The SpaceNavigator from 3dconnexion was what I was going to buy before I saw
the in-air mouse from Gyration. I've got a bad feeling about the mouse's
performance for CAD (based on price,) but I got to try.
I did see this Praying Mantis looking input device (pen mounted to a
parallelogram armature that swiveled on a base) that a guy was using in the
bonus materials of some CGI movie, (Incredibles?) I can't remember. It
looked one of a kind and very expensive.
On 6/15/07, Bob Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ben Barrett wrote:
> So, Xwindows experts: Anyone care to comment on how deeply X would have
> to be re-engineered to handle multiple points of input?
Oooh, ooh, I get to pretend I'm an expert! (-:
X already handles multiple input devices. At this very moment my
laptop has a trackpad, a trackpoint, and a USB mouse, and I can use
any/all of them to push the cursor around. (When I'm at home, I use
all those PLUS synergy to push it around from another computer's
mouse.)
But I think you're asking for multiple cursors. That's harder.
There's a deep relationship between the cursor focus and the keyboard
focus, and if you added more cursors, you'd have to define how
they all affect keyboard focus. Among other things.
I've worked with applications that used separate pointer input
devices, but they didn't access the device through X. For example,
AVS (Advanced Visualization System, www.avs.com) could use a Spaceball
(a 6-axis input device, www.3dconnexion.com) in addition to a mouse.
The mouse went through X, and the Spaceball always went directly to a
3D viewport.
I've seen CAD systems with similar things (mouse plus pen input), and
I've seen experienced users work them in both hands very productively.
Sorry, I can't remember the name of the CAD system. It was an
integrated HW/SW product from the 1980s.
But those are both specialized apps that bypass X for at least one of
their inputs.
--
Bob Miller K<bob>
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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