OT: rodent usage

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

It would appear that on Sep 25, Sylviane et Perry White did say:

> On Wednesday 24 September 2008 19:45, Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:
> > OK perhaps I was being a bit harsh, But it felt harsh to me. It seams
> > like all control settings are going to be primarily made with the rodent
> > in hand. Which annoys me a bit because I lack some of the hand/eye/screen
> > coordination needed to use the dang thing well. I do a little better with
> > track balls but even then it's usually easier for me to type 30 or forty
> > words than to get the gosh durned rodent accurately pointed at anything I
> > need to click on. (and that's not to say I consider myself a typist... If
> > it weren't for spell check, even I wouldn't know what I typed most of the
> > time...)
> Joe,
> I have a feeling you have past the point where a computer novice gets lost 
> when the mouse reaches the edge of the table before the pointer reaches its 
> target (very funny).

What? You mean I didn't have to get a bigger desk and a mouse with an
extra long cord after all???? <snicker>

Yeah I do hope I'm past that point. Actually I'm not so much a novice as
set in my ways...

> Also using shortcuts instead of mouse is good practice.
> 
> Still there are cases where the easiest way is to move the pointer or focus.
> I don't know what applies in your case but I would consider:
> 1) "Ball" mice may not roll smoothly, sometimes they need cleaning (not just 
> the ball as manufacturer tell, but the shafts it rools against)

That's a big 10-4, In fact my track ball does sometimes have that
problem. Every now and again I tip it upside down (catch the ball) and
spray the Redmond out of it's guts with a can of air... The rodent usually
works a little smoother afterwards. But it still doesn't help me keep the
pointer in between the lines... Though to tell the truth I may have
exaggerated (slightly) as at times I can make it work a little easier.
but if I spend much time with it, my hands start to go numb, and once
that happens it's a hopeless cause. Funny that, I can keypunch for hours
without such problems, But it only takes a few minutes trying to control
the mouse... <sigh>

> 2) Settings for the mouse may be adapted to your needs (speed, acceleration)

I do slow it down some. But if I gotta drag n drop something with it set
too dang slow, the finger on the button is bound to wiggle before I get
there...

> 3) Tabulator and arrows (up, down, left, right), in conjunction with other 
> keys (alt, shift, ctrl...) may change the focus... sorry, can't tell you all 
> the details because *I* rather use the mouse than remember this stuff.

If you mean inside an application to move between fields and/or tabs,
then I think it usually works But I keep forgetting when to switch to the
arrow keys... I put a lot more faith in a labeled fields with an
underscored character in the fieldname being reached via
<alt>+{the underscored character} 

> 4) It is even possible to move the pointer anywhere without a mouse, I just 
> don't remember how :0(

Actually I do <Now>. I found some of this a long time ago but never had
a clue how to make it work. Which since it was such a pain to find the
complete info when I googled "kde keyboard mouse emulation" I'll list what
I learned here for the benefit of others...

Actually there are two different places where mouse emulation / navigation
is mentioned in the old kcontrol that I'm used to... And you
just inspired me to spend some serious time googling the
subject. Eventually I pieced together that the item kde calls
mouse emulation in the shortcut keys assignment screen (usually
set to <alt>+<F12>) will temporarily tie your cursor keys to
the mouse pointer. The space-bar will generate one single
click and exit mouse emulation. And that is all it can do.
Whereas if you go into the peripherals -> mouse -> mouse navigation,
you can activate num pad mouse nav. Which is then toggled on/off
with a three key <ALT>+<SHIFT>+<numlock>. When on, there are
several control key combination that If used with great care
can do the job. IE all the number keys except 5 & 0 move
the pointer.  "Set" {but not click} left, middle, or right button
emulation with "/", "*", & "-" respectively then click with "5" or
double click with "+" The "0" is supposed to emulate holding
the button for drag n drop, the "." is supposed to let go.
But I didn't get stable results from all of that when I tested it.
But if I only use { / 5 } to click, { / 55 } to double-click/mark-word
{ / 555 } to triple-click/mark-line and { * 5 } to paste-marked. While
leaving the other click controls alone I get fairly predictable results
in Hardy... If that works as well elsewhere IE Intrepid, Sabayon, &
OpenSuSE then it will be worth teaching myself to use it consistently.

 
> I hope some of this can help you, but you may have had a necessity to learn 
> all this much better than I.
 
 Actually you motivated me to spend a few hours finding the info I lacked
 on Mouse Navigation... Thanks!
 
> As a side-note, for a seamless integration of your mails in this list, since 
> you talk about spell checkers and you appear  (I don't want to use the word 
> "seam"   ;0)		) to use this very word "seam" quite often, I will
> advise you not to trust your spell checker (it doe's not spell the end
> of things :P	because of a spell casted on all primitive spell checkers so
> that they are unable to take the context into account to flag out a
> correctly spelled world that shouldn't belong here) on that world and use
> "seem" or "appear" instead. Your wife may use the word  "seam" if she is
> a dressmaker or she does some sewing.  YMMV     	;P

Touche! Actually I don't completely trust my spell checker. I know its a
relatively primitive one that doesn't include context checking... But
for similar reasons to why mouse intensive controls bother me I find
most gui spellcheckers annoy me with the need to use corded keys to
select from the pop-up list of suggestions ignore add etc... And often
there is no way, without resorting to the mouse, to actually select the 2nd
suggested word instead of the first. Plus they tend to put their pop-up
dialog box right squarely in front of the context I need to determine
which if any of the suggestions I likely intended to say. AND I prefer
to compose with vim, thus I use the following key bindings in my .vimrc
file to spell check my text with an admittedly simplistic spellchecker
That none-the less catches better than 90 percent of my typos...

:map s :w^M:w! $spellfile^M:!aspell -c $spellfile^M
:map S :w^MG:r $spellfile^Mkd1G

Of course the ^M in the .vimrc are the actual tokens vim generates with 
<ctrl>+V <enter>...

-- 
|   ~^~   ~^~
|   <o>   <o>	     Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
|	^		J(tWdy)P
|    ~\___/~	     <<jtwdyp at ttlc.net>>