs themselves,
is to have initdraw look in the environment
for a $windowsize and respect that.  Then the
Plan 9 window script is just
"windowsize=$1; shift; exec $*".

> (2) Providing a command-line parameter or XWindows resource to specify
> swapping scrolling direction of mouse buttons 1 and 3 (to make it the same
> as all the other programs I use).

This isn't emacs, you know.  ;-)

Russ

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[andrey mirtchovski]

> What do you mean by an XWindows resource?
> Is this different from a command-line option?
> (Sorry, I know very little about X even now.)

basically X resources allow you to circumvent having to supply an
argument for each little thing you want to execute.  for example, to
let xterm understand utf8 you can either exec xterm -u8 every time or
set:

	xterm*utf8: 1

in .Xresource...

here's mine (! is a comment)

mirtchov@localrob$ cat .Xresource 
!big scrollback
xterm*SaveLines:  5000
!unicode
xterm*utf8: 1
!a reasonably reasonable font
xterm*font:     *-lucidatypewriter-medium-*-12-*-75-*

9term*font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1

!close a session when connected from somewhere else
vnc*shareOption: false
mirtchov@localrob$

of course you need to merge .Xresource with the rest on startup:

mirtchov@localrob$ cat .xinitrc 
xrdb -m ~/.Xresource
plumber
exec /usr/local/plan9/bin/rio 
...

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Russ Cox]

> basically X resources allow you to circumvent having to supply an
> argument for each little thing you want to execute.  for example, to
> let xterm understand utf8 you can either exec xterm -u8 every time or
> set:

i'm always sorry i asked.  thanks.

russ

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> basically X resources allow you to circumvent having to supply an
> argument for each little thing you want to execute.

i reckon it's _really there_ so that you waste weeks to months
tweaking the whole mess ;)

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Peter Canning]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 17:21:51 +0000, andrey mirtchovski wrote:

> 
>> What do you mean by an XWindows resource?
>> Is this different from a command-line option?
>> (Sorry, I know very little about X even now.)
> 
> basically X resources allow you to circumvent having to supply an
> argument for each little thing you want to execute.  for example, to
> let xterm understand utf8 you can either exec xterm -u8 every time or
> set:
> 
> 	xterm*utf8: 1
> 
> in .Xresource...
> 

I think of X resources as Xserver-side environments variables.  Typically
the resources in $HOME/.Xresources get loaded into the X server as
properties of the root window during session startup, so that they are
accessible to X programs using that display no matter where the
program is running.

	- Peter Canning

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

it took me quite a while to get the hang of sam's 'x',
but i wouldn't give it up for anything.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Rob Pike]

> it took me quite a while to get the hang of sam's 'x',
> but i wouldn't give it up for anything.

same here. that's why i put it in acme. life was too hard without it.

-rob

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[a]

// How many hours will it take me get proficient with ACME?

as people have said, i think it's about a week or two using
acme an hour or so a day. ahtat's for the whole thing, and
there's a lot of stuff in there. but it's a very consistent
model and remarkably easy to pick up.

the chording itself is about an hour before you're familiar
enough that you don't really think about it, another hour
before it's natural, and, for me, it was one more hour
before i started wondering why something like it wasn't in
tons of other programs.
ア

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Charles Forsyth]

you might well have been surprised that kfs touches your hard drive when
you've given it an ordinary file.  what is it doing?  should you worry?
answer: console session, 9p1.c:/^f_session, mkchallenge, readnvram! (and no).
gosh.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Nils M Holm]

Martin Wyser <martin.wyser@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> How many hours will it take me get proficient with ACME? [...]

I can only speak for myself. It took me about an hour to memorize
the basics (chording, discovering -c 1, understanding how commands
work), about one day before I switched to acme for most editing
tasks, and about a week until I discovered that Edit commands are
actually explained in the sam(1) man page (used |sed before).

All in all, acme(1) is a very clean interface and should not take
too much time to get proficient with. Acme(4) may be a different
thing (haven't looked too hard yet).

Nils.

-- 
Nils M Holm <nmh@despammed.com> -- http://www.t3x.org/nmh/

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[jmk]

Kenji Okamoto wrote:
> 
> I've never heard anyone else than boyd. ☺
> 
> Kenji

Neither Presotto nor I use acme. We've tried, maybe we're just too old.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Geoff Collyer]

I use acme for reading mail and browsing directory trees, but I don't
live in it, like dhog did.  Now that I know how to cancel an
inadvertently-clicked button 2, it's okay.  I'm also a long-time sam
user.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Brantley Coile]

> I use acme for reading mail and browsing directory trees, but I don't
> live in it, like dhog did.  Now that I know how to cancel an
> inadvertently-clicked button 2, it's okay.  I'm also a long-time sam
> user.

I'm truly muddled.  I've used Oberon so Acme is like a place where two
worlds meet.

 Brantley

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Kenji Okamoto]

> Neither Presotto nor I use acme. We've tried, maybe we're just too old.

Probably, you grows up in the character device era, right?

If we consider Plan 9 only from character user interface, I can only find
one advantage of Plan 9 on a file server side.   If that's all the Plan 9,
we don't need terminals.   We need only file server, auth/cpu server.
I know it's the very obvious advantage of Plan 9 system.   However, I see
another possibility of Plan 9 to use it as our GUI terminals, where I'm
not saying that present distribution is satisfying for it.   Acme of its present
form may not be the goal of GUI terminals of Plan 9 which I'm saying, 
however, it seems to me that the goal must exist beyond the point where 
we could overcome it.   According to my understanding, the most weak point
of acme is that it's not fully impremented as user level file server model of
Plan 9, but as older style of library calls.   Rob will say something else,
I know of course.   

Acme's user interface is best to me to write documents, paricularly its multi-window
capability.   Everytime when I teach beginner students, who are not computer science
major, how to use acme, they learn it very quickly, of course, including chording.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Rob Pike]

acme is a file server. the interface is a little odd but i assure you
it's a file server.
Mail, win, etc. all just read and write files to connect to acme.

in an acme window, ls /mnt/acme

-rob

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Kenji Okamoto]

> acme is a file server. the interface is a little odd but i assure you
> it's a file server.
> Mail, win, etc. all just read and write files to connect to acme.

Oh, I'm sorry, you are right.

I should have to say, all the acme applications are written as older
style library calls.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Rob Pike]

> I should have to say, all the acme applications are written as older
> style library calls.

i don't understand why you say this.  have you looked at the source
to Mail or win?

-rob

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Kenji Okamoto]

> i don't understand why you say this.  have you looked at the source
> to Mail or win?

I'll shut up my mouth untill I got time and to concentrate myself
to computers, sorry.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[YAMANASHI Takeshi]

> acme is a file server. the interface is a little odd but i assure you
> it's a file server.

This is surely an advantage of acme compared to other
extendable editors.  One can add a feature to acme
without learning a specific macro or language.
Instead, just use rc script, c program or all comfortable
mingling of them.

Thank you for the interface.
-- 

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> Acme's user interface is best to me to write documents, paricularly its
multi-window
> capability.

it's your choice.  no-one ever said you couldn't use it.

btw: check your facts.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[YAMANASHI Takeshi]

> However, I see
> another possibility of Plan 9 to use it as our GUI terminals

By the way, I am seeing Plan 9 terminals as grid terminals
these days; ie, a Plan 9 terminal working as front end to 
linux clusters (they are common computing nodes, aren't they?)

Users on Plan 9 can import linux-nodes' file systems via u9fs
so there is no need for any particular mechanism to do so-called
staging.  Only cp(1) between the terminal and clusters would
be enough.  And of course, you can start your jobs on the clusters
with ssh.  factotum/secstore provides the one-time-sign-on
feature here.

Honestly speaking, I'd love to see Plan 9 as computing nodes
and looking eagerly 9grid project to develop.  However, many
applications doesn't support Plan 9 yet.

(Hmm, having written down my idea as above, it doesn't sound new.
they're ordinary usages of Plan 9 terminals after all.)
-- 

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Charles Forsyth]

>>Everytime when I teach beginner students, who are not computer science
>>major, how to use acme, they learn it very quickly, of course, including chording.

i found that too.  they sometimes find it refreshingly different.  often they
have no idea that a computer interface COULD be different.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> i found that too.  they sometimes find it refreshingly different.  often
they
> have no idea that a computer interface COULD be different.

that's what PARC found when they gave their system to a bunch of
secretaries.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[a]

// ...paricularly its multi-window capability.

i've just (re)discovered Zerox. that one feature makes me
about 15% more productive when working on largish documents
or pretty much any program longer than two pages. every
time i use it i find myself wondering why every editor
doesn't have something similar.

i showed Zerox to a windows/mac based coworker who's just
discovering the unix world. it took a few runs to explain
that, no, it wasn't just making a copy of the file.
ア

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> i showed Zerox to a windows/mac based coworker who's just
> discovering the unix world. 

i don't use it, except to freak people out :)

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[rog]

> i've just (re)discovered Zerox. that one feature makes me
> about 15% more productive when working on largish documents

for me, the only alternative is a printout... so Zerox
saves paper. how ironic is that?

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Rob Pike]

> How would one do it without losing most of the (non-)ergonomics?
> (the (...) depending on one's opinion)

it's already done. the program is called acme.  the chording is
just shortcuts, not added functionality.

-rob

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Martin C.Atkins]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 22:13:51 -0700 Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> > How would one do it without losing most of the (non-)ergonomics?
> > (the (...) depending on one's opinion)
> 
> it's already done. the program is called acme.  the chording is
> just shortcuts, not added functionality.

I suppose I was assuming that the non-chording alternatives to the
chords were significantly less "convenient" than the chords - why else
would the chords be there?

So my question was: is there a way to be as convenient as the chords,
without using chords? Has anyone any ideas?

Charles' contribution implies that the answer might be "no". Which
would be a perfectly reasonable answer to my question!

However, the fact remains that I remember several people (not just
Boyd) saying they don't/can't use chords, for various reasons. I'm
neutral on that point, and would just say that "they certainly take
some getting used to".

Martin

-- 
Martin C. Atkins			martin@parvat.com
Parvat Infotech Private Limited		http://www.parvat.com{/,/martin}

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[a]

// So my question was: is there a way to be as convenient as the
// chords, without using chords? Has anyone any ideas?

given that all the keys/buttons already have their own meaning, the
only two options (far as i see) is making the *combintations* have
different meaning (chording), or expose the functionaly to the
existing functionality (click on "Cut"). both are already in acme,
although it's optimized for the former (sam, by contrast, i would
consider optimized to the later, with its menus under the pointer
on button-press, regardless of position).

there are two other options that preserve the "each key has its
function" assumption: more keys, or *replace* tun functionality. i
don't think the PgUp/PgDn/Home/End/Ins/Del block is used frequently
in Plan 9 (certainly not by me or others i've observed), in favor
of the arrow-scroll. Ins and Del could be reasonalbe Cut and Paste
proxies providing the same effect as the acme chording. or add
buttons, and get back to the old Sun aircraft-carrier-sized
keyboards. it's been a while, but didn't they have cut and paste?

the remaining option is toss the "each key has its function"
assumption, but i think that gets you context-sensative key
meaning, and intuitivly that sounds like it would confuse the hell
out of my hands - the meaning is wired well below concious level.

i *do* have a Shuttle Xpress i use with my PowerBook, quite
happily. it's got 5 buttons and two (nested) jog wheels. they
currently do nothing for me in Plan 9 or X11. in OS X, pretty
much everything's configurable, and (optionally) context
sensitive (interpreted by their software). it might be useful in
Plan 9 if i could map, say, the buttons to 1+2, 1+3, 1+(2,3) and
the outter jog wheel to scroll up/down.

anyway, enough of that. personally, i miss the chording in every
application i've ever used after my first month of acme.
ア

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[andrey mirtchovski]

> the remaining option is toss the "each key has its function"
> assumption, but i think that gets you context-sensative key
> meaning, and intuitivly that sounds like it would confuse the hell
> out of my hands - the meaning is wired well below concious level.

I think you left out the so called ''mouse gestures''.  Last time they
were mentioned on this list people claimed they only had derogatory
meaning :)

andrey

ps: has anyone tried ''gestures'' (now i can't type it without
giggling like a schoolgirl!) with a trackball?  how hard are they?

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Dave Lukes]

> ps: has anyone tried ''gestures''
> with a trackball?  how hard are they?

I just did:
they're no worse with a trackball than with a mouse:-).  'Nuff said.

> (now i can't type it without
> giggling like a schoolgirl!) 

Ditto.
	Dave.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Richard Miller]

> the old Sun aircraft-carrier-sized
> keyboards. it's been a while, but didn't they have cut and paste?

The lefthand keypad on the one gathering dust under my desk has
keys labelled:

Stop	Again
Props	Undo
Front	Copy
Open	Paste
Find	Cut
	Help

The only one I can remember ever using is Stop.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> the old Sun aircraft-carrier-sized keyboards. it's been a while, ...

iirc brucee's (one time) cat halted his sun by jumping down on the keyboard
and hitting:

    Alt-L1-a

impressive piece of chording ;)

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Bruce Ellis]

was indeed a clever cat - but that feat was followed by
scorn and derision.  i bet he could have turned off a 780
with hia bum.  oh yeah, that's been done.

brucee

boyd, rounin wrote:
>>the old Sun aircraft-carrier-sized keyboards. it's been a while, ...
> 
> 
> iirc brucee's (one time) cat halted his sun by jumping down on the keyboard
> and hitting:
> 
>     Alt-L1-a
> 
> impressive piece of chording ;)

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> i bet he could have turned off a 780
> with hia bum.  oh yeah, that's been done.

yes, that feat was most impressive.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

>> iirc brucee's (one time) cat halted his sun by jumping down on the keyboard
>> and hitting:
>> 
>>     Alt-L1-a

Yep. And it was even more impresive that you
could continue execution without rebooting the thing.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[a]

yeah, them's the keys. most of the suns i hooked them up to
didn't actually do anything with most of them, either. did
seem like something of a waste, though.

i never knew what "Props" was supposed to do. did it cause
things like "Dude, you rock!" to print on the screen?
ア

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Scott Schwartz]

| yeah, them's the keys. most of the suns i hooked them up to
| didn't actually do anything with most of them, either. did
| seem like something of a waste, though.
 
I was an enthusiastic user of the "Front" key for shuffling
windows around, as well as "Copy" and "Paste" to access
the clipboard (instead of just the selection).

| i never knew what "Props" was supposed to do. did it cause
| things like "Dude, you rock!" to print on the screen?

It opened the current application's preferences dialog (in SunView and
Openlook, at least.)

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Charles Forsyth]

>>Charles' contribution implies that the answer might be "no". Which
>>would be a perfectly reasonable answer to my question!

it was not so much the answer was `no' -- obviously you could use the increasingly extensive
selection of function keys or an emacs-style richard-the-third scheme--
but the acme interface is clean and pleasantly uncluttered as it is, thanks.

also, that i'm more interested in how other interfaces might benefit from
more of the same, or in what other ways might an interface be given different `feel'
(that does some good)?

acme is suggestive of some possibilities for `a user interface for programmers'.
(at last.)  is there a potential `user interface for end-users that want to get their work done'
that doesn't patronise the poor sods or limit them with cruddy `metaphors'?
bouncy globes indeed.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> However, the fact remains that I remember several people (not just
> Boyd) saying they don't/can't use chords, for various reasons.

rob is right in that chording is a short cut.

forsyth is right in that those who use it will get a shock when
they move from acme to other user interfaces and that the
addition of chording may indicate a useability problem with
the current interface.

i've always thought that acme had some neat ideas in it, but
i'm a sam-ite.  use the tools that suit you for the job.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[9nut]

> How would one do it without losing most of the (non-)ergonomics?
> (the (...) depending on one's opinion)

middle-click on Cut , Snarf , Paste ?

To paraphrase Martha Stewart: "chording: it's a good thing" 

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Charles Forsyth]

>>How constrained do the non-chording folks feel by the current acme interface?

it will be less than the severe constraint felt by those who chord, who are stuck without
chording in nearly every other interface known to man, which nevertheless
are full of unbelievably many utterly trivial and silly things that
don't actually help you get your work done.   the arrival of chording was the first
time (apart from Oberon, same thing only more so) i had seen a `look and feel'
that actually `felt' different: once you get used to it, it feels as if you're grabbing
text directly from the screen with the mouse (and the `undo' effect is
important too).

one current exception is Opera, which does use chording a bit.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[ron minnich]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004, Martin C.Atkins wrote:

> Partly :-), but partly a serious question, since the "I hate
> chording" topic seems to come up quite frequently. How constrained do
> the non-chording folks feel by the current acme interface?

I don't chord. I'm too uncoordinated. I still like Acme quite a bit. I 
shift around too many editors in a single day to really get too exercised 
about this or that feature.

ron

[9fans] p9 mice

[Sascha Wildner]

Hello,

so which mice do you use? Does anyone know where I can buy an optical 3 
button mouse? I don't mind if there's a cable.

Regards,
Sascha

-- 
http://yoyodyne.ath.cx

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[andrey mirtchovski]

> so which mice do you use? Does anyone know where I can buy an optical 3 
> button mouse? I don't mind if there's a cable.


IBM has one for $25USD:

	http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=-840&langId=-1&partNumber=31P7405&storeId=1

that's what i use on my desktop.

andrey

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Rob Pike]

i have a few of andrey's mice. they're catching on at work.

-rob

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[lucio]

> i have a few of andrey's mice. they're catching on at work.

I keep wishing for a three-button trackball.  Or is it just me?  I
keep having to reposition the mouse on the pad because ACME moves the
cursor for my very convenience.  I'm assuming that a trackball would
be better suited in such case.

But trackballs, specially three-button ones, seem expensive.

++L

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Dave Lukes]

> I keep wishing for a three-button trackball.  Or is it just me?  I
> keep having to reposition the mouse on the pad because ACME moves the
> cursor for my very convenience.  I'm assuming that a trackball would
> be better suited in such case.

No, not really: you'd just have to roll instead of scroll.

> But trackballs, specially three-button ones, seem expensive.

I use a trackball, nothing to do with the gui:
I want to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, wandering mouse disease
and needing a desk extension just to point accurately.

The downside is that you'll hate it until you're used to it,
after that, you'll hate mice!

Also, once you're used to it, a trackball is much easier,
especially for fine positioning: there's less physical
and psychological intertia involved (one finger vs. one hand).

I use a "Logitech® Cordless TrackMan® Optical".

It's big, expensive and dextro-centric but I really like it:
I'm getting another one for home.

It has 4 buttons, scroll-lock button, a wheel and scrolling buttons,
JIC you're short of things for your fingers to do.

It's ~€70, but, hey, my wrist is worth more than that.

If you do find any cheaper alternatives I'd be interested.
BTW: the smaller the ball, the  trickier they are to use.

	Dave.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Dave Lukes]

Just noticed:
   
http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/hardware/keyboardsmicejoystickswheelsandtablets/productView.htm?quicklinx=2H8K

    4D Trackball Combo

It claims to be a serial+PS2 trackball with 3 buttons and 2 wheels.

I know nothing about it, but, since it's ~€12,
it may be worth a try.

I may just buy one to try out.

Also, there are a load of trackballs from trust, kensington
and (yuk) microsoft available, some fairly cheap.

Cheers,
	Dave.


On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 11:10, Dave Lukes wrote:
> > I keep wishing for a three-button trackball.  Or is it just me?  I
> > keep having to reposition the mouse on the pad because ACME moves the
> > cursor for my very convenience.  I'm assuming that a trackball would
> > be better suited in such case.
> 
> No, not really: you'd just have to roll instead of scroll.
> 
> > But trackballs, specially three-button ones, seem expensive.
> 
> I use a trackball, nothing to do with the gui:
> I want to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, wandering mouse disease
> and needing a desk extension just to point accurately.
> 
> The downside is that you'll hate it until you're used to it,
> after that, you'll hate mice!
> 
> Also, once you're used to it, a trackball is much easier,
> especially for fine positioning: there's less physical
> and psychological intertia involved (one finger vs. one hand).
> 
> I use a "Logitech® Cordless TrackMan® Optical".
> 
> It's big, expensive and dextro-centric but I really like it:
> I'm getting another one for home.
> 
> It has 4 buttons, scroll-lock button, a wheel and scrolling buttons,
> JIC you're short of things for your fingers to do.
> 
> It's ~€70, but, hey, my wrist is worth more than that.
> 
> If you do find any cheaper alternatives I'd be interested.
> BTW: the smaller the ball, the  trickier they are to use.
> 
> 	Dave.
> 

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[lucio]

> No, not really: you'd just have to roll instead of scroll.
> 
Well, you don't need to _lift_ the device, the way a mouse demands.

> Also, once you're used to it, a trackball is much easier,
> especially for fine positioning: there's less physical
> and psychological intertia involved (one finger vs. one hand).
> 
Yes and no.  Positioning isn't necessarily easier.

> It's big, expensive and dextro-centric but I really like it:
> I'm getting another one for home.
> 
I prefer using my left hand, sadly.

> It has 4 buttons, scroll-lock button, a wheel and scrolling buttons,
> JIC you're short of things for your fingers to do.
> 
You mention that three buttons are under the right-hand thumb.  I
agree with others that chording is practically impossible in such
case.

Why didn't Logitech just stick a third button on their perfectly
adequate product of a few years ago, I wonder?  Its only other flaw
seems to have been a propensity to catch smoke particles which lead to
an extremely ugly, grimy interior.  Nobody smokes in my office, so the
problem would be much smaller.

++L

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Dave Lukes]

On Thu, 2004-04-15 at 08:10, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> Yes and no.  Positioning isn't necessarily easier.

It _must_ be, once you're used to it:
less muscles and inertia involved.
Plus, when you get CTS, using a mouse becomes a _lot_ harder!

> I prefer using my left hand, sadly.

:-(.
I've been looking for left handed or neutral pointing interfaces,
and they are few and far between.

> > It has 4 buttons, scroll-lock button, a wheel and scrolling buttons,
> > JIC you're short of things for your fingers to do.
> > 
> You mention that three buttons are under the right-hand thumb.  I
> agree with others that chording is practically impossible in such
> case.

I lied: see later mail:
there's actually 8(eight) buttons in total:
3 under the thumb, one under your pinkie/annular/whatever finger
and a scroll wheel with 2 scroll buttons either end plus a scroll
lock button (no, I'm not making this up!!!).

So you can get a reasonable combo of (thumb, index, annular)
for the 3 buttons.

Interestingly XF86 gives you 2 middle buttons
(the <spit/> scroll wheel and one of the other thumb buttons),
and I'm starting to use them interchangeably?!?

(If you wanted to, you could, no doubt, remap some of the other
 5 buttons to create a greatly enriched user chording experience).

> Why didn't Logitech just stick a third button on their perfectly
> adequate product of a few years ago, I wonder?

Lack of marketing-compatibility:-).

>   Its only other flaw
> seems to have been a propensity to catch smoke particles which lead to
> an extremely ugly, grimy interior.  Nobody smokes in my office, so the
> problem would be much smaller.

Well, that's generally less of a problem with optical stuff anyway:
I pop the ball out of mine about once a month and blow/wipe
the dust off and that's it.

Dave.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Micah Stetson]

> Why didn't Logitech just stick a third button on their perfectly
> adequate product of a few years ago, I wonder?  Its only other flaw

Sigh.  They had some very nice three-button products a
few years ago -- both mice and trackballs.  I still use
my three button MouseMan all the time.  I'd like to go
optical, and possibly cordless, but I'm not willing to
settle for a lesser mouse.

But here's an idea.  We three-button mouse users are
apparently a minority group, and we're obviously being
discriminated against.  Perhaps we could lobby for some
sort of affirmative action law dictating that all mouse
manufacturers produce a particular percentage of their
mice with a sane button configuration.  I don't think
this would be too hard to pull off, especially here in
California.

Micah

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Greg Pavelcak]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Micah Stetson" <micah@cnm-vra.com>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 12:32 PM
Subject: Re: [9fans] p9 mice


> > Why didn't Logitech just stick a third button on their perfectly
> > adequate product of a few years ago, I wonder?  Its only other flaw
> 
> Sigh.  They had some very nice three-button products a
> few years ago -- both mice and trackballs.  I still use
> my three button MouseMan all the time.  I'd like to go
> optical, and possibly cordless, but I'm not willing to
> settle for a lesser mouse.
> 
Yeah. I still like my TrackMan Marble. A ball under the thumb
and three big buttons. Very comfy. Unfortunately, button 1 sometimes
"lets go" in the middle of selecting text areas. It doesn't realize I'm
still holding it down, so I use the wheeled version. It's nowhere near
as good.

Greg

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> Why didn't Logitech just stick a third button on their perfectly
> adequate product of a few years ago, I wonder?

probably because windows only ever used 2 and X was
probably not in the equation.  even X only really used 2
button; the 3rd being used by very few things and in
completely arbitrary ways.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> I keep wishing for a three-button trackball.

i'm sure logitech make one.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Dave Lukes]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 29 bytes --]

There's an echo in here:-).

[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 2428 bytes --]

From: "boyd, rounin" <boyd@insultant.net>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] p9 mice
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 15:01:13 +0200
Message-ID: <004e01c42220$92a63340$45747d50@SOMA>

> I keep wishing for a three-button trackball.

i'm sure logitech make one.


[-- Attachment #3: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 1970 bytes --]

From: Dave Lukes <davel@anvil.com>
To: 9fans <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] p9 mice
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:10:24 +0100
Message-ID: <1081937424.20600.29.camel@zevon>

> I keep wishing for a three-button trackball.  Or is it just me?  I
> keep having to reposition the mouse on the pad because ACME moves the
> cursor for my very convenience.  I'm assuming that a trackball would
> be better suited in such case.

No, not really: you'd just have to roll instead of scroll.

> But trackballs, specially three-button ones, seem expensive.

I use a trackball, nothing to do with the gui:
I want to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, wandering mouse disease
and needing a desk extension just to point accurately.

The downside is that you'll hate it until you're used to it,
after that, you'll hate mice!

Also, once you're used to it, a trackball is much easier,
especially for fine positioning: there's less physical
and psychological intertia involved (one finger vs. one hand).

I use a "Logitech® Cordless TrackMan® Optical".

It's big, expensive and dextro-centric but I really like it:
I'm getting another one for home.

It has 4 buttons, scroll-lock button, a wheel and scrolling buttons,
JIC you're short of things for your fingers to do.

It's ~€70, but, hey, my wrist is worth more than that.

If you do find any cheaper alternatives I'd be interested.
BTW: the smaller the ball, the  trickier they are to use.

	Dave.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[ron minnich]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:

> I keep wishing for a three-button trackball.  Or is it just me?  

No it's not. I have trackball but hate that damned scrollwheel.

If you have a pointer to a 3-button trackball, let us know. 

ron

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Dave Lukes]

> If you have a pointer to a 3-button trackball, let us know. 
> 
> ron

Ron,
The logitech has 4 buttons (3 under thumb position,
 1 under annular/little )
_plus_ 2 scroll buttons _plus_ a scroll wheel _plus_ scroll-lock.

I think it's called "overkill".

Xfree86 thinks that one of the thumb buttons is button 1,
the other two are both button 2, and the annular is 3:
I'm sure you could get at all 4 buttons independently
if you wanted to driver-hack.

Dave.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[boyd, rounin]

> No it's not. I have trackball but hate that damned scrollwheel.

the 'thing' is truly ghastly piece of 'design'.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Robin KAY]

andrey mirtchovski wrote:
>  Sascha Wildner wrote:
>
> > so which mice do you use? Does anyone know where I can buy an
> > optical 3 button mouse? I don't mind if there's a cable.
>
>  IBM has one for $25USD:

I can't see properly from the picture. Is there a middle mouse button 
beyond the blue 'ScrollPoint' thing, or is the 'ScrollPoint' thing the 
middle button? How is to use?

-- 
Wishing you good fortune,
--Robin Kay-- (komadori)

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Brantley Coile]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 260 bytes --]

I just bought one.  There is indeed a middle button.
The 800dpi thing is great, too.  Takes a little getting used to,
though.  Like going from a Cessna 172 to a Pitts S2B.  (That's an 
aerobatic biplane for those of you who are aeronautically challenged.)

[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 2270 bytes --]

From: Robin KAY <komadori@myrealbox.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] p9 mice
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 10:09:42 GMT
Message-ID: <1081918264.2948.0@despina.uk.clara.net>

andrey mirtchovski wrote:
>  Sascha Wildner wrote:
>
> > so which mice do you use? Does anyone know where I can buy an
> > optical 3 button mouse? I don't mind if there's a cable.
>
>  IBM has one for $25USD:

I can't see properly from the picture. Is there a middle mouse button 
beyond the blue 'ScrollPoint' thing, or is the 'ScrollPoint' thing the 
middle button? How is to use?

-- 
Wishing you good fortune,
--Robin Kay-- (komadori)

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[andrey mirtchovski]

> I can't see properly from the picture. Is there a middle mouse button 
> beyond the blue 'ScrollPoint' thing, or is the 'ScrollPoint' thing the 
> middle button? How is to use?
> 

Yes, there is a middle button (the blue thingy is left unused).  As
Brantley Coile says it takes some getting used to but it's worth it.

I've used it to play the occasional game of quake too. 

andrey

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[kim kubik]

andrey mirtchovski <mirtchov@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> wrote in message
news:8b896c83d31d6ce56f17a1cbf17c4dbd@plan9.ucalgary.ca...
> > Does anyone know where I can buy an optical 3
> > button mouse? I don't mind if there's a cable.

> IBM has one for $25USD:
>
http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=-8
40&langId=-1&partNumber=31P7405&storeId=1
>
On that web page description of mouse, under "Features and Benefits"
it reads:

    "No mechanical ball to get dusty, dirty or stolen."

Stolen? STOLEN? Is there a big market for hot mouse balls?

Guy comes home, finds window broken, laptop, printer, digital
camera all still sitting there; tries to use computer, no response.
Mouse ball is gone . . . a pink glove is laying by the pad.

An alley downtown, swarthy guy in black trenchcoat, "psst, kid,
lookit here: this is from a little old lady who only used her Mac
for email on Sunday's . . ."

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[a]

// Stolen? STOLEN? Is there a big market for hot mouse balls?

maybe not a market, but you'd be surprised how often the walk off.
especially in public or semi-public places, like university comp
centers or 'net cafes.

in high school, somebody stole *all* the mouse balls from our
computers, only to replace them a week later. it's a common prank.
ア

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Adrian Tritschler]

kim kubik wrote:
> andrey mirtchovski <mirtchov@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> wrote in message
> news:8b896c83d31d6ce56f17a1cbf17c4dbd@plan9.ucalgary.ca...
> 
>>>Does anyone know where I can buy an optical 3
>>>button mouse? I don't mind if there's a cable.
> 
> 
>>IBM has one for $25USD:
>>
> 
> http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=-8
> 40&langId=-1&partNumber=31P7405&storeId=1
> 
> On that web page description of mouse, under "Features and Benefits"
> it reads:
> 
>     "No mechanical ball to get dusty, dirty or stolen."
> 
> Stolen? STOLEN? Is there a big market for hot mouse balls?

There is zero market for stolen mouse balls, but tons of inconvenience 
when some brilliant student decides to steal them from fifty or more PCs 
in labs.

Solution to this was to hot-glue the little ball-retainer thingy shut, 
this prevented the ball being stolen, but resulted in them being 
uncleanable and very quickly filling up with whatever grey goo mouse 
balls and rollers fill up with.

Students steal stuff because they can, not because there's any need or 
market for it.

> Guy comes home, finds window broken, laptop, printer, digital
> camera all still sitting there; tries to use computer, no response.
> Mouse ball is gone . . . a pink glove is laying by the pad.
> 
> An alley downtown, swarthy guy in black trenchcoat, "psst, kid,
> lookit here: this is from a little old lady who only used her Mac
> for email on Sunday's . . ."

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

> so which mice do you use? Does anyone know where I can buy an optical 3 
> button mouse? I don't mind if there's a cable.

You can also use the two button + wheel-button logitech ones.
We use them and now can't leave without. In particular, the one that
comes with the BT keyboard/mouse set is really ergonomic.

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[yassine]

> Does anyone know where I can buy an optical 3 
> button mouse? I don't mind if there's a cable.

A real 3-button one can be bought here: 

    http://www.contourdesign.com/pmo/

  Yassine

Re: [9fans] p9 mice

[Sascha Wildner]

yassine wrote:

>>Does anyone know where I can buy an optical 3 
>>button mouse? I don't mind if there's a cable.
> 
> 
> A real 3-button one can be bought here: 
> 
>     http://www.contourdesign.com/pmo/
> 
>   Yassine

Hmmm. Maybe someone should add this and the IBM link to the Wiki...

Sascha

-- 
http://yoyodyne.ath.cx
Followup-To: 
Distribution: 
Organization: University of Bath Computing Services, UK
Keywords: 
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-- 
Dennis Davis, BUCS, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
D.H.Davis@bath.ac.uk