Re: question about RMB

[John Kodis <kodis jagunet com>]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 08:52:39AM +1100, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> 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"

Same here.  Also, "Button 1" is the notation used by X, and I can't
see the point of cluttering it up with a clairification (Left) that
will be wrong for ~15% of the population.

> 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.

It's not only the left-handed who would be impacted by this.  I'm
right-handed and I position my mouse on the right, yet I still find
the "Left Click" notation confusing.

When reading a phrase like "left click", I find myself stopping in
mid-sentance to think something like "let's see, the mouse is on the
right, so the left-most button is the first button, so the author
means "click button 1".  While I can't pinpoint the cause of this
confusion -- perhaps it's because both the left and the right buttons
are off to my right, and the difference between "way to the right" and
"not quite so far to the right" is too subtle to grasp intuitively --
I do know that for me at least, the button 1/2/3 notation is vastly
more intuitive than the left/middle/right button notation.

-- John Kodis.