building a mouse trap

[Miller Puckette]

David Z has done something good along these lines: he's fixed it on the Mac so
that if your mouse cursor hits the top of the screen it just jumps down so you
can keep dragging it up!

Others have invented rules like dx * (1 + dy * dy) (so that the further off
center you drag the faster it goes) but it's counterintuitive for users.

I don't know how to pull David's trick off in TK; but I think it's easy
enough for externs to track the mouse by imitating the way the number
box does it.

On another topic, I've noticed that at least 5 people are interested in using
Pd with alternative front ends...  I'm working now on command-line options
to make this easier; I hope to put a "test" version (Linux only) out within a
week.  Oh yes, new "data" stuff too...

cheers
Miller

On Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 01:33:47AM +0200, pix wrote:
> hi there,
> 
> since there has been some chatting about gui stuff recently, i thought i'd
> mention something i've been thinking about a bit recently.
> 
> often i run into that situation where i'm dragging a number box, and i hit
> the edge of the display, and i have to stop dragging, move the mouse back
> to the number box and start dragging again. then i was thinking that it
> would be grat if, while dragging on a number box (or maybe a new kind of
> object) that the mouse got 'trapped' over the object, so that you could
> keep scrolling an infinite distance in any direction without beng limited
> by screen realestate.
> 
> i actually went out and got myself a trackball, hoping that i might be
> able to impliment this feature, and i would even be able to eliminate the
> inherent jerkiness off recentering the mouse when it reaches the edge of
> the mousemat.
> 
> thenn .. (are you still with me?... this is getting kind of long) i was
> thinking that it might also be useful to have this 'mouse trap' be able to
> maintain two values simultaneously, for the vertical and horizontal
> movement of the mouse. like the xy mouse reader objects in csound.
> 
> soanyhow, i was wondering if anyone had tried this, thought about it,
> wouldf like it etc? i havent played withh externals much, and i'm not sure
> if it's possible for an external to make the Xcalls that would be
> needed.
> 
> pix.
> 
> --
> This .sig last modified Thu Jul 01 00:00:00 GMT 1970
>