On Mon, 4 Mar 2002, John Hinsley wrote: 

> But I'd argue that the colour convention 
> 
> a.	Has history on it's side
> 
> b.	Is going to be easier to remember than the main/menu/halo convention.
> (Which already, IIRC, conflicts with VW's "naming convention" which I find a
> real PITB.)
> 
> The answer is really simple and completely mechanical: either take 3 pots of
> paint into class (the stuff we used to paint plastic model planes with is very
> good for this) or, if your students are messy/in a hurry, a packet of Ben Day
> Dots purchased for next to nowt from your local stationer. 

I agree with John - we should keep the colours. There are various ways to
switch the mouse buttons (e.g. in the settings panel of the OS mouse
driver, there are different mice, in laptops we often rather have a top
and bottom button; some people are left-handed). So I don't think that it
is too much burden for the user to find out which button is which and then
mark them with the colors. This eases writing platform (mouse-device) 
independet tutorials. I think John did a great job on

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2102
paragraph 'Squeaking Mice'

I think having the colors and even having them marked with paint on
the mouse eases teaching Squeak to children. It's easier to say
'press the red' button instead of 'press the left button' (which actually 
might be in fact the right button in some set-ups).

Additionaly the colors occur in the code and it would be a considerable
effort to change all that. 


What we need is consistency, i.e. not having
buttons swapped by _Squeak VM or Smalltalk code_ in the chaing of commands
from the physical mouse-click to the morph on the screen. If the buttons
are swapped in a logitech mouse utility is not our problem and 
that's left to the person who sets up a Squeak installation.


To ease set-up of Squeak in a class we would need a simple
MouseButtonTestMorph:

A subclass of Rectangle

red    click -> background color switches to red
yellow click ->                              yellow
blue   click ->                              blue    

Implementing this would actually be a nice exercise for a new squeaker.
(An old Squeaker like Bob Arning and Ned Konz would probably need 15
minutes, while a newbie would probably need an afternoon). It would
as well make a good topic for writing a tutorial.

Cheers
Hannes Hirzel