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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: mouse following buttons
From:       Jeff Roush <jeff () mousetool ! com>
Date:       2002-06-04 22:24:20
[Download RAW message or body]

This is getting farther OT, but what the hey ...

On Tuesday 04 June 2002 08:26 am, Kuba Ober wrote:
> I don't have RSI (well, I do sometimes feel like might start having it, but
> luckily it's nothing persistent), 

If you feel occasional pain, you should really see someone about it, and you 
should probably not wait.  RSI develops gradually.  Think "frog in boiling 
water".  Hopefully, any aches you have will only be occasional, but you need 
to develop good ergonomic habits now to make sure. One intense project with 
long hours could make the pain turn chronic.  Most people wait too long 
before seeing someone about RSI.  I know I did.

> but I consider mousetool an ugly hack
> around a hack. 

What hack is it a hack around?  I don't quite get your meaning on this one.

> RSI is bad enough, but you make it worse because people have
> to *wait* to get stuff done.

MouseTool's pauses don't affect my productivity.  They don't divert my 
attention, and they don't waste significant amounts of time.  It might help 
to see someone actually use the program to believe this, but it really does 
become very inconspicuous with just a little practice.

> Changing clicking into waiting -- for those with RSI. Now that's a good way
> to advertise this misfeature :-(...
>
> Get a foot pedal and connect it in parallel to your mouse button. You can
> get two of them if you need LMB/RMB functionality. 

RSI is a funny thing; actions that relieve one person's pain may be 
debillitating to someone else.  Foot switches and foot mice are cool ideas, 
and do help many people.  But after living with this damn pain for over ten 
years, I've learned enough about my own body to worry that I might develop 
RSI in my legs.

This is not as crazy as it may sound; my aching is not simply in my hands and 
wrists, but also occurs in other areas of my body.  I know that I don't have 
either tendonitis or carpal tunnel syndrome; if I can believe the latest 
diagnosis, I have fibromyalgia, a more generalized pain that can make a happy 
home for itself anywhere in the body.  So I feel I need to be very careful 
about using new muscle groups in creative but repetitive ways.  

And, a few years ago I received an email from a MouseTool user who'd used a 
foot mouse long enough to develop tendonitis in his legs; it took him a good 
six months to recover full use of his legs.  For him, MouseTool worked better 
than a foot switch.  Your mileage may vary.

> Another approach would
> be blink detection. I have a very cute blink detector (it's optically
> isolated, too!) that sends a space via serial port every time you
> double-blink (blinking is normal behaviour, double-blinking OTOH doesn't
> happen all by itself), if you'd have use for it let me know.

That sounds great; I'd love to hear about it.  We need to have more ergonomic 
options available.  I know people have used eye-blinks for the extremely 
disabled; do you find it useful -- and usable -- as an able-bodied person?

Have you used it to click a mouse?  Would you triple-blink to double-click?  
How would you drag?  Do you have information available online that I could 
take a look at?  How long, and how intensively, have you used it?

I just did a few tests; I moved the mouse, watched the cursor, and 
double-blinked.  I repeated this a number of times.  Each time, my eyes 
involuntarily refocused on the screen.  By the time my vision returns to 
normal, probably a half of a second or so has gone by.  Hmm.  This would 
likely get faster -- and less distracting -- with practice.  Has that been 
your experience with it?  It seems less convenient to me than MouseTool -- 
but, again, that might change with practice.

A few years ago I tried an eye-tracking system that let you click using a 
long, slow, blink.  That way it ignored involuntary blinks, while allowing 
the user to use intentional blinks as input.  But it was sslllloooowww.

I've also tried using a breath switch to generate clicks.  This to me has real 
potential.  It can be fast, unobtrusive, and easy on the body; you can blow 
to click, and suck to right-click.  (No jokes, please.)  Unfortunately, the 
switch I got required so much force that it was unusable for fast, repetitive 
work.  Sometime I'd like to try it with a more sensitive switch.

Anyway, for now I'm sticking to MouseTool.  MouseTool uses no extra muscles.  
There are no motions involved beyond moving the mouse to the point where you 
want to click.  And it needs no extra hardware.

But I do want to hear about your system. 

This has gotten pretty far off topic.  Perhaps we should email each other 
directly, or take the discussion over to the KDE Accessibility list...

>
> Cheers, Kuba Ober

Enjoy,

Jeff
www.mousetool.com


 
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