Re: question about RMB

[Dan Mueth <d-mueth uchicago edu>]

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 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.  This should be unambiguous for any user independent of their
mouse configuration.

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.

For the middle mouse button, there is no ambiguity for lefties or
righties. 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.

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.

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 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.

Dan