Ever notice how left-handed people are treated by society and technology? Shears are made to be used in the right hand, so are most potato peelers. Years ago, teachers forced students writing with their left hand to use their right. Wind-up watches have the stem on the wrong side for leftys and even words in our language are right-biased. Words such as “sinister” and “gauche” have roots which denote “left” while “adroit” comes from “right.” Even the English language is designed to be written by the right-handed. Just watch a left-handed person write some time. Either they have to curl their hand around so that they can see what they’re writing or drag the heel of their hand through what they just wrote (try _that_ with a fountain pen!).
This leads me to explain that even the Macintosh shows a bias towards right-handed users. The original keyboards had only one set of option and cloverleaf keys—on the left side—and the Mac Plus and subsequent keyboards have their numeric keypads on the right. And even the arrow cursor points from right to left. The menus are displayed from left to right and it’s always seemed harder to pull the mouse over to the left than to push it from the right.
Anyway, I read a message on CompuServe about someone who had a pinched nerve needing an arrow cursor that pointed the other way. After too much research, I wrote the code for Lefty which provides this function. Just put it in your System Folder and re-boot and give it a try.
Necessary Warning:
This code has been tested somewhat and since it doesn't do a lot of fooling around, it should work on all Macs. I have used it on a Plus and a IIci. It may, however: a) bomb; b) work incorrectly; c) not work at all; d) all of the above, depending on what software you use it with. In that case, I’m sorry, but there’ll probably never be a Lefty 1.x.* In other words, if it doesn't work with your system, please toss it and forget about it.
For amusement, let someone use your Mac with Lefty installed and see if they can figure out what’s different.
Just remember—each side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body so that those of us who are left-handed are the only ones that are in their right minds.
Mike Stith
531 Sims Ave.
Columbia, SC 29205
(803) 777-4409
January 29, 1990
CIS: 76174,1020
GEnie: MSSTITH
Bitnet: C0265@UNIVSCVM.BITNET
Internet: C0265@vm.csd.scarolina.edu
AppleLink: U0350
Technical Jargon (for those who are interested):
Lefty Init is composed of 3 parts: an initialization part which sets up intercepts to the InitCursor and SetCursor QuickDraw routines and code to handle those two routines. The InitCursor patch goes ahead and calls the original InitCursor and then (yes, it’s a back-patch, but I couldn't figure out any other way to do it) sets the cursor to the Lefty arrow (InitCursor sets the original arrow). The SetCursor patch examines the cursor passes by the invoking code and if the cursor is the standard arrow cursor, replaces the parameter with a pointer to the Lefty cursor. It then invokes the original SetCursor. That's all there is to it…
*Well there _is_ a newer version. Lefty 1.2 is a minor change which loads the substitute cursor from the INIT file instead of containing it internally. This will allow those who wish to change the normal “arrow” cursor to change it to whatever they wish (assuming they aren’t afraid of ResEdit...). It’s a CURS resource, number 37. Good luck. M.S. 04/02/90
