A mighty small macro language developed by Peter Grogono in 1975.
["Mouse, A Language for Microcomputers", P. Grogono <grogono@concour.cs.concordia.ca> Petrocelli Books, 1983].
(31 Oct 1994)
<hardware> The most common kind of pointing device. A mouse is moved over a flat horizontal surface and includes some means of converting its position in two dimensions into X-Y coordinates which the computer can read. It also has one or more buttons whose state can also be read. It is called a mouse because the wire connecting it to the computer or keyboard looks like a mouse's tail.
The two commonest types of mouse are rolling ball and optical. The former has a ball which rests on the surface and rotates as the mouse moves. The ball is also in contact with two shafts at right-angles to each other whose rotation is measured by optoelectronic sensors.
An optical mouse has no moving parts but requires a special mouse mat (mouse mats used with rolling ball mice are optional extras to improve traction) marked with a pattern of horizontal and vertical lines. The mouse contains a light-emitting diode and photocells to detect the light reflected from the pattern on the mat.
Some mice are shaped to fit the hand and some even come in left- and right-handed versions.
A good operating system will specify conventions for the use of three mouse buttons. One button, as on the Macintosh, is far too limiting and, far from simplifying use, requires the use of modifier keys on the keyboard to accomplish tasks which could be done more simply with multiple mouse buttons.
(27 Jun 1995)