Mousekeys alternatives?

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

My battered optical mouse finally quit (is why I write so much right
now, it limits most of the other stuff I'm meant to be doing).


Got replacents now. I think there were a couple of posts where Thanatoid
mentioned mice but I can't find them to reply to. Basically, if anyone hasn't
tried opticals, there's a good chance to try, eBay seller Blarney-Jon in
Ireland. These mice are made there, too, and they're straight from a factory
as OEM supplies it looks like, so you'll need a USB to PS2 adapter if you
aren't using it on USB.. They're extremely good value, and take a beating
over more than a year before they give up. They work really well with the
Logitech 'Mouseware' driver v8.62. Hyperjump enabled. That's the best
combination I found for mouse control in W98, and I tried a few. I know there
are really cheap mice, but more than ten times the quality at double the
price has to be the best compromise I know. Opticals never need maintenance,
until a button switch fails or something else breaks. When I had a ball mouse
I could only imagine tracking like these have, too.

In message ,
Lostgallifreyan writes:
[]
as OEM supplies it looks like, so you'll need a USB to PS2 adapter if you
aren't using it on USB.. They're extremely good value, and take a beating
[]
I _think_ I am correct in saying that it has to be a mouse (or keyboard)
designed to work with both interfaces: just having a USB to PS/2 adapter
_doesn't_ guarantee operation.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Solution: a more subtle problem

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

The button replacement switches can be gotten, among other
places, from www.mouser.com [sic] and they cost about 50 cents
each. They are made by Omron in Japan, and are probably superior
to whatever your mouse had when you bought it. Anyone with basic
soldering skills can change them.

Of course, you should open your mouse and make sure you are
getting the exact correct switch, but I don't think they gave
changed. What's changed is the stupid scroll wheel and the
optical/laser "improvement".

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

In message ,
Lostgallifreyan writes:
[]
as OEM supplies it looks like, so you'll need a USB to PS2 adapter if you
aren't using it on USB.. They're extremely good value, and take a beating
[]
I _think_ I am correct in saying that it has to be a mouse (or keyboard)
designed to work with both interfaces: just having a USB to PS/2 adapter
_doesn't_ guarantee operation.

True but I'm fairly sure these are designed for both. The seller spoke of
selling some for laptop machines without the adapters, so they surely work
without, somehow. Also, they come with adapters, I forgot that because I
already have spares so I didn't think about that point when I posted before.
(And I'd only just got them and posted quickly).

thanatoid wrote in
:

Of course, you should open your mouse and make sure you are
getting the exact correct switch, but I don't think they gave
changed. What's changed is the stupid scroll wheel and the
optical/laser "improvement".


Already do. Five at a time from RS Components. By the time my mice die
they've usually had a switch or two replaced, but once there are tiny cracks
in the PCB or chips in the plastic that combine to make poor or erratic
contact even when a switch or PCB trace was recently fixed, it looks more fun
to replace all. I get real mileage out of these..


The optical bit is an improvement, really it is. It's a bright LED, not a
laser, very narrow bandwidth light but not coherent (no speckle). I don't
know how it tracks, but likely a small 4-quadrant silicon photocell with an
acrylic waveguide that uses internal reflection to send and collect the
light. I can use it on the arm of a chair, where the only previous device
that works was a £40 trackball! Not having to hold it in certain ways to get
clean tracking really reduces the stress. I used to grip mice so hard in an
effort to keep them tracking well, that it hurt to use them, but the optical
ones totally ease that problem. I never have to get tetchy about a failure to
precisely point to something even on surfaces so crude that no ball mouse
could work at all, let alone have to clean the innards every few hours.

And at the current price this isn't a luxury item... I felt like I had my
money's worth when they used to cost ten times what they cost now.

thanatoid wrote in
:

the stupid scroll wheel

Once you get used to hovering over some general area in Media Player Classic,
or 1by1, and using that as a volume control, or clicking in a spin control
and being able to quickly home in on a new numeric value be it two or twenty
integers distant, you may repent of that view.

A simple knob or slider is basic to ALL electronics with proportional
controls, EXCEPT for a computer! Given that the scroll wheel lets us point to
some control, based on the assumption that we are only likely to tweak one at
a time, the scroll wheel is a very good idea. It took me far less time to get
into it that to wonder how I'd done without it before, and I didn't waste
much time on that either. Using it as a third button for double clicks helps
too. No misfires that way. All round stress reduction...

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

snip

The optical bit is an improvement, really it is. It's a
bright LED, not a laser, very narrow bandwidth light but
not coherent (no speckle). I don't know how it tracks, but

At one time I bought a Genius mouse (I know, but there was
nothing else in the corner store), and the thing flashing its
red LED's whenever my hand approached it drove me insane. Since
the buttons were also cheap Chinese crap, I just put it away.
For the price, it wasn't even worth going back to the store to
argue about having to press buttons more than once to get a
result.

Yeah, I didn't think it was a laser, but you never know. That's
what they /call/ them. The magic word. I remember when a laser
pointer cost $300. The world sure has gone to hell since then.

AFA scroll wheels, on one hand I agree, and there is nothing I
miss more than potentiometers and similar rotating devices to
control electronics. Having to press several tiny buttons in the
exactly correct order, half the time going where you do NOT want
to, and having to start all over, is a nightmare, no more, no
less.

One might argue the scroll wheel is a step in the right
direction, but only a small device with six or so scroll wheels
would be /really/ useful - but also confusing. Speaking of six
scroll wheels, a fully ergonomic handpad, one for each hand,
whether with buttons or scroll wheels or trackballs or a
combination thereof, possibly with all those as plugin modules
in case you actually WANT ten scroll wheels for some
application, and that does NOT cost $800 /might/ be a solution.

The fact we still have to drag around an idiotic piece of
plastic and click when its tiny asymmetrical arrow is pointed at
something is beyond retarded, whether there is a ball or an LED
or a laser inside. Nor do I think anything will change soon - I
still laugh about "natural keyboards" giving people more wrist
injuries than the regular ones.

And I do NOT think swishing your finger across the screen of
your cellphone or iPad, neither of which I own nor intend to
ever get, is the answer either. And I can just imagine trying to
do image editing with voice commands.

I have an old graphic tablet with a stylus and that actually
works pretty well as an all-purpose mouse but the "left click"
button is not well-placed ergonomically. And the spring inside
is wonky and not replaceable.

I used to like trackballs, have two, one wireless, and still use
them sometimes, when I need a change.

But as much as I hate to say it, NO mouse design has ever
improved on the MS serial mouse ver 2.0A. (The shape of ver 1
might have been identical, I don't believe I ever saw one.)
That's what I still use. Fortunately, my "newest" computer (7
yrs old) has 2 serial ports. I have no idea how well a serial-
USB adapter would work.

I hate all this stuff, I really do. I miss taking walks in the
mountains and drinking from tiny streams of pure ice-cold water.
I miss food that was actually food. I remember when airline
cutlery was stainless steel. I miss being able to take an
airplane without feeling like a pig in a cage surrounded by guys
with guns under their jackets.

And as much as I hate people, I also miss people actually
talking to each other. Now, if anyone DOES talk to anyone else,
AOT "texting" or using a cellphone (more and more people I know
have NO land lines at all), it is usually ABOUT their new
cellphone or iPad. It's sickening. And I hate the internet more
and more every day.

It's all so ridiculous.

thanatoid wrote in
:

At one time I bought a Genius mouse (I know, but there was
nothing else in the corner store), and the thing flashing its
red LED's whenever my hand approached it drove me insane. Since
the buttons were also cheap Chinese crap, I just put it away.
For the price, it wasn't even worth going back to the store to
argue about having to press buttons more than once to get a
result.


These are better, trust me, I couldn't stand that either. If these behaved
like that I'd have stamped on them. The light is all but invisible, it's not
for show on the top (I got rid of one like that too, it wasn't even a light
for tracking. These are, the light is purely functional, on a dark surface
you very rarely get to see it let alone notice it in use.

The seller deliberately avoids the nastier Chinese mice. Not hard, he lives
in Ireland, same place that made them. The button action is clean, very
stable, and the wires aren't the kind that rip apart as easily as soft woll
either.

One might argue the scroll wheel is a step in the right
direction, but only a small device with six or so scroll wheels
would be /really/ useful - but also confusing. Speaking of six
scroll wheels, a fully ergonomic handpad, one for each hand,
whether with buttons or scroll wheels or trackballs or a
combination thereof, possibly with all those as plugin modules
in case you actually WANT ten scroll wheels for some
application, and that does NOT cost $800 /might/ be a solution.


I've considered such a device too, but as a musical instrument control. I
thought of it based on a cross between sliders, and trumpet valves. But for
general computer use I wouldn't want it, as you say, confusing. The GUI's
business is to group the controls on a virtual surface. (Stuff like wxLua
lets us build our own interfaces too, even if we don't know C and all the
elaborate complier systems out there). But once I have that set of controls,
I know I'll only tweak one, even if it's one after the other, fast. The
SpinControl is a very neat tool, part textbox, part up/down buttons, and
nothing beats clicking in one of those, then scrolling to get the value.
Those controls (ideally, and usually in practise) can be coded to take text
representations of the internal value too, so this method is as close as I
ever saw to thinking about the selection and it magically happening. Almost
all other methods including direct numeric entry are clumsy in comparison. If
the mouse didn't track so well, this too would be annoying as a data entry
method, but as it is, it works very well, especially on large control
surfaces like those in CakeWalk, and I used wxLua to code a DX7 (synthesizer)
editor entirely on the strenght of this ability. It's faster and easier than
on the original DX7 because my finger is always within an inch of what
amounts to the data entry slider.

The fact we still have to drag around an idiotic piece of
plastic and click when its tiny asymmetrical arrow is pointed at
something is beyond retarded, whether there is a ball or an LED
or a laser inside. Nor do I think anything will change soon - I
still laugh about "natural keyboards" giving people more wrist
injuries than the regular ones.


I guess the problem is how fast we can adapt to it as an extebsion of the
body. 'Ergonomics' sucks for the same reason that 'smart' psychoacoustics
sucks. Only works well for those who can adapt specifically to it. It's
easier for US to adapt to a situation than for us to to imagine we can force
a situation to adapt to US. If the the reverse were true we'd all be doctors,
surgeons even.

And I do NOT think swishing your finger across the screen of
your cellphone or iPad, neither of which I own nor intend to
ever get, is the answer either. And I can just imagine trying to
do image editing with voice commands.


I found touchscreens weird. But so long as they have precision they can help.
A finger is rarely any good. A stylus is fiddly, but it works. Large
touchscreens like ELO's type (expensive unless you get extremely lucky on
eBay) are good, especially the surface acoustic wave types which armour the
screen at the same time as giving the most stable sense method, while not
dimming the view. I decided to leave mine hooked up to sense touch after
getting the mice sorted. There are moments when I know exactly what to touch,
faster than I can think of any other way to make it happen.

I have an old graphic tablet with a stylus and that actually
works pretty well as an all-purpose mouse but the "left click"
button is not well-placed ergonomically. And the spring inside
is wonky and not replaceable.

I considered a tablet but if the drawn surface doesn't correlate directly
with screen pixels as an overlay, I can't use it. I can move a drawn line ok,
just as with a mouse, but starting a line in some precise location, that's
another matter. I might as well blindfold myself and start shooting at it,
for all the good I can do.

I used to like trackballs, have two, one wireless, and still use
them sometimes, when I need a change.


I like then too. It's the expense that puts me off them. I stll obsessed with
the mechanics too (and the materials are amazing, in those things, lowest
friction on any polymer I ever saw, and tiny nuggets of some substance that
may or may not be industrial diamonds a mm wide, and polished).

These optical mice amaze me even more though, because for the first (and
only) time, I ceased to obsess over the mechanics, till something broke
badly. I trust them to work, like I trust my own fingers. That's the only way
it can feel better than some dumb-arse prosthetic.

But as much as I hate to say it, NO mouse design has ever
improved on the MS serial mouse ver 2.0A. (The shape of ver 1
might have been identical, I don't believe I ever saw one.)
That's what I still use. Fortunately, my "newest" computer (7
yrs old) has 2 serial ports. I have no idea how well a serial-
USB adapter would work.


These opticals are deliberately staying close to that. But what they add
works. The basic shape and proprtion of keys, etc, is more similar to the
first mice than to anythign that has happened since. No weird 'ergonomic'
assymetry, so they'd work just as well lefthanded, so long as the driver can
support the swap, which the Logitech driver can.

I hate all this stuff, I really do. I miss taking walks in the
mountains and drinking from tiny streams of pure ice-cold water.
I miss food that was actually food. I remember when airline
cutlery was stainless steel. I miss being able to take an
airplane without feeling like a pig in a cage surrounded by guys
with guns under their jackets.

And as much as I hate people, I also miss people actually
talking to each other. Now, if anyone DOES talk to anyone else,
AOT "texting" or using a cellphone (more and more people I know
have NO land lines at all), it is usually ABOUT their new
cellphone or iPad. It's sickening. And I hate the internet more
and more every day.

It's all so ridiculous.



Dig your heels in, ignore the screams of 'UPGRADE UPGRADE UPGRADE', and those
who feel the need to do the happy little Microsoft dance, and it's amazing
how much of all that goes away. You know, somewhere, I think people still use
spades to dig stuff. Yep, I did that not so long ago. Works for me. All
the iPad owners in all the world will think I'm a luddite, but I know more
about computers than most of them ever will. And I used to hate them too. So
I learned to make them an extension of me, instead of letting their makers
force me to become an extension of them.

And like the simpler forms of mouse and keyboard, the best chance of making
something likely to work as an extension to other people who think
differently, is keep it simple, pare it down to the essentials, so what we
see is what we get, and we can add extras easily, knowing what, where, and
how to do it. Everyone thinks this way about their homes. If people were
compelled to live in houses as they do with computers, many would choose to
live in the streets, or become nomads, than live in a gilded cage that they
have no control of. Human spirit rebels against that. Microsoft's 'service
model' is doomed because they won't accept that. So it won't go on getting
worse forever.