Mouse polling

[Charles Silverman]

I don't have the time to give a solid and detailed response to the
mousepolling controversy. Suffice it to say that I need to do detailed
mousepolling within repeat structures.

My work evolves creating alternative input solutions for kids with
disabilities. I've been writing software for this population for 12 years.
I'm looking at kids who have unusual physical movements. They press a switch
with some part of their body. The Mac sees the switch press as a mouse
button press. I need to filter a lot. For example, what if the user presses
a switch by accident. I look at the duration the switch press, to look at
differing lengths of time signaling different activities.

Traditionally I did all this in SuperCard, crash-free and intuitively. The
allure of Metacard/Revolution has been 1)speed, 2)text field features,
3)many built-in features, 4) clear, ongoing work and excellent
communications with user community, 5)frequent upgrades, 6) cross-platform
support, etc. 

I don't want to switch to another language, especially now that I've
invested some serious time with MetaCard (and dazzled a number of C++ and
Java students in our lab with what Rev can do).   But all these gains are
worth nothing to me if the key piece, mousepolling, is not available. Here's
to hoping that some serious work will happen to fix these features.

Thanks,

Charles Silverman


________________________
Charles Silverman, M.Ed.
Coordinator, Accessible Interactive TV Project
Centre for Learning Technologies/ITM
Ryerson Polytechnic University
Toronto, Ont. CANADA