On Sun, Oct 15, 2000 at 04:32:39PM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote: > > On Sun, 15 Oct 2000, Mark Tearle wrote: > > In terms of documentation, the way around it would be to use something like > > "Button 1 (Left)" with the thing in brackets indicating the normal > > assignment. I find this a bit too wordy and would prefer just "Button 1" > I think we really want to avoid things like "click on the icon with the > left mouse button" or "click on the icon with mouse button 1". Those are > verbose and essentially redundant. We should just say "click on the > icon". The "mouse" is implicit, as well as using the default > button. I have to disagree with this. I have helped quite a few users with very little computer experience learn on both Windows and Linux and many of them have had to think carefully in the early phases about which mouse button to press. Now, in the long run, this is only an issue with new people, since they are often trying too hard and over analysing everything. Nevertheless, it is people like that who will read every word in the manual and take it literally when trying to work things out. > And as much as I like and respect the UI gurudom of Arlo, I think that > calling it "Context Click" will confuse about 98% of users instead of just > the left-handed ones. Some user education would be required if we went down this path. However, it would be possible to write an application that leads you through basic stuff like "how are the buttons on my mouse referred to" .. much like my Palm Pilot lead me through the basics of how to use the stylus the first time I turned it on. > For the middle mouse button, there is no ambiguity for lefties or > righties. On the mouse I'm using at the moment, button 2 is on the lefthand side of the mouse and is pressed with my thumb. Hardly "middle click". :-) > So we can simply say "middle-click on the icon". (Again avoiding the > more verbose "click on the icon with the middle mouse button".) This > also allows a more natural definition of "middle-click" to mean using > the middle mouse button on 3-button mice or pressing both buttons at > the same time for 2-button mice. What new user to X Windows and Gnome will guess that pressing both buttons at once on the mouse is the same as middle clicking? > > Thus, the only button we really need to discuss is the right one (for > righties, or left one for lefties). Here we can use "right-click" and > most left-handed users should identify that this is "left-click" for them. > Alternately, we could come up with another name for it such as > "alternate-click" or "minor-click" or ..., but once again this will > probably confuse a lot more people than it unconfuses. It sounds to me like you're saying here that it isn't really a problem and we should just use the righthanded way of saying things and let people with alternate mouse setups adjust. > While I originally like Telsa's idea of using entities, I don't think it > is practical. Aside from requiring that mouse buttons are described a > certain way in every sentence so that all entities fit in place nicely, it > doesn't work for documents on the web or for printed manuals. We will > have to find a good solution for docs in these media, and we should adopt > that for our online help as well. I agree with this. It's a nice general solution, but not entirely practical (although Telsa possibly has solutions to the points you bring up). > I think that getting rid of "left mouse button" and turning "right mouse > button" into "right-click" makes it much easier for a left-handed person > to simply associate "right-click" with the alternate mouse button. I don't. :) I think I should probably explain my point of view here, lest this looks like a flame of Dan's opinion (which it isn't): to me, this isn't just a "lefties" versus "righties" discussion. There is the issue of the audience for which this documentation is being written. As I sugeested above, I think the people for whom this will matter are the beginners -- those who read every word and apply it literally, at least in the beginning. At present, I suspect there are not a lot of those people who are Gnome users, but they _are_ starting to appear. Some of the other mailing lists I'm on confirm this: we are starting to see questions from Gnome users who are generally very new to Unix and sometimes to computers in general. I would rather see us write documentation that is accessible to those people than just say "they'll pick it up eventually". In the latter case, it's just as likely that they'll use something else and our efforts will be for naught. Just my two cents, Malcolm -- Malcolm Tredinnick email: malcolm commsecure com au CommSecure Pty Ltd
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