Left Hand Mouse

[ARTHUR@GUINEVERE.tamu.edu (Arthur Keen)]

The mail was a bit slow today,..., so to vary your daily ritual, I
suggest moving the mouse to the left hand side of the console.

Input to choose-variables, and accepting-values menus, can become very
tedious for user interfaces that require high degree of mouse control,
and a great deal of numeric input, for example in a CAD system. 

I found that the following factors cause a great deal of unneccessary
hand movement from mouse to keyboard and back, and breaks the
concentration of the designer.
 
a) The mouse is for all intents & purposes, useless after a field has
	been selected, so the CTRL, & META keys have to be used.
b) You have to press return before clicking on a new field.(In the mac,
	clicking on a new field causes a return)
c) The return key and numeric keypads are normally on the right side of
	the keyboard. 

Consequently, I decided to switch the mouse to the left hand side:

I did this about three months ago, and it has worked very well. The
transition took three days, and I am now of the opinion, that the mouse
should be on the left side. (Strangely enough, plug for the mouse
adapter is also on the left hand side of my console) This ability to
switch sides, has also been invaluable to me in giving demos. 

I hope this does not cause a slowdown of productivity in SLUG. 

Arthur.

P.S.

In S-geometry, or to be more precise, the color system, there is a
	tv:choose-number &rest args
function that generates a pop up numeric pad, which can be used quite
	nicely with choose-variable-values: 

(tv:choose-variable-values 
  '((height "Inter Floor Height ft" :choose-number :max-value 50)))