On Sat, 9 Aug 2008, Martin Costabel wrote:
Viv Kendon wrote: []
Right-click (button 2) is command-click in Tiger.
Viv, please don't confuse this even more than it is already. Long before Windows came along with its 2-button mouse, X11 was made for 3-button mice where buttons 1, 2, 3 are left, middle, right.
Actually, because that was about MAC OS, not X11, I was thinking of the Apple 5 button mouse, which I think does label the right button as 2 and the middle as 3. But I don't have one at the moment to bring the preferences up to check. My apologies if I misremembered their labels. I also mouse left-handed, so right-left labels can be a bit awkward. I'm going to use "primary" "secondary" and "middle" from now on (which is what they get called in Preferences if you plug a generic 3 button mouse in). I certainly agree it is confusing. Especially because MAC OS did change to using crtl-click for "secondary mouse button" (i.e. right button for most people) in Leopard. Which is what confused Jeremy. And means that X11 will need to emulate mouse buttons differently from MAC OS, because we need ctrl for other things, as you point out. Under Tiger, Apple's X11 did use the same emulation for secondary mouse button as MAC OS (command-click). XDarwin/Xorg allowed you to choose. Personally, I prefer to use trackpad actions as mouse buttons, and a two-finger tap on newer trackpads does give a seconary mouse button click. However, there is no way in MAC OS to tap a middle button so there is no point discussing it here. But it does mean I only need to emulate one mouse button for x11. Having it configurable would make a lot of sense, I could use cmd-click for middle button and leave option/alt free to be meta for emacs (for example). -- Viv
By all means make this configurable, but Jeremy, please don't make ctrl-click = button2 or button3 by default. It is needed for ctrl-button1. Until now, fortunately, I don't see this happening in 2.3.1_beta1, I see it only in the wrong text in the Preferences, where it is written that one should "Hold Option or Control while clicking to activate the middle or right mouse buttons".
Please, please, don't do this!
-- Martin
________________________________________________ Dr Viv Kendon http://quantum.leeds.ac.uk/~viv tel: +44 113 343 4864 Physics and Astronomy Quantum Information Group University of Leeds