Mouse scroll wheel integration

[Halcyon]

Hello there friends,

I vaguely remember when using one of the emulators a long time ago (possibly Red Squirrel), that there was a mouse module that let you use the scroll wheel in RISC OS. Does it exist? Did it ever exist? Did I just dream it?

[IanJeffray]

... a mouse module that let you use the scroll wheel in RISC OS. Does it exist? Did it ever exist? Did I just dream it?

The "RSTools" module does that, yes. I miss it with Arculator, so it'd be nice to have an equivalent.
(This holds for RedSquirrel and its derivatives such as VirtualRPC)

RISC OS Select directly supports scrollwheel mice, and RPCEmu supports that.

[philpem]

The Stuart Tyrrell Developments PS2MouseMini supports scroll mice too, and there was a driver module on their website to enable it. Has anyone tried that in RPCEmu (before I do)?

Edit: Tried it in the latest RPCEmu release; sadly it doesn't work.

[IanJeffray]

The Stuart Tyrrell Developments PS2MouseMini supports scroll mice too, and there was a driver module on their website to enable it. Has anyone tried that in RPCEmu (before I do)?

Edit: Tried it in the latest RPCEmu release; sadly it doesn't work.

I'm not entirely sure why you'd even expect it to work as RPCEmu doesn't emulate a PS2MouseMini.

The PS2MouseMini just converts wheel movements in to "all 3 buttons held, do a Y movement" and the module recognises this combination and converts it in to a window scroll request. If RPCEmu was to have a "be a ps2mousemini" emulation option, and convert host OS wheel inputs in to "all 3 buttons held, do a Y movement" inputs to the emulated system, then the STD module would work as expected.

To confirm this is true, if you have a real PS2MouseMini and RISC OS just configured as a standard mouse, then run:

Code: Select all

REPEAT MOUSE X,Y,B:PRINT X,Y,B:UNTIL .

This will show that any wheel movement generates a short "7" button press (all 3 buttons pressed) and a change in Y appropriate to the direction the wheel was moved.

[philpem]

I'm not entirely sure why you'd even expect it to work as RPCEmu doesn't emulate a PS2MouseMini.

You mentioned it works in Select and I figured that was probably what Select implemented (the hold-mouse-and-move thing), and it might be worth a go.

Foolish me should have known that implementing a common interface is just not something us RISC OS types do!

[IanJeffray]

I'm not entirely sure why you'd even expect it to work as RPCEmu doesn't emulate a PS2MouseMini.

You mentioned it works in Select and I figured that was probably what Select implemented (the hold-mouse-and-move thing), and it might be worth a go.

Foolish me should have known that implementing a common interface is just not something us RISC OS types do!

That will be what Select does - because it can use a ps2mousemini when configured to do so. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at though. If you want wheel support, you'll need to get wheel support implemented at the 'hardware' level in RPCem -- and it would be nice if that simply presents the same interface as STD's interface does.

[julie_m]

It's been awhile since I used RiscOS; but doesn't clicking Adjust on one of the arrows at the end of a scrollbar (remember when scrollbars had arrows at the ends?) have the effect of scrolling it in the opposite direction of the arrow? If this is still the case, it would somewhat obviate the need for a scroll wheel, since you could effectively scroll in both directions without moving the mouse, just your fingers.

[IanJeffray]

It's been awhile since I used RiscOS; but doesn't clicking Adjust on one of the arrows at the end of a scrollbar (remember when scrollbars had arrows at the ends?) have the effect of scrolling it in the opposite direction of the arrow? If this is still the case, it would somewhat obviate the need for a scroll wheel, since you could effectively scroll in both directions without moving the mouse, just your fingers.

It does exactly that. But once you've used a scroll wheel with RISC OS, you'll realise how much better it is than having to carefully position over the direction buttons on the scrollbar.

[Phlamethrower]

Old versions of RPCEmu (~0.8, pre-Qt) did emulate PS2 wheel mice for the A7000/A7000+ machine types, which some versions of RISC OS support (like the IOMD version of RISC OS 5 - in 2020 I updated that to add PS2 wheel mouse support).

However (a) I don't think RPCEmu supports wheel mice for RiscPC machine types (it'll be using the sole PS2 port to emulate the keyboard, and the quadrature mouse port lacks native support for scrollwheels - hence real machines needing hardware dongles like PS2MouseMini), and (b) I'm not sure if PS2 scrollwheel support has been carried forward into the Qt versions of RPCEmu (the old version I have from 2020 didn't seem to support it)