The Sinclair QL Forum

Firstly, forgive my ignorance, I may well be asking a question that you all know the answer to, but I don't know it.

The question(s) relates to how the QL, or more specifically the pointer environment and SMSQ/E and the use of mice.

I had some experience of PC mouse drivers and the concept of a mouse queue, to which multiple pointing devices can input concurrently - does such a concept exist on in the pointer environment too?

Can I have multiple mice / pointer devices? Do applications look for a hardware mouse, or do they request mouse pointer data from a central driver?

Pr0f wrote:Firstly, forgive my ignorance, I may well be asking a question that you all know the answer to, but I don't know it.

The question(s) relates to how the QL, or more specifically the pointer environment and SMSQ/E and the use of mice.

The mouse directly reports the increments it measured (by adding/subtracting to a central variable pt_inc) and in a scheduler task, the increments are regularly translated into the pointer movement. The current position is recorded in the pointer environment.

I had some experience of PC mouse drivers and the concept of a mouse queue, to which multiple pointing devices can input concurrently - does such a concept exist on in the pointer environment too?

No, the PE pretty much predates all that fancy stuff

Can I have multiple mice / pointer devices?

I don't see why not, multiple devices can manipulate pt_inc. You cannot have multiple mouse pointers, though.

Do applications look for a hardware mouse, or do they request mouse pointer data from a central driver?

The pointer environment is the central driver. It already comes with the most common mouse drivers built in, but there are also external ones (like SERMouse).

Marcel

mk79 wrote:The pointer environment is the central driver. It already comes with the most common mouse drivers built in, but there are also external ones (like SERMouse).

I wonder about the "s" in drivers. Which mice except QIMI does the PE support? (Not talking SMSQ/E of course.)

A serial mouse connected to SuperHermes (no "SerMouse" driver) works pretty well with the PE. This needs the IPC_EXT driver that comes with SuperHermes and the IPC_MOUSE command.

A serial mouse integrated with the DiY Toolkit's serial mouse driver should probably work as well (Never tried that, however). After all, this driver emulates the cursor keys that can be used to move the cursor. Whether thet is in any way acceptable, needs to be tried.

And last, but not least, SerMouse by Albin Hessler should work as well, as it basically seems to emulate the QIMI (I am not 100% sure and never tried that myself as well, as i'm using SuperHermes. But the fact that as long as SMSQ/E for the GC/SGC was sold as a product the SerMouse driver apparently was included, would suggest that should work)

Tobias

Peter wrote:

mk79 wrote:The pointer environment is the central driver. It already comes with the most common mouse drivers built in, but there are also external ones (like SERMouse).

I wonder about the "s" in drivers. Which mice except QIMI does the PE support? (Not talking SMSQ/E of course.)

Sandy SuperQBoard, Atari, Thor.

tofro wrote:A serial mouse connected to SuperHermes (no "SerMouse" driver) works pretty well with the PE. This needs the IPC_EXT driver that comes with SuperHermes and the IPC_MOUSE command.

A serial mouse integrated with the DiY Toolkit's serial mouse driver should probably work as well (Never tried that, however). After all, this driver emulates the cursor keys that can be used to move the cursor. Whether thet is in any way acceptable, needs to be tried.

And last, but not least, SerMouse by Albin Hessler should work as well, as it basically seems to emulate the QIMI (I am not 100% sure and never tried that myself as well, as i'm using SuperHermes. But the fact that as long as SMSQ/E for the GC/SGC was sold as a product the SerMouse driver apparently was included, would suggest that should work)

Tobias

I just had a look at that DIY toolkit code - it's quite well thought out. The key emulation feature is a plus feature - so you can use the mouse in something like ED, but the main mouse driver is a proper mouse, using the serial port and a scheduled task to stuff serial mouse data into the mouse data structures for the pointer environment.

I'm learning a lot...

mk79 wrote:

Peter wrote:

mk79 wrote:The pointer environment is the central driver. It already comes with the most common mouse drivers built in, but there are also external ones (like SERMouse).

I wonder about the "s" in drivers. Which mice except QIMI does the PE support? (Not talking SMSQ/E of course.)

Sandy SuperQBoard, Atari, Thor.

Isn't QIMI the Atari mouse interface?

Peter wrote:

mk79 wrote:

Peter wrote: I wonder about the "s" in drivers. Which mice except QIMI does the PE support? (Not talking SMSQ/E of course.)

Sandy SuperQBoard, Atari, Thor.

Isn't QIMI the Atari mouse interface?

QIMI adapts Atari-style mice for the QL, but the driver I meant was for native Atari hardware, which interfaces the mouse through the keyboard controller.

Marcel

How can non-SMSQ/E pointer environment run on Atari?