As will probably be apparent from the image of the mode map below, we have added the ability to assign functions to the click and double-click of the Meta’s scroll wheel as well as to Scroll Up and Scroll Down. We intend to leave Scroll Up and Scroll Down blank on the default modes for most applications, since the scroll feature is usually utilized in some basic manner, but if you want to use them for something else, you certainly can. In this case, Escape is assigned to the scroll wheel click, Select All to the double-click, and scrolling up and down is left to the application’s control.
Sijy said on February 21st, 2010 , 3:48 am
Could you guys add links to these modes from the game list and application list pages so we can easily access them without having to search the blog in the future when it’s 5 pages down?
Now to rethink how I can use the scroll wheel as a button.
admin said on February 21st, 2010 , 8:54 am
That’s a good idea. We will do that.
Carl said on February 21st, 2010 , 6:24 pm
Any chance of a “paste text without formatting” rather than have to have paste special and the choose?
admin said on February 22nd, 2010 , 1:30 am
That’s a great point. I’ve never used Paste Special for anything but unformatted text myself. Anyhow, we’ve already swapped it out – the hotkey is Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V – and tested it successfully. Paste Unformatted Text will be the default for the B4 double-click on this mode and we’ll alter the graphic accordingly soon. Thanks for your contribution!
admin said on February 22nd, 2010 , 1:51 am
Okay, as can be seen from the revised image above, we’ve made three changes to the OpenOffice Writer default mode. First, Paste Unformatted Text has replaced Paste Special. This should save some pointless clicking. We have changed Undo from a key to a keypress, thus eliminating Redo on the double-click. This will let the user undo a series of unwanted actions with a single press if required. And third, we have switched Spell Check and Print Preview on T2. Spell check is now the click, and Print Preview the double-click.
Carl said on February 23rd, 2010 , 1:19 pm
Thank you for that – it is much appreciated. I’m looking forward to when the mouse can be delivered.
Another annoying feature that the operating systems I use have is the toggle between applications. Why are they trying to be clever by re-organizing the order of them compared with what is visible in the taskbar? That just makes it take longer if you have several windows open. Any chance of an application toggle that doesn’t re-organize stuff? That’s how all tabs work in explorers today, so it’s just the operating systems that haven’t figured out that it’s stupid to do as they do…
TheGZeus said on February 24th, 2010 , 1:59 am
@Carl: What do you mean re: the taskbar?
First of all, this application will have nothing to do with window management (which is what you’re talking about).
Second, I… don’t know what you’re talking about.
It happens to me alot. Could you go into detail, giving an example?
Keep in mind I left Windows for Linux 3 years ago, and left standard window managers about halfway through that, because I was sick of moving them around manually trying to fill the screen with important things.
Now I let StumpWM (there’s a screencast) handle that for me, and I haven’t had anything resembling a taskbar in all that time.
What I’m getting at is they can’t solve this problem, and all that modeware will need is to be aware of the program in use.
@admin: Hopefully there’s a useful way of communicating with modeware, so I can have Emacs tell it to change bindings, if need be.
Also, Linux has more modifiers than Windows, or even Mac. We have Alternate, Meta, super, Hyper, Shift, and Control and some keyboards have AltGr(which just means supporting UTF-8).
X is pretty well documented(20 year old program, after all).
racingfreak92 said on February 25th, 2010 , 1:45 am
An alternate that i would imagine would be more useful for students (i know it would for me) is changing B1 and B2 ( i hope im referring to the correct buttons). The alternate i suggest is:
B1: Bold, Subscript
B2: Italic, Superscript
admin said on February 25th, 2010 , 8:32 am
Why would Subscript and Superscript be more useful for students than Underline and Word Count?
Carl: Regarding the taskbar, we are in the process of trying to figure out an intelligent way to handle the Alt-Tab windows function so that Meta users can quickly and easily switch through applications when they are in Desktop Mode.
Carl said on February 25th, 2010 , 12:37 pm
Using an Alt+Tab example was just to illustrate the point I was making. The functionality should ideally be useful in all major operating systems. As it appears that work is ongoing on this, I won’t try to explain further at this time.
Carl said on February 25th, 2010 , 12:50 pm
Btw, word count is tremendously frequent to use when writing research, as all conferences and journals have word limits. I haven’t seen any such outlets allow subscript or superscript, so from a professional point of view – please don’t sub out word count (at least). Most students of the three universities I am affiliated with have word count limits on their submissions also. If you really want to put in super-/subscript, maybe some other place is better? On the topic of possible missing elements: how about justify instead of align right (align right is essentially only used for rare cases in Calc/Excel, while justify is used very often especially in two-column outlines of Write/Word). It would be perfect to have align left on click and justify on double click as well, given those two are so commonly used in flowing text. Maybe I’m the only one, but I also tend to use borders instead of underline, so if there are more out there that do so – maybe you could have insert footnote instead?
racingfreak92 said on February 25th, 2010 , 6:27 pm
In Office 2007 word count is a lot easier to access and the # of words you have is always displayed on the bottom status bar of the document (which you can also click to bring up the full word count box).
Underline is also not used very much for papers and in many cases italic can be used as a substitute. I know superscript and subscript are also not used often but when typing math notes or papers like i sometimes do, or chemical equations for science, its much clearer to format them correcting with the corresponding scripts. Thats just my 2 cents though.
I like the suggestion of switching out Right Align for Justify.
admin said on February 25th, 2010 , 8:56 pm
Okay, you’ve convinced us that Justify is more necessary than Right Align. We’re going to keep Word Count, though, at least in Writer Mode. We’ll probably drop it from Word since it’s already being displayed on the status bar.
WaterBoy said on February 26th, 2010 , 9:32 am
A couple of other frequently-used Word functions for consideration:
Insert Page/Section Break
View (edit) Header and Footer
A button to activate the Style selector would also be handy.
admin said on February 26th, 2010 , 9:35 am
The important question is what buttons would you remove in order to add these, Waterboy?
WaterBoy said on February 26th, 2010 , 11:01 am
Well, let’s see.
First is the Tab action on the joystick. Since most people use a mouse right-handed (and last I heard this mouse is only available in a right-handed model), that leaves the left hand free for keys on the left side of the keyboard — like Tab. And since the Tab mouse action is not a keypress, it would have to be pressed multiple times for repeats vice the keyboard keypress.
A similar case can be made for the Escape action on the wheel.
Since the Insert Break and Header/Footer functions are multiple actions and the Tab and Escape are single actions, it seems to make more sense to leave the latter two on the keyboard in favor of the others.
Style would just have to slide, I suppose. I personally use it far more than Thesaurus, but I don’t know if that’s common enough to warrant a replacement.
Carl said on March 2nd, 2010 , 5:42 pm
Is it an accident that we’re seeing Paste Special again instead of Paste Without Formatting?
timon37 said on March 2nd, 2010 , 9:09 pm
Hm i’ve got a few questions. Will it be possible to assign a button as a “modifier”? Meaning when you press it the actions/keys/macros under other buttons change. And will there be any major functionality differences between windows and linux drivers?
admin said on March 2nd, 2010 , 10:01 pm
Yes, we’ve fixed it. It is not currently possible to assign a button as a modifier, so at present you’re limited to around 46 commands or macros per mode. However, since all of the 50+ modes made to date are taking up much less space than we have allotted for them, we will probably be adding this capability in the future.
admin said on March 3rd, 2010 , 10:15 pm
@Timon37: The anwer to the question about any major functionality differences between windows and linux drivers is that the WarMouse Meta doesn’t use a driver at all, but the basic HID interface that exists in any operating system. So, once we find a way to get the communications between the software and the firmware to work properly on Linux and OS/X, there will not be any differences between the way the mouse and software operate together on the different operating systems.
TheGZeus said on March 5th, 2010 , 3:58 pm
@admin
Another thing to consider is the variety of interface/’desktop’ options on Linux, and how extensible many of them are.
I use a tiling window manager written in Lisp and it’d be nice to be able to use an api to tell the mouse to change default modes on different virtual desktops, if an app I use there perchance doesn’t have the ability to tell the mouse to change, for example.
Then there’s things like Emacs, which change their keybindings based on the ‘mode’ that the application is in. Again, it’s not that hard to have Emacs tell an external application what mode it’s in, but yeah.
Even if I have to write something to tell modeware what to do, that’s fine, an api spec for modeware would be fine. Though it probably wouldn’t be much harder to write a daemon that works without involving X…