Re: intelligent dialogs

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom idecnet com>]

mbabcock@fibrespeed.net (2000-08-15 at 1237.11 -0400):
[...]
> > This is why X11 uses Button1, Button2, Button3, etc. instead of
> > LeftButton, MiddleButton, RightButton.
> Not everybody thinks in numbers.  Yes, I'm a big math fan and love reading
> books like "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper" and other John Allen Paulos
> books, but I don't advise people to order their lives by numbering things.
> It _isn't_ convention for people to number their fingers.  Some people count
> starting with their forefinger, others with their thumbs, and some people
> can only count to one, using their middle finger ;-).  That said, no, I
> wouldn't advise numbers.  I can understand X using them internally -- just
> as this application is residing at a memory address known as 0xC00.....
> something, not "Outlook Express".  But I don't want to know that usually,
> and neither does any other user.

I was explaning what Ken has, Plus adding pens and other pointer
systems. Plus apps that do not have Action, System & Context at all,
as someone said. With all the mess, the only way, IMHO, is to use the
damn numbers, and let user know how numbers are arranged in his mouse
and what each number does in each app.

OK, you do not want numbers... use colored symbols like some game
consoles. Or names Alpha, Bravo & Charlie, or Foo, Bar & Beep, or Amy,
Bob & Cathy. Whatever, but you still will have the problem, you need to
tie physical to logical, cos none of them is fixed (hand and device
shape are the cuase of the first, apps of the second).

Hehe, I think I know why Macs have one button. Do we have a problem?
Eliminate it instead fix it and solved. IMHO Mac could have solved,
instead of killing it, by using replazable covers like IBM keyboards,
and now we would not have any problem.

Well, can we forget all this then?

GSR