Dear All,

Thanks to Bill Scott, James Stroud and Jürgen Bosch for their responses.

Here is the original email:
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We have recently bought a few iMacs for crystallography. I'm not keen on the supplied "mighty mouse" so I have switched to using a microsoft 3-button wheel mouse. I would like to configure it so that it behaves as it would with other unix systems such as RH Linux.

i.e.
(1) double-clicking with LH button on a file name selects ALL of the file name, not just up to the first full stop.
(2) clicking the scroll wheel pastes the selected text AND it can be done multiple times without re-selecting.
(2) I would like these functions to work in terminal windows, the ccp4i gui and web pages (and probably a few other things I haven't thought of
yet!) AND be able to transfer the selected text between applications.

I have installed the microsoft intellipoint drivers that seem to give more control over configuring the various buttons through "system preferences", but I still can't get what I want.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Dave Lawson

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Here are the responses:

--------------
Bill:
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Hi David:

david lawson (JIC) wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Sorry for the slightly off-topic subject.
>
> We have recently bought a few iMacs for crystallography. I'm not keen 
> on the supplied "mighty mouse"

May I have them?

> so I have switched to using a microsoft 3-button wheel mouse. I would 
> like to configure it so that it behaves as it would with other unix 
> systems such as RH Linux.

You managed to use "Microsoft", "behaved" and "Linux" (albeit RH) all in one sentence without a hint of irony.


>
> i.e.
> (1) double-clicking with LH button on a file name selects ALL of the 
> file name, not just up to the first full stop.

Although your choice of Microsoft products shows dedication to a company with a firm reputation for placing the customizability needs of its customers ahead of its own desire to make profits, the first thing to realize is that you should never ever ever install their drivers. Ever. So if you did, take them out, now, and reboot. I'll wait.  It is still early Sunday morning here.


> (2) clicking the scroll wheel pastes the selected text AND it can be 
> done multiple times without re-selecting.

When you've gotten rid of the drivers, this should now work. In Apple's Terminal program (as of 10.5) and iTerm (as of 1215), you just set the preference to do middle-button-paste and left-button select, and Blair's your uncle. Unfortunately, in pretty much every other application I can think of on OS X, this, sadly, does not work, and there is nothing Steve Gates will let you do about it.


> (2) I would like these functions to work in terminal windows, the 
> ccp4i gui and web pages (and probably a few other things I haven't 
> thought of
> yet!) AND be able to transfer the selected text between applications.

I'd like to be at my ideal high-school weight, be paid more than a postdoc, and, well ...  Getting the OS X gui to play nice with X11 is sometimes challenging.  With the exception of Terminal and iTerm, you have to explicitly put stuff in the copy/paste buffer (command-C) before it is in the system clipboard.  Then you can paste to X11 programs with a middle-button click, but this only works if you uninstalled that viral driver. Going from X11 to aqua programs requires selecting the text in the usual X11 manner but explicitly issuing the paste command (command-p).  If you are using KDE X11 applications, you are really in for headaches.

To get whole-string selection in iTerm or Terminal, there is a preference setting that allows you to input which characters you want to have considered parts of a "word" for click-to-select purposes.  Unfortunately, pretty much every other application lacks this customizability, and I know of no system-wide preference setting that would enable you to do this globally.

Aqua simply behaves by slightly different rules.  Although I am a slobbering OS X fan, this lack of customizability to me, as well as a lack of focus-follows-mouse, it a negative.

If you really need the canonical linux behavior, you can install gnome, xfce4, KDE, enlightenment, or any number of other window managers via fink. I've found KDE buggy and the XFCE4 is way out of date.  Gnome is probably the best bet, and there is a major effort now to bring it completely up to date in fink.

>
> I have installed the microsoft intellipoint drivers that seem to give 
> more control over configuring the various buttons through "system 
> preferences", but I still can't get what I want.

Therein lies the problem, I am afraid. OS X will behave better using the default settings.  It may be possible to tinker around with the driver, including separate settings in X11, to recover canonical behavior, but for purposes of sanity, uninstall them first, get everything working as best as possible, verify middle-button-paste works in X11, verify X11 coot and pymol do the right thing, and then if you need additional functionality, reinstall the drivers, verify things like coot and pymol still use the middle button correctly, or adjust until they do, and only then try customizing.

Best of luck!


Bill

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James:
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The mighty mouse is better than you think. First, do what Bill Scott said. Then, try putting your mighty mouse back in and clicking on the little apple in the upper left of your screen, then click on "System Preferences..." then, in the System Preference window, click "Keyboard & Mouse". Click on the "Mouse" tab. You will be able to configure your mighty mouse to the exact behavior you want. Don't be freaked out by the unibody design or tiny little roller ball. It works eerily well and will all make sense after you use it for about 20 minutes. Give it a shot. Don't forget that you paid for *both* the M$ mice and the mighty mice, so you should experiment to see which one you like better.

James

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Jürgen:
---------------------------

Hi David,

since you said you bought a few iMacs, try the mouse first without any drivers on a virgin iMac, if that works, then reinstall those which you had exposed to the drivers for that mouse.
All procedures you describe seem to me pretty standard out of the box and work on my mighty mouse (at home), a M$ mouse and a Dell mouse (at
work) - I don't leave my mighty mouse at work, otherwise it might find another owner. Could anybody tell me why a three button mouse on M$ XP does not work with the scroll wheel e.g. in the Explorer thingy ?
In general before ever installing any drivers, plug the device in first and see if it is recognized, if not then you can still go ahead and install drivers. The only thing that was not recognized immediately in my case was a Nikon Firewire Slide Scanner, I was kind of dissapointed by that, as I had to get the CD out of the envelope and actually install something.

Jürgen

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Anyway, I gave the mighty mouse another go, and it does have most of the funtionality I want - apart from being able to select all of a file name with full stops in it with a double-click. In an ideal world I would like to go totally Mac, but I work on a site that is 99% windows, so communicating seamlessly with the rest of the site, would not be possible. My current solution for my office-based functions is to use the remote desktop connection to bring up my windows machine on the Mac desktop. This actually works pretty well and means I don't need two monitors on my desk. However, the mighty mouse doesn't give me the windows functionality I expect. 
So... I uninstalled the MS mouse driver as advised and switched back to the MS mouse and rebooted. I pretty much get the functionality I want (apart from being able to select all of a file name with full stops in it with a double-click!!). Also I still get all the windows functionality I expect in the remote desktop connection. So I think I will stick with the MS mouse for now...

Thanks again Bill, James and Jürgen!

Dave


Dr. David M. Lawson
Biological Chemistry Dept.,
John Innes Centre,
Norwich,
NR4 7UH, UK.
Tel: +44-(0)1603-450725
Fax: +44-(0)1603-450018
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.jic.bbsrc.ac.uk/staff/david-lawson/index.htm