Fujitsu Pen Tablets

Dan Ingalls Dan.Ingalls at disney.com
Thu May 24 20:55:51 UTC 2001


"Noel J. Bergman" <noel at devtech.com> wrote...

>All of these devices appear to have plenty of screen real estate, processing
>power, and memory.  But Squeak's mouse-button-centric UI is an issue for
>usability. Even though Squeak works fine with a 1-button mouse, it uses a
>keyboard to map back to a 3-button mouse [red == button-1, yellow ==
>button-2/option+click, blue === button-3/cmd+click].
>
>Based upon my experiences to-date with the iPAQ, I'd say that Squeak UI
>needs more work on stylus-centric devices before it is entirely usable on a
>device that lacks a multi-button mouse and/or a keyboard with which to
>simulate the effect.  Right now there are too many things that require a
>3-button mouse and/or keyboard to manipulate the UI.  Images with Genie just
>don't seem to be mature enough, yet.  If someone is aware of some useful
>change sets, please let me know.
>
>So far, I haven't seen a stylus-centric UI that out does the Newton for
>usability.

There are two quite independent issues.  One is how to do it all with one mouse button, and I think that's not so hard.  The other is how to do it without pen-up tracking.  This is also do-able, but a number of places in Squeak need to be rethought in this regard.

I think someone put out a goodie a while ago (or maybe I just dreamed it) that makes Squeak pretend there is no pen-up tracking even with a normal mouse.  You can see the cursor move (since you can see the pen in your hand), but the mouse coordinates don't change until the button goes down.  This would be a great motivator for addressing this particular problem.

	- Dan






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