There’s quite a bit of chatter about the Open Office Mouse, much of it drawing disdainful parallels to the “complexity” or “tin ear” of Open Source software in general.
Why a mouse with so many buttons? Apple only needs one (or two)! Why those Open Sourcers have no clue about user interfaces and slick marketing, blah blah blah.
Here’s the thing that I think people are missing there: one of the strengths of Open Source is that it can effective address niche and non-mainstream problems. Most commercial ventures want to reach a wide a user base as possible – which often translates into aiming for the least common denominator.
But a one- or two-button mouse, while sufficient for the least common denominator of computing, is no great shakes for say, gaming. In fact, gamers may use all sorts of strange devices, all with the objective of getting more control points under their fingertips.
Perhaps something like a Belkin Speedpad? Or, perhaps something like the OpenOffice Mouse?
I don’t think that every computer user would be interested in a Speedpad, but it’s fine device for gamers (not so much Linux gamers, because the company doesn’t support Linux – but let’s overlook that failing here for the larger argument).
Same sort of thing with the OpenOffice Mouse, I think – if you spend a lot of time in an application that would benefit from more buttons in your pointing hand, something like the OpenOffice Mouse is clearly desirable.
In fact, I have a Logitech G9 myself - often listed as one of the best gaming mouse choices – and it has 11 buttons. I don’t use all of them moving around my desktop, of course. But I do use all of them in some games, and even have it set up “special” for a couple of other applications.
Now, I haven’t used or even help and OpenOffice Mouse, but it already looks very attractive to me. I especially like the idea of full Linux support and long macros. These are killer features for a Linux gamer – I don’t know about the ergonomics and actual implementation yet, but there’s nothing laughable on the face of the OpenOffice Mouse.
There is something laughable on the face about the immediate dismissal some people are giving it. And something seriously laugable about trying to tie that into a larger critique of Open Source in general.
#1 by saulgoode on November 10, 2009 - 4:01 pm
I don’t know what the keys on the mouse are assigned to — though I’d assume they’d be completely configurable — but I could certainly imagine situations where such a mouse would be advantageous. For example, I make a lot of entries into book inventories and it would be quite handy to be able to enter ISBN or UPC numbers using numeric keys on the mouse, obviating the need to switch back and forth between the mouse and keyboard.