What about a little rename in MouseEvent?

Ricardo Moran wrote

I totally agree with the color buttons being really confusing. What's funny is that it's not even consistent. For instance, preference "swapMouseButtons" comment is "if true, swaps mouse buttons 2 and 3". What's
that suppose to mean? Weren't mouse buttons colored?? :)

However, I have a question: once you change the names to left, right, middle, what will happen if swapMouseButtons is true? Will "middleClick" still mean "middleClick"?

True, I guess in a 3-button environment there will always be a "Primary", "Secondary" and "Middle" button, for left and right-handed people :)

> *no* Colors have no *meaning* in this context. I can not even tell you the
> three colors we have now. And not at all which is supposed to be the middle one.

+1, I don't know the colors either.

> Colors for buttons make no sense *at all* if your buttons have no colors.

AFAIK, most operating systems number the mouse buttons.

- The primary button is what you use to perform actions (typically
left mouse button).
- The secondary buttons is what you use to open context menu
(typically right mouse button).
- The third button is the middle button, the fourth button, ...

Now I see that numbers are not that far from colors, but at least they
have a logical order. I don't like #select, #menu, #extra because I
does not make sense in any other context (for example games, or touch
applications) than a traditional GUI.

Lukas

--
Lukas Renggli
www.lukas-renggli.ch

2011/1/24 Guillermo Polito <[hidden email]>:
IMO, the correct order is:
1) understand current implementation
2) refactor

At least, after this lengthy thread, pretty all has been said about
red/yellow/blue buttons and I wish I don't hear anymore anyone
pretending he does not understand.
The summary is:

The logical squeak^H^H^H^H^H^Hpharo pointing input device is a mouse
with 3 buttons named red yellow and blue by historical reference to
Xerox Dorado machine (insert ref here).
In smalltalk-80,
- the red button (originally on the left) was generally used for selection;
- the yellow button (originally on the middle) was generally used for
contextual operation on the selection (via a pop up menu);
- the blue button (originally on the right) was generally used for
operation on the window (via another pop up menu).

Due to hardware differences from one machine to another (presence of
one, two or three buttons), and native OS feel differences (for
example, the button used for contextual pop up menu is the right
button rather than the middle in Microsoft windows), a level of
indirection is kept to insulate this logical level from physical
level.

The mapping from physical buttons to logical buttons is programmable.
On mouses with less than 3 buttons, other buttons can be emulated with
combinations of modifier keys.
Depending on user preferences, the mapping middle=yellow,right=blue
can be swapped, the default being to adhere to native OS conventions
(at least it should !).

Where exactly this mapping happens (VM and/or image) and how to
program it still has to be documented, but hey, you got the grounds ;)

>>
>> Then you'll can argue at will whether the logical level shall be named
>> #right #logicalRight or #blue, I don't care.
>
> Then we can change it again.
>

It all depends if the changes are on a private kernel API or a public
API exposed to third party packages.
In later case we'd better not gratuitously raise the burden on early
Pharo adopters.

Marcus suggested this was previously a Squeak taboo :)
I didn't mean to inhibit changes or discourage you, sorry if I did.
All I want is that this kind of decision be rationalized rather than randomized.
It's better to think of next steps in advance rather than step back
from a dead end, isn't it?

Nicolas

I would like to have the iSqueak Event hierarchy. It is published in PharoTaskForces if I remember correctly.

Stef


> I hate yellowButtonPressed and redButtonPressed and blueButtonPressed messages.
>
> Why not lefClick, rightClick and "middleClick"?
>
> Cheers,
> Guille

On the other hand, as the buttons of mice can be reassigned, the 'names'
"right" and "left" could become ambiguous...


my 0.019999...

--
Cesar Rabak





 

Lukas Renggli wrote

...
AFAIK, most operating systems number the mouse buttons.

- The primary button is what you use to perform actions (typically left mouse button).
- The secondary buttons is what you use to open context menu (typically right mouse button).
- The third button is the middle button, the fourth button, ...

Now I see that numbers are not that far from colors, but at least they have a logical order. I don't like #select, #menu, #extra because I does not make sense in any other context (for example games, or touch applications) than a traditional GUI.

Agree, on one side there are the physical buttons (button 1, 2, 3 etc) and on the other hand there are the  events they trigger.  e.g. for right-handed people button 1 would be the primary button where for left-handed this could very well be button 3.

Then again, maybe it is time to look a bit further as it looks like the near future is heading towards a world without any physical buttons where there is no need to number or name buttons at all :)

http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/new-apple-patent-puts-a-display-on-the-magic-mouse-20110124/

Additional gesture events:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKlkte1aOOw

Regarding the "looking into the future" i was thinking that we will go
the Smalltalk way, by reifying such new events. Instead of "reusing"
plain old three button mouse events.
And leave the MouseEvent for what they were originally conceived (the
proposed renaming )

In this scenario a touch pad would generate a TouchPadEvent, and a
multibutton mouse would generate "MultiButtonMouseEvent"

Fernando

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Geert Claes <[hidden email]> wrote: