Are UI developers all left handed?

[Dale Amon]

On Wed, Aug 08, 2012 at 01:52:45PM -0400, John Moser wrote:
> I hate Unity but I think I'd have trouble making a decent argument,
> given the above.  Really I just want to know why EVERYTHING except
> Windows (which doesn't do anything useful in the first place) puts the
> useful stuff in the top left when it's ergonomically and
> biomechanically [B-B-B-BUZZWORD C-C-C-COMBO!] easier to move your hand
> away and outward from your body.  I don't think we can really blame
> Canonical for that.

I can tell you the historical reasons. All windowing systems
began with their coordinate systems with 0,0 in the upper left
because that is where the scan lines begin. Lines are written
from left to right, top to bottom.

It was more difficult to correctly set the position of the upper
right corner because there was not always a good way to get that
info. And if your key controls were at (XMAX,0) and you got the
screen size wrong, you were stuffed.

Dale Amon
Who once in a time long ago and far away 
worked on a windowing system for a display 
graphic terminal output controlled by PDP-11 
assembly code.