🚀 go-pugleaf

 bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) writes:
>A program doesn't have to know -- and, actually, shouldn't know --
>what input device the user is using.  Absolute devices such as
>graphics tablets typically have the interface in hardware; they move
>from place to place by simulating a corresponding sudden mouse
>movement.

Ah, but this particular digitizer communicated via the serial
port and gave it's output in the form  +/-NNN.NNN +/-NNN.NNNB

it would have been quite a project to build a hardware interface
for it as opposed to simply writing a D/A that would accept the
serial input and control the cursor.

And no, we could not buy an off-the-shelf tablet - it had to be
a sonic digitizer. In this case, at that time, moving the mouse pointer was
the only way (short of building the above mentioned inerface)
to accomplish what we needed.

In any case, this discussion started out (I believe) by someone saying
that Apple SHOULD have provided the capability - I say he/she was
right - there should be system calls, perhaps with strong warnings about
how it doesn't follow HI guidelines, but the capability should be there.


-- 
Mike Schechter, Computer Engineer,Institute Sensory Research, Syracuse Univ.
InterNet: isr@rodan.acs.syr.edu   Bitnet: SENSORY@SUNRISE