Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 03:58:11 -0700 (PDT) From: Jim Dennis <jim@starshine.org> To: zach@blizzard.gaffaneys.com (Zach Heilig) Cc: zounds@INNOSOFT.COM, root@synwork.com, questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Mouse Outside of X Message-ID: <199607121058.DAA02125@starshine> In-Reply-To: <87ivbuur3a.fsf@freebsd.gaffaneys.com> from "Zach Heilig" at Jul 11, 96 09:45:45 pm
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> > zounds@INNOSOFT.COM writes: > > > On Thu, 11 Jul 1996, Mike K. wrote: > > > > Is there a way to use my mouse outside of X. It would be nice to be able > > > to cut/copy/paste in my shell. I know when I ran Linux, mouse was > > > available from the shell. TIA > > > You werent running the shell when you were using the mouse in linux Yes, he probably was. I've used my mouse on Linux systems which had never had an Xlib or bin pass over their filesystems. > > Actually, from what I saw from my friends screen (he seems to like > Linux..), the functionality is in the console driver. The button > mappings were the same as you'd expect under X. Not in the console driver (though there is probably some kernel level support). This function is provided by the old 'selection' or the more current gpm (generic protocol for mice??) by Allesandro Rubini (based on the selection code by Andrew Haylett). Midnight commander includes support for gpm -- so that one gets mouse support for the app -- just like the old Norton Commander for DOS. Any time a non-mouse aware (gpm) app is running gpm defaults back to it's role of allowing the operator to 'select' (mark/copy) and 'paste' any text that's displayed on the console. This is particularly when viewing info in one interactive (curses) program in one VC and needing to quote it in another. <GUI-bashing> (You don't need X for this folks -- DESQview had support for text mode "mark & transfer" over ten years ago. I'd like to play with the console code in Linux to find/add hooks keyboard support for this -- and real backscrolling). Of course DV also supported multiple, resizable, overlapping, multi-tasking text mode windows before Microsoft ever heard of Xerox PARC --and DV offered a feature that I still don't get in *any* other environment (GUI or not, under DOS, Windows, Linux or FreeBSD) -- task sensitive keyboard macros and definitions that can cross task boundaries and perform mark and transfer. I once saved a Quarterdeck customer from several thousand dollars of hairy custom programming in about 10 minutes of telephone tech support time (while I worked for them). His problem was that he was switching from one contact management package to a new one. Each had a proprietary file format. Neither had an export or import function. He had a couple years (tens of thousands) of records in the old one (TeleMagic?). The solution was simple: open both packages in different tasks and close or "hide" all other windows; bring up a record display in the old one, and a record entry form in the new package; create a macro to mark each field from the old and transfer it to the corresponding field in the new (this converts one record) record another macro to save the new record, switch back to the other task, cycle to the next record, and call the first macro. (These macros were simply done interactively). Now the user was instructed to just hit the second macro key about 50 times; come back in five minutes; and repeat as necessary. The whole job kept his machine busy for a weekend with minimal hand holding on his part. The machine was a 386 with about 4Mb RAM. I'd really like to regain that sort of power and simplicity under Linux/FreeBSD. </GUI-bashing> > I noticed in a different reply that this is supposed to go into 2.2. > Will the mouse give xterm-like events, so my emacs menu's will work > :-) or would that be impossible? (I am currently unable to run X, it > has something to do with disk space, and non-VGA display hardware).. Linux emacs doesn't exihibit support for gpm -- I suspect that this would require source patches to the binaries (elisp code would probably not be enough). Perhaps someone is porting gpm to FreeBSD. Maybe someone will also bring 'loadkeys' along for the ride. (hmm...adding gpm support to lynx, tin, and elm would be cool too).
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