Mouse Arrow speed and Kensington!!

S

Santiago

Registered

Hi all,

I own a Kensington Thinking mouse ADB in my G3 MT.

Whenever I get to OS X it feels like I got into the slowest possible computer out there. I use the Kensington Mouseworks control panel in OS 9 and it has various speed settings which makes navigation so much quicker.

I just hate that in OS X Beta I have to scroll 3-4 times as much just to do simple tasks like moving a window.

Is there any way of speeding up the Mouse control panel to handle speeds higher than the mac standard fastest setting?

It will be ok on a 640*480 display but when you use 1280*1024 and above it becomes an issue.

Maybe just change a little .xml file?

Kensington might bring its support extension down the road but it will be far off.

I want speed!!! Thanks if anyone knows anything.
 
I grepped the whole file system looking for occurances of the word "mouse" (case insensitive). I found quite a few, (in binary files), but none of them pointed me to a configuration file that I could edit. :(

I'm having the same difficulties with my old Logitech (ADB) MouseMan. It's slow without its custom software even under MacOS9. I'm only using it because OS X doesn't support my USB PC Card. (I've got a WallStreet II, which has no built-in USB).

There must be some API call to control this sort of thing...If only I had some decent development tools!

-- ben
 
oooh... look what I found:

<key>MouseClick</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>MouseScaling</key>
<string>5 2 2 3 6 4 10 5 15 6 22</string>

This is in the file

~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

The string "Mouse Scaling" presumably controls the acceleration of the mouse
I haven't yet figured out what it means/how it works, but it may be possible
to get the mouse to run faster by adjusting these numbers...

I'll write more when I manage to figure out how it works. :)
 


Keep us informed if you find out anything.

Kensington people told me they are already working on OS X Drivers and they have a Beta Test program.


Cheers.
 
The "fast" setting provided by mac os X is shown below:

<key>MouseScaling</key>
<string>5 2 2 3 6 4 10 5 15 6 22</string>

The format of the configuration string seems to be:

n t m {t m}

n = the number of pairs t m
t = a threshold.
m = a multiple

At least, that's my suspicion from the experiments that I've performed and the experience I've had previously. I have no idea what units these values are given in, and could easily be missing something.

Setting all the threshold values very high, should cause the mouse to behave more sluggishly. (it does). Increasing the multiples, on the other hand, should cause the mouse to move faster. (it does, usually)

It's possible to change this directly in the .GlobalPreferences.plist with your favorite editor. Log out, and log back in again and the changes will be in effect. They'll stay that way, unless you change the mouse settings though the control panel, in which case your changes will be overwritten.

The funny thing is that I _think_ I've succeeded in making my mouse go faster by changing the multiple values, but the change is either not nearly as dramatic as the numbers would suggest, or I'm just imagining that the mouse is going faster. I've been unable to perform a really convincing controlled experiment. It may be that the OS cuts of the multiple above a certain number and ignores anything that's higher.

Most recently I've tried:

<string>7 1 4 2 12 3 30 4 60 5 120 7 200 </string>

This seems to <i>feel</i> faster, but maybe I'm just imagining things, or maybe my mouse is so old that it just doesn't want to go any faster ;-)

Could someone else give this a try on their system and tell me what they observe?

-- ben
 
aaahhhrrrggg!
why does this thing keep nuking my angle brakets? The first time, I was a bad boy and typed them in literally. This time I was nice and used &lt; and &gt; which previewed fine, but as you can see...

The word MouseScaling is surrounded by tags key and /key (in angle brakets). The numbers are packaged as a string (/string).
 

Strangely the File: .GlobalPreferences.plist

does not contain jack about the mouse on my system.

Though in an interesting turn my Proformace III is listed in there and attaches a colorsync profile to it.

Here is my file:

<!DOCTYPE plist SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/PropertyList.dtd">
<plist version="0.9">
<dict>
<key>AppleLanguages</key>
<array>
<string>English</string>
<string>French</string>
<string>German</string>
</array>
<key>ColorSyncDeviceList</key>
<dict>
<key>ColorSyncDevice-mntr416492988</key>
<dict>
<key>DefaultProfileID</key>
<string>1</string>
<key>DeviceClass</key>
<string>mntr</string>
<key>DeviceFactoryProfiles</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>ProfileID</key>
<string>1</string>
<key>ProfileLocType</key>
<string>1</string>
<key>ProfileLocURL</key>
<string>file://localhost/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/ProFormance%203-416492988</string>
<key>ProfileName</key>
<string>ProFormance 3</string>
</dict>
</array>
<key>DeviceID</key>
<string>416492988</string>
<key>DeviceName</key>
<string>ProFormance 3</string>
<key>DeviceState</key>
<string>0</string>
</dict>
<key>DefaultDevice-mntr</key>
<string>416492988-kCFPreferencesAnyUser-kCFPreferencesCurrentHost</string>
<key>DevicesLastModified</key>
<date>2000-10-06T00:19:50Z</date>
<key>ProfilesLastModified</key>
<date>2000-10-06T00:56:50Z</date>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>


 
Strange, that's _absolutely_ nothing like mine. Are you sure we're both looking at the same file?

To check, open a Terminal and the following command.

more ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

mine contains information on the following topics:

- aqua color variant (carbon/blue, as an integer)
- highlight color
- recent folders
- mouse click speed
- mouse scaling
- Open and Save panel sizes and positions
- application menu appearance
- system beep sound and volume
- system volume
- last color picker used.

 
You've been looking at the system-wide GlobalPreferences file, instead of your own personal copy. The system wide file resides in the top-level library folder, while your Global Preferences file resides in your own personal Library folder.

<B>/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist</B>
-- in the shared, system-wide preferences folder

<B>~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist</B>
-- in your own personal preferences folder. This is the one that contains the mouse information.


Yes, the "<B>~</B>" makes all the difference. It's an abbreviation meaning "current user's home directory". (Isn't UNiX demented?) ;-)

-- ben
 


Ok ok.. I will play with it later dumb hahahaha

I was playing with that directory just yesterday installing the new OSX screensavers and strangely they only work in root even though I enables full permissions to them.

Thanks for the help ;-0
 
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