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Bug 188

Summary: Mac Right-Mouse-Button emulation modifier is incorrect
Product: SDL Reporter: Nathan Gray <n8gray>
Component: eventsAssignee: Ryan C. Gordon <icculus>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact: Sam Lantinga <slouken>
Severity: normal    
Priority: P2 CC: max
Version: 1.2.9   
Hardware: PowerPC   
OS: Mac OS X 10.4 (PPC)   

Description Nathan Gray 2006-03-31 00:05:49 UTC 
Apologies if this isn't an SDL bug, but I'm pretty sure it is.  The geniuses at Apple, as I'm sure you know, have decreed that One Mouse Button is Enough.  However, the rest of us idiots think we need at least two.  (Some lunatics even want three!!)  

In any case, the standard on Mac is that Ctrl+click == RMB.  It appears to me that SDL's input layer doesn't handle this correctly, because on every SDL game I've tried Cmd+click == RMB.  Perhaps this can be configured, but it seems that the default is wrong, unless it's my system that's misconfigured.
Comment 1 Max Horn 2006-04-01 21:04:07 UTC 
I wouldn't call it "wrong". The decision to use Cmd-Click was made for multiple reasons.
It actually predates the wide spread use of "Ctrl-click" for context menus and other typical "right click" usages

The main problem with using Ctrl-Click is portability: The ctrl key exists on many platforms, and Ctrl-Click is in fact used in many games / SDL apps for various purposes. If we just override this, it'll break those ports. OTOH, The Cmd/Apple key is Mac specific, hence using Cmd-Click to emulate the right mouse button is pretty much safe.

Note that Cmd-Click is used for this purpose in various commercial games, too (e.g. all Blizzard games). Even Apple uses Cmd-Click in X11.app for this very purpose (and Alt-Click for the middle mouse button emulation).


Hence I would argue against changing this. One could discuss making this optionally configurable, but the default should IMO stay at cmd click. And after all, for most apps, this amounts to a documentation mod at most :-).