Evolution of the Apple Mouse

[Dave McGuire]

On 9/30/10 11:38 AM, Doc wrote:
>>> Hmm, I think X windows had something similar at one time - middle
>>> button to
>>> drag the bar, left button to automatically go up and page and right
>>> button
>>> to go down a page (if I remember right, it did jump by a screenful,
>>> rather
>>> than smaller increments)
>>
>> Interesting. I have played with a fairly primitive X setup, no modern
>> window managers and so on, and yes, it did some of that, but I'd not
>> registered the direction-switching bit, which (for my money) is the
>> core usability feature. ISTR going "ooh, it's like RISC OS", playing
>> to see if the features I liked were there, and being disappointed -
>> but I might have missed it.
>
> If I remember rightly, that was a feature of one of the window managers,
> rather than the X server itself, but it was indeed a feature. I want to
> say it was either twm or mwm, and I'm pretty sure it was configurable.

   It's not part of the window manager, it's part of the "toolkit". 
That word has a slightly special meaning in X; basically it's a 
higher-level set of widgets that sits atop raw Xlib. 
Typically-implemented widgets are buttons, menus, and...scrollbars.

   The behavior that Jules mentions is specific to the scrollbars 
implemented by Xt, for "X toolkit", which is a standard toolkit that 
ships with X11.  Nowadays, though, most apps use other toolkits like 
GTK+ or Qt.

> And just to pick a nit, it's "X" or "The X Window System", but never
> ever "X Windows". :^)

   Thank you. =)  I was debating mentioning it but didn't want to sound 
too pedantic.  I'm glad you did. :)  "It's a window system called X, not 
a system called X Window".

             -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL