Suggestion: Centered Mouse Pointer

[fingus]

Suggestion: Centered Mouse Pointer at Workbench Startup.

[ssolie]

That is also very un-Amiga. I suspect many will disagree.

[samo79]

Suggestion: Centered Mouse Pointer at Workbench Startup.

Maybe
Altrough personally i don't have any problem with the current position

[ddni]

Why bother?!
Is this really an issue?
How long does it take to move the mouse to any point of the screen?

[tonyw]

Why is the centre of the screen any better than the top LHS?

What about putting it on the bar of AmiDock?

What about putting it over the icon of the first app that was run last time (which in my case is usually the Shell) ?

What about making it a user specification in Prefs/Input ?

[ddni]

@tony

Lol why not save the man hours and just leave things as they are?

[fingus]

That is also very un-Amiga. I suspect many will disagree.

In that case it would be enough just to add something like this option to Input-Prefs:

[ ] Center Mouse-Pointer at startup

[chris]

I must admit I don't even notice the mouse pointer starts in the top-left. Is starting it in the middle any more convenient? I'd rather the devs spent their limited time on more important matters.

I suspect the reason Commodore put it in the top-left is simply because 0,0 is easier than calculating the middle of the screen. I can also see a problem with putting it in the middle if the screenmode changes during boot (which can happen if an error messages forces the initial screen open early), as the pointer will end up at some point on the screen which is neither the top-left nor the middle (it can't be reset to the middle on every screenmode change, as that would cause havoc when switching between screens of different modes under normal use).

[nbache]

I actually filed an enhancement request (#6271) in Bugzilla for this 3 years ago (after having thought about it for much longer).

To quote my reasoning from there:

I've always wondered why the mouse pointer had to
default to the top left corner after Workbench has
loaded. On most monitors, this means at least half
of it is hidden from view, and it also means the
distance to any random object on the screen is on
average longer than necessary.

I assume it is just that the mouse X/Y coordinates
are never actually initialized, so they just contain 0
like anyother uninitialized numeric variables?

Could we have them initialized, preferably to the
center of the screen (or rather, the center of the
visible part of the screen, to please people with
autoscrolling screens )?

But I agree, it is far from the most important issue at hand .

@ssolie:

That is also very un-Amiga. I suspect many will disagree.

I really don't see anything un-Amiga (nor the opposite) in this. It is just a small improvement in the usability of WB.

@chris:

I can also see a problem with putting it in the middle if the screenmode changes during boot (which can happen if an error messages forces the initial screen open early), as the pointer will end up at some point on the screen which is neither the top-left nor the middle (it can't be reset to the middle on every screenmode change, as that would cause havoc when switching between screens of different modes under normal use).

Agreed, but this doesn't mean it couldn't be set to the middle of the current WB screen after IPrefs has finished setting it up, just that once during startup. It could be a separate command run from Startup-Sequence that did it.

Best regards,

Niels

[samo79]

I presume that the main reason of that position is that AmigaOS menus are on top only (atleast in the past), so the default position of the pointer was and still exactly the same of the first clickable menu .. i think that the only reason is that

Sure an option to choose how to place the default pointer would be better, why not ?