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Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

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Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#101

Post by Stratoscope »

kristopolous wrote: post #59
Stratoscope wrote: post #44

It's a bit scary to see that one of the highest-voted answers to this question (188 points) is completely wrong. It says that the (0,0) hotspot simplified the calculations for a cursor position update, because you didn't have to add any (X,Y) offset. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/52349/43259 The problem with this idea is that the arrow pointer was never the only cursor. On the first Macintosh, there were many others…

You can see similar things in the Apple Lisa source code as well: https://info.computerhistory.org/apple-lisa-code The linked SO page is a page of complete speculation. History isn't just a bunch of logical thought exercises, it's an assembling of documentation and evidence. As far as I can see, there is no contemporaneous documentation claiming intentionality so the question remains unanswered. A smoking gun would b…

> A smoking gun would be a file with a name like cursor.bitmap or some code like "declare cursor_default = [ [ 1, 0 ... ] ];" from a major source (ms/xerox/apple) say, pre-1988 or so, with some comment above it explaining the rationale of why that cursor style in particular.

The Inside Macintosh pages from 1985 I cited above may be what you're looking for.

Especially page 158 (I-146).

It doesn't give a longwinded rationale of why you need an X/Y hotspot offset, it does much better than that. It shows you several cursors with their hotspots, so you can see why a hotspot is needed. And it lists the data structure to support it.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#102

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

raffraffraff wrote: post #39

Without reading everything there is on the subject, I'd guess it's tilted for the same reason it's tilted to the left . Humans are tool makers and tool users. After enough time the tool becomes an extension of the body, even if the tip of the tool is mechanically or virtually detached from the hand that is controlling it. The tool maker designed this as a right-handed tool, coming into the frame in the right hand. If…

A horizontally flipped (straight edge on the right) cursor does exist, I think some versions of Microsoft Word use it when editing the left margin of a document or something like this. I don't think it's a standard Windows cursor though.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#104

Post by Cockbrand »

robinhouston wrote: post #90
p-e-w wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not sure any explanation is needed here. Early UX design wasn't always done with as much thought and sophistication as today's software designers (are claiming to) apply. The first Windows systems had plenty of UI blunders that make the cursor thing look insignificant by comparison, and I can promise you they weren't all about "visual balance" or similar. Lots of them have carried over to later versions.

I think the apparent contradictions here can be explained quite easily: Apple cared about design, and Microsoft did not. Looking back from an era in which Apple's sensibility has prevailed, it's quite hard to explain the extent to which Microsoft, at least until the late '90s, really didn't care whether their software looked good. They genuinely didn't see it as important.

Well, Microsoft did hire Susan Kare to design the Windows 3 icons. Kare previously and famously did a lot of early Macintosh GUI design work for Apple. But while Apple saw GUI design as a holistic effort, at Microsoft, the good stuff (e.g. Kare's icons) and the bad stuff (e.g. the sloppily designed mouse cursor) just went hand in hand. Which adds to your point.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#105

Post by zoomablemind »

My understanding is that before mouse pointer there was a light pen aka light gun pointer. It was used perpendicularly to the screen, literally pointing at the desired location.

Then, when implementing a more 'remote' on-screen pointer, the notion of pointing perpendicularly at the site was best projected by a tilted 2D marker.

Think of the mouse pointer kinda sticking out of the screen as a dart.

I can't imagine the arm strain the users of the light pen had to endure back in time ... Though the workflow was probably still more keyboard-bound.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pen

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#107

Post by Cockbrand »

troupo wrote: post #35
p-e-w wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not sure any explanation is needed here. Early UX design wasn't always done with as much thought and sophistication as today's software designers (are claiming to) apply. The first Windows systems had plenty of UI blunders that make the cursor thing look insignificant by comparison, and I can promise you they weren't all about "visual balance" or similar. Lots of them have carried over to later versions.

> Early UX design wasn't always done with as much thought and sophistication as today's software designers (are claiming to) apply. Oh, but it was. Here's Apple HIG from 1987 listing extensive bibliography on the subject: https://x.com/andy_matuschak/status/1447409175596699652 (here's the full PDF: https://andymatuschak.org/files/papers/Apple%20Human%20Inter... ) Modern "designers" apply as much thought and care as a…

I think the point here is

> wasn't always done with as much thought

While Apple cared a lot about perfecting UX, Microsoft had other priorities.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#108

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

> It was found that, given the low resolution of the screens in those days, drawing a straight line (left edge of arrow) and a line at a 45 degree angle (right edge of arrow) was easier to do and more recognizable than the straight cursor.

Ockham's Razor. It really is that simple. Having had to do a lot of "dot art," in The Days of Yore, I understand perfectly, why this choice was made. Some systems did an "unfilled" arrow, with just the outer barbs. Same angle of the shaft, but the barbs were at 90 degrees. Leaning left was chosen, because of the prevalence of righties. The "unfilled" arrow was easier to confuse with the background.

I suspect that many of today's programmers would be absolutely aghast, at the resolution of our screens, back then.

ResEdit FTW!

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#109

Post by a13o »

raffraffraff wrote: post #39

Without reading everything there is on the subject, I'd guess it's tilted for the same reason it's tilted to the left . Humans are tool makers and tool users. After enough time the tool becomes an extension of the body, even if the tip of the tool is mechanically or virtually detached from the hand that is controlling it. The tool maker designed this as a right-handed tool, coming into the frame in the right hand. If…

I mouse left-handed and wrote software for Windows to flip the mouse cursors, because it felt more natural

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#110

Post by justsomehnguy »

Stratoscope wrote: post #96
zb wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arrow has a white outline around it, so the hotspot is at the tip of the black arrow, at (1,1).

Bingo! Now that you jogged my memory, I can confirm this. The next question is why you need a white outline around the black arrow. This is easy to answer: if you didn't do that, what would the black arrow look like against a black background?

Some DE solved that by having an inverse outline.
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