On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 09:40:08AM -0800, Joshua Juran wrote: > On Dec 21, 2010, at 8:18 AM, H.Merijn Brand wrote: > >> If I have to use the mouse, let it be as simple as >> possible: a big ball for movements, three buttons - for which the >> middle should paste and do nothing else > > I couldn't think of a better way to make X11 hostile to new users. > > "Let's see... left click? Works as expected... right click? Okay, a > menu pops up. I wonder what middle click does... AAAAAAGH! What the > hell just happened?" > > Dumping arbitrary text into a window (which might be a shell) doesn't > exactly encourage users to explore the interface. I guess they're > supposed to read the manual instead. > > It's one thing for an experienced user to enable this behavior on his > own system, but innocent people shouldn't be exposed to this.
If there's one thing I'm missing after switching to a MacBook, it's the copy-and-paste functionality that doesn't require a combination of keys with a mouse or trackpad. Really, select with mouse, cmd-C, click where to paste, cmd-V? That's vastly inferiour to select with mouse, middle click where to paste (the latter may also be shift-insert). Luckely, when just copy-pasting inside X, I can still use a three button mouse, but I need cmd-C when selecting from a non-X application, and cmd-V when pasting to a non-X application. And there's no shift-insert on a MacBook. I do not care if someone considers a middle click to be "hostile to new users". Catering for new users isn't the end-all be-all of design. If your users are most of their time using your application/os/whatever "new users", you're doing it wrong - it means they stop using your product shortly after becoming experienced. I've used X for over 20 years, far longer than the time I was an X-newbie. I love my middle click. Abigail
