Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pwg 405 days ago
What happens with that "absolute position relative to some arbitrary 0,0 picked by the mouse" when the user picks the mouse up off the table/pad/etc. and repositions it (i.e., they hit the edge of the pad and now "re-center" to continue moving left (or right) on screen). The mouse loses its 0,0 point reference as soon as it is picked up.

It could send a "reset 0,0" packet of some form in this case, but now reception of that packet becomes critical to continuing to properly communicate motion to the attached computer.
2 comments
hmry 404 days ago
That's not how mouse input works though, right? If I move my mouse cursor to 10,10, and then pick up the mouse and set it down somewhere else, it's still at coordinates 10,10. You don't need the mouse's physical absolute position, but just the cursor position (which is the sum of all the relative movements)
link
pwg 404 days ago
> That's not how mouse input works though, right?

No, mouse input data does not work that way.

My reply was referring to @tehbeard's suggestion that the mouse could be modified to send absolute coordinates instead, and I was pointing out a reason why that modification would not work out so well.

link
justsomehnguy 405 days ago
> It could send a "reset 0,0" packet of some form in this case, but now reception of that packet becomes critical to continuing to properly communicate motion to the attached computer.

And those "how I would have designed a wireless mouse protocol" guys are back at the square one.

link