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From: @MIT-MC.ARPA:jqj@CU-ARPA.CS.CORNELL.EDU
Newsgroups: fa.info-terms
Subject: information on serialized mouse data wanted
Message-ID: <13682@Glacier.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 09:49:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: Glacier.13682
Posted: Fri Oct 25 09:49:03 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 08:37:35 EDT
Sender: daemon@Glacier.ARPA
Organization: Stanford University, IC Laboratory
Lines: 34

From: jqj@CU-ARPA.CS.CORNELL.EDU (J.Q. Johnson)

When using a workstation with a mouse to emulate a terminal, one problem is
how to send mouse-position data inband to the host.  This is important, for 
example, if you want to use the mouse with a host-based editor like Emacs 
that is designed for use with traditional character-oriented crt terminals.  
My question: has any standard arisen for encoding such mouse data?

One possibility, of course, is to transmit a cursor-position sequence (if
the emulation is ANSI standard, that's ESC [  ;  R ), but one
frequently wants to have the mouse cursor be independent of the display
cursor, so this is a bad choice.  A variation on this theme is to send
a sequence of relative motion command, as if the user had pressed arrow
keys.  Another (even uglier) possibility is to second-guess why the host 
application program wants to know the mouse cursor; for example, in 
Interlisp-D a click of the mouse sends a sequence of Emacs commands (^A, 
^P, ^N, ^F, etc.) to move the typein point to match the mouse position.

Another possibility, which I prefer, is that used on the BBN Bitgraph --
to send a special command sequence to report on mouse position and status
(e.g. buttons).  For BBN, that sequence is ESC : 2 ;  ;  ;  c
where x and y are window- or screen-relative pixel coordinates, and flags
encodes such things as which mouse button was pressed, or whether x and y
represent deltas from the previous mouse position.  The Bitgraph may
be programmed to send status reports at timed intervals (to allow host
tracking), on button events, on motion, etc.

I would like to see some standard including these features and others 
(e.g. status reports when the mouse enters a host-settable hotzone or 
crosses a boundary such as a window edge, position reporting in either
pixel or character units, and perhaps support for multiple or 3d pointing 
devices).  Ideally, this would become an extension to X3.64.

Is such a standard unreasonable?  Are there any de facto standards now?