more than 5 mouse buttons

[Corne Beerse]

Hendrik Tews wrote:

>James Weatherall writes:
>   
>   If I remember correctly, the X11 protocol supports only five "buttons"
>   natively, being left, middle, right, mousewheel-up & mousewheel-down.  VNC
>  
>

As far as I know, the first X11 system I used (a SunSParcstation back in 
1992) had a 3 button mouse. With that mouse, in right hand mode, the 
buttons 1 to 3 where numbered from left to right. Pressing button 1&2 
simultaniously, signaled mouse button 4, Button 2&3 gives button 5 and  
1&3 gives button 6. The OpenView window manager (ovwm) actually used 
those mouse buttons. Come to think of it, this might be an ovwm 
implementation, effectively using only buttons 1 to 3...

For current situations, I think there are some parties that have to 
cooperate:
- The mouse driver at the console needs to send the signals to the 
desktop-s X11 (or msWindows desktop). I bet most standard mouse drivers 
only recognize 3 physical buttons and the scroll-wheel.
- Then the window manager (linux or windows) must send the signals to 
the vncviewer application.
- I guess the vncviewer application blindly sends all signals to the 
vncserver side.
- msWindows based vncserver must send the signals to the remote 
msWindows windowmanager.
- unix based vncserver (Xvnc) must handle the signals: send it to the 
windowmanager at that side and so on.
- Finally there is the application that has to handle the mouse buttons...


>   technically supports an additional three to make a total of eight, but they
>   are unlikely to work with X11.
>   
>Yes, I had the hope that now, when nearly every mouse identifies
>itself at least as a 12 Button mouse, this  button restriction
>has been lifted.
>
>Anyway, is there a way to get a Button 6 press event through vnc?
>
>Bye,
>
>Hendrik
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