🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <16995@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) writes:
>In article <1990Jun5.091419.14219@portia.Stanford.EDU> canuck@portia.Stanford.EDU (William Stocker) writes:
>>I'm writing a Mac program in THINK Pascal 3.0, and need to force the
>>mouse to a particular screen location....
>>but there's a good purpose for it -- trust me!
>
>Besides, to have a program move the pointer for you is like having a
>robot grab your hand and move it around for you.  The pointer is the
>user's `hand': he should have free, unconstrained movement of it at
>all times.
>
>Tell me what, exactly, this `good purpose' is that you've thought up,
>and I and millions of other Netters will help you come up with a more
>proper way of doing it.

Well, X-Windows has a call to "warp" (as in warp drive) the mouse pointer.
Most X-based user interfaces think that if you put up a modal dialog box,
you should move the mouse pointer into the dialog (probably over the
default button) and restore its old position after the dialog goes away.

This is a religious question and should really be user-settable behavior.
(Hmm... it could probably be coded as an INIT, but it's beyond my skill.
Any takers?)
The Mac OS was designed for a small screen where one swipe of the mouse
could always get you to a dialog box in the middle of the screen.
X was designed for big displays where moving across the screen is
more tedious.

--Mike Rubin <mike@attunix.att.com>