Mouse wheel in 0S3.2

[Predseda]

I want to ask for your experience with the native mouse driver in WB3.2. you can turn wheel support on in IControl. Does it work for anyone of you, and if so, with which mouse and which adaptor?

I have bought Cocolino for this purpose and I have Genius NetScroll Eye PS/2 mouse. But to get the wheel working I had to install FreeWheel driver, supplied with Cocolino (which I wanted to avoid).

[Daedalus]

You still need to use a driver to read the mouse signals and translate them into Intuition events, but you shouldn't need Freewheel, which takes the Intuition events and applies them to windows that don't support the wheel natively. Are you running the Cocolino driver still?

[Predseda]

Oh, thank you Rob. I though the OS3.2 functions substitute those drivers.

I installed both Cocolino driver (which was added to s:user-startup) and Freewheel (which was added to s:wbstartup/ ) from the supplied floppy and the scrolling acted weird. I removed the freewheel now and it works perfectly.

But tell me: it does NOT matter if the IControl mouse wheel checkbox is tagged or not.

[Daedalus]

Good stuff That's interesting - I hadn't noticed that before, but you're right. I just tried turning off the setting (and rebooting for good measure), and it hasn't made any difference to the scroll wheel operation that I can see. Might be a more subtle feature (e.g. scroll wheel on gadgets or something), might be a bug...

[DJBase]

I use a Logitech MX300 on a Cocolino adaptor... I just had to run its driver from User-Startup... Wheel works no matter if its activated in IControl or not... EZMouse or Topolino does not work...

[Malakie]

Have a standard USB mouse with a mouse wheel. Bought one of those USB mouse adapters. Is there a way to use the mouse wheel this way, on OS 3.2?

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Malakie

Have a standard USB mouse with a mouse wheel. Bought one of those USB mouse adapters. Is there a way to use the mouse wheel this way, on OS 3.2?

If the USB adaptor supports the scroll wheel, all you need to do is install the driver for that adaptor and it should just work. Many USB adaptors do not support the scroll wheel however, so check the documentation for whatever model you bought.

[Malakie]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

If the USB adaptor supports the scroll wheel, all you need to do is install the driver for that adaptor and it should just work. Many USB adaptors do not support the scroll wheel however, so check the documentation for whatever model you bought.

I have bought two different adapters, neither came with drivers. They were plug and play in terms of the mouse functioning. They also never came with their own drivers of any kind. But while they work great plugged in, neither use the mouse wheel native even with the option turned on in OS 3.2 in prefs.

So something is missing here...

[Thomas Richter]

This cannot work. Look, the 9-pin adapter of the Amiga joystick port cannot carry an additional scroll wheel signal. We have GND,+5V, four pins the mouse movement, and 3 pins for 3 mouse buttons. That makes in total 1+1+4+3 = 9 pins. Where do you want to carry signals for the scroll wheel?

[Malakie]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

This cannot work. Look, the 9-pin adapter of the Amiga joystick port cannot carry an additional scroll wheel signal. We have GND,+5V, four pins the mouse movement, and 3 pins for 3 mouse buttons. That makes in total 1+1+4+3 = 9 pins. Where do you want to carry signals for the scroll wheel?

So they why put the option in OS 3.2? And why would an adapter that allows me to plug in either a wired OR wireless mouse, not be able to handle a driver to allow it? I am literally using both a wired and wireless mouse on my Amiga's. Something is not making sense here.

Either the OS 3.2 programmers are wrong and the USB interface people are wrong or you are... Did you also miss all the other posts below of people literally and actually using their mouse wheels on an Amiga? And btw, data pins can carry more than just one signal. A data pin can easily be used to pass data for different needs using a gate. Gate on, you get one data signal, gate off, you get a different signal.

That's basic electronics. I also have found numerous public domain projects like freewheel (which if I understand correctly does work with PS2 mice), as well as some others that are supposed to work on Amiga allowing the mousewheel functionality to be added to programs. There is even one on Github that is current from what I can tell for people to use in their programs.

However, I was asking the same as others.. Has anyone gotten it to work and if so, how? The OS has it built in so it has to work with something, I can't see them adding mouse wheel capability just because.

[Malakie]

Originally Posted by DJBase

I use a Logitech MX300 on a Cocolino adaptor... I just had to run its driver from User-Startup... Wheel works no matter if its activated in IControl or not... EZMouse or Topolino does not work...

Hmm.. I will have to try one of those mice.. I assume the driver came with that adapter?

[Daedalus]

You don't need a driver for the basic functioning of the mouse. That's movement and the three main buttons. So if an adaptor doesn't support the scroll wheel, it doesn't need a driver.

A driver is *only* needed for the scroll wheel. As Thomas points out there's no hardware support for the scroll wheel on the port, only for three buttons. Typically, scroll wheel support uses the middle mouse button signal (pin 5) to communicate the scroll wheel and middle mouse button status. The driver detects these signals and converts them into input events that the OS, MUI, Freewheel etc. then use to scroll windows.

As I said in my previous post, you need to use an adaptor that supports the scrollwheel. It doesn't matter how many adaptors you buy if none of them have that function. The Cocolino and Micromys both support the scroll wheel using downloadable drivers (and after nearly 2 decades of using the scroll wheel on my Amiga I miss it badly when I don't have it), but they're both for PS/2 mice. It's only recently that USB adaptors have started supporting the wheel, and to my knowledge it's only the Rys Mk. II with the most recent firmware installed that does.

[Malakie]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

You don't need a driver for the basic functioning of the mouse. That's movement and the three main buttons. So if an adaptor doesn't support the scroll wheel, it doesn't need a driver.

A driver is *only* needed for the scroll wheel. As Thomas points out there's no hardware support for the scroll wheel on the port, only for three buttons. Typically, scroll wheel support uses the middle mouse button signal (pin 5) to communicate the scroll wheel and middle mouse button status. The driver detects these signals and converts them into input events that the OS, MUI, Freewheel etc. then use to scroll windows.

As I said in my previous post, you need to use an adaptor that supports the scrollwheel. It doesn't matter how many adaptors you buy if none of them have that function. The Cocolino and Micromys both support the scroll wheel using downloadable drivers (and after nearly 2 decades of using the scroll wheel on my Amiga I miss it badly when I don't have it), but they're both for PS/2 mice. It's only recently that USB adaptors have started supporting the wheel, and to my knowledge it's only the Rys Mk. II with the most recent firmware installed that does.

Ok that was the answer I needed... I know the Amiga native does not support it plug and play obviously. BUT with OS3.2 now having an actual option to turn it on, I was assuming that there was now a driver in the OS to support it directly, which you are apparently saying, is not the case then.

So what, exactly, is the OS3.2 option for? If it does not turn on the functionality, then why did they add it? That's the confusing part.

I will probably go with the Rys Mk II so thanks for that info.

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by Malakie

So what, exactly, is the OS3.2 option for? If it does not turn on the functionality, then why did they add it? That's the confusing part.

The option enables the OS to interpret generated mouse wheel movements and scroll whatever is under the mouse pointer appropriately (this is also what Freewheel does for older versions of the OS).

The driver is needed to generate these movements so that they are there for Freewheel or 3.2 to interpret. Unfortunately there is no 'standard' way used by the adaptors that can produce these movements, as such there is no way to include a 'standard' driver in with the OS.

[Malakie]

Originally Posted by indigolemon

The option enables the OS to interpret generated mouse wheel movements and scroll whatever is under the mouse pointer appropriately (this is also what Freewheel does for older versions of the OS).

The driver is needed to generate these movements so that they are there Freewheel or 3.2 to interpret. Unfortunately there is no 'standard' way used by the adaptors that can produce these movements, as such there is no way to include a 'standard' driver in with the OS.

So if I understand correctly, hardware mouse interface designs can now simply support mouse wheel functions and the OS 3.2 option will allow the mouse wheel to work without additional need for drivers etc... and to date, only the Rys II unit has that ability.. which of course I cannot find available anywhere.. lol

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Malakie

BUT with OS3.2 now having an actual option to turn it on, I was assuming that there was now a driver in the OS to support it directly, which you are apparently saying, is not the case then.

The support in the OS is that there are now official events to which interface elements can respond. This means application windows can check for this event and react accordingly without having to be patched or worked around. Before 3.2, those events still existed unofficially and were patched in using Freewheel or similar.

So what, exactly, is the OS3.2 option for? If it does not turn on the functionality, then why did they add it? That's the confusing part.

It turns on and off this feature of the OS. It doesn't have anything to do with the hardware that triggers these events, and doesn't provide any drivers for such hardware.

Originally Posted by Malakie

So if I understand correctly, hardware mouse interface designs can now simply support mouse wheel functions and the OS 3.2 option will allow the mouse wheel to work without additional need for drivers etc...

No. You will always need a driver to interpret the scroll wheel signals from the hardware and translate them into Intuition events. What you don't need is Freewheel or similar patches to actually do something with these events.

and to date, only the Rys II unit has that ability..

For USB mice, it looks that way. For PC/2 mice there are several options that support the scrollwheel.

[alkis]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

This cannot work. Look, the 9-pin adapter of the Amiga joystick port cannot carry an additional scroll wheel signal. We have GND,+5V, four pins the mouse movement, and 3 pins for 3 mouse buttons. That makes in total 1+1+4+3 = 9 pins. Where do you want to carry signals for the scroll wheel?

Hmm, can't the -X & +X at the same time, by convention, mean up wheel and -Y & +Y at the same time mean down wheel?

[Thomas Richter]

That is not quite how the mouse signals movements work. Its a quadrature impulse encoding (i.e. two signals rotated 90 degrees each other), meaning that every possible state of the four pins is valid. This signal then drives the mouse counter within Denise. Thus, you would need a second port for the wheel, or some smart encoding that multiplexes the otherwise unused middle button with the wheel events, and some software instance in the system that decodes that again.

Anyhow, no matter what, it is quite irrelevant which encoding is used for the wheel or whether there is a way how to transport the signal. There is no standard how to encode it, and each adapter has its own way of encoding if it encodes the event at all, and the Os has no means of supporting various encodings there might be. It is the job of a piece of software (a driver) to feed the input device with the wheel events. That's typically the USB stack for USB mice.

For example, the Poseidon stack creates those events and sends them down to the input even handler chain where they are picked up by applications and intuition.

[alkis]

I see. That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.

[boemann]

Originally Posted by Malakie

So what, exactly, is the OS3.2 option for? If it does not turn on the functionality, then why did they add it? That's the confusing part..

I can certainly understand the confusion of what this checkmark does. We tried a few different texts but couldn't come up with something that is short and correct. The scroll wheel events are always delivered to the window and even to the nearest scroller if the window didn't care. So this is what you see if you have the checkmark off.

But when this button is checked the wheel events are delivered directly to gadgets first. So you can scroll in TextEdit by hovering the text area (even if the window is not active ) It is generally a good idea to have it turned on as the thing you scroll is more precicely determined. Only if the gadget you hover with the mouse doesn't care about the scrollwheel will intuition fall back to the default of delivering to the window as a whole.

The checkbox was added as we wanted to alllow the user to opt out, but really it doesn't serve a big purpose anymore and we might have it always on and remove the checkbox.