Well . . .
Xerox's Alto and Dorado were the first commercial systems with mice, and used the button colors we see in Smalltalk and Squeak today. The first widely-distributed mouse-equipped personal computer was the Mac, the design of which leaned heavily on the private demonstrations Apple's people saw of Smalltalk at PARC, but the Mac, of course, had just a single button. Microsoft made the two-button mouse a standard, though there have been other offshoots with as many as a dozen or more buttons.
The three-button mouse is finally once again coming to the forefront, most commonly in the wheel-mouse optimized for internet browsing.
Frankly, I think the mouse button issue is far and away more confusing in terms of platform independance than the Ctrl vs. Alt issue.
Gary Fisher Sent at 9:04AM EDT
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Hinsley" jhinsley@telinco.co.uk To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2001 8:08 AM Subject: Re: {bad habits] Squeak for Windows - Ctrl instead of Alt key
G.J.Tielemans@dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:
- Wasn't the design of the red yellow and blue buttons not just the
solution for platform (mouse) independency?
I *think* all mice were red, yellow and blue, once upon a time. Then some folk started bodging together OSs which could only handle two mice buttons and the rot set in. I think it's a tragedy: using the middle (yellow) button to copy and paste is a real time saver.
As to the Alt & Ctrl keypress debate, I'm actually happy enough with it as it is. While I've no objection to some swap around appearing as a preference, I'd like Squeak, by default, to operate the same on all OSs.
Cheers
John
-- If you don't care about your data, like file systems which automagically destroy themselves and have money to burn on 3rd party tools to keep your system staggering on, Microsoft (tm) have the Operating System for you.