Re: [9fans] three sets of windows

["Gary V. Vaughan" <gary@vaughan.pe>]

On 28 Apr 2010, at 22:05, Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> On 28 Apr 2010, at 15:40, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
>>> if you're feeling ambitions and want something more like your laptops track pad.
>> 
>> Surely you jest?  Something that repositions the cursor to an
>> uninteresting location in the middle of a document by simply hovering
>> one's thumb in the vicinity of the space bar?  Or am I just
>> particularly cursed with this?
> 
> I expect it's a trackpad quality kind of thing. On the ancient iBook I have, in System Preferences there's a checkbox labelled "Prevent accidental trackpad input." I don't know quite what it does or how it does it, but it works very well for me.

It did that simply by enforcing a minimum time (maybe around 1000ms) from the last key press before interpreting any input from the trackpad.  I found it quite annoying since my trackpad felt like it needed a sturdy poke to make it responsive again if I wanted to move the cursor around while editing something.

My MBP, and I believe all the newer Apple laptops, no longer offer that option, but they work all the better for it.  I don't know quite how it works in this incarnation, but I neither move my cursor accidentally nor feel like poking the trackpad until it comes back to life nowadays :)  Additionally the area is surprisingly large now that no space is devoted to a button, and the whole trackpad can be clicked.

Sadly, when I upgraded Parallels my Plan9 VM stopped booting, and I haven't bothered to try and get it going again since I mostly work with my laptop balanced on my lap so a physical mouse is not at all useful... and I haven't found a comfortable way of mousechording with an all-in-one trackpad/button :( Surely I'm not the only one that dislikes separate mice?

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan <gary@gnu.org>