Re: 3 button mouse

On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 09:01:26 +1030
Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> On Monday, 28 February 2005 at 22:52:08 +0100, Dag-Erling Smrgrav wrote:
> > David Scheidt <dmschei@attglobal.net> writes:
> >> I need a three button mouse.  Just three buttons, no wheel, no bells,
> >> no whistles.  I can't find one, as everything has a silly wheel.  I'm
> >> not picky about interface (PS/2, USB, serial, or Bluetooth will work),
> >> or balls v. optical.  Does anyone still sell these things?
> >
> > what do you have against mouse wheels?  they are very useful in X,
> > and also function as a middle button.
> 
> Let me count the ways...
> 
> 1.  Few FreeBSD applications support the wheel out of the box, so it's
>     not much use.

The second wheel in Opera and Sylpheed-claws doesn't work, but in KDE
apps it does.

> 2.  Setup is non-trivial.  Every mouse seems to have its own protocol,
>     and I have a number here which I can't enable.

I guess you don't use cheaper models :) this seem to be easier to setup this days.

> 3.  They're an ergonomic disaster.  The wheel that functions as a
>     middle button is in the wrong position for this function.  It
>     should be about 15 mm further towards the finger tip.  In its
>     current position, you have to bend your middle finger to touch it,
>     and then you have to be careful not to turn the wheel (unless it
>     isn't enabled, in which case it's not a problem).
>
> 4.  In addition to being in the wrong place, the spring on the middle
>     button is usually too heavy.

The only mouse which I can use both wheel and middle button is a cheap
A4Tech "Optical GreateAye WheelMouse" WOP-35. All Genius I've tried
suffer from what you say above.

A few years ago there was a NetMouse or something (from Genius I
thinks) which had a 2-position button for scrolling in-place of a wheel,
pressing that button's ends was more economical for scrolling that
turning the wheel; unfortunately they don't do it anymore.

Since this mouse has two more buttons on the sides I was thinking of
taking the time to find out how to map them to page up / page down (or
better scroll-up / scroll-down) or to move the middle-button click on
one of them.

-- 
IOnut
Unregistered ;) FreeBSD "user"

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