IDE' mouse problem with 3.4.1 on macOS

[Fifi]

Hello,

The third mouse button (scrolling the content back and forth) doesn't work at all on the IDE under macOS.
Is there a fix planned soon since this problem was already reported long time ago and that without this capability, the IDE is almost unusable on a Mac.
TIA for news about that.

Cheers.
Fifi

[mnrvovrfc]

Did this mouse come with your computer or did you buy it separately? As far as I know a Mac mouse has only one button. To get the "right mouse button click" on Windows, have to hold "command" key and then click on MacOS, right? But a third button? You have to tell me about it.

It's going to be difficult to consider this, well, because I have seen enough MacBook Pros and other portable computers by ApCo and they don't even have any buttons south of the keyboard, just the finger pad. Tap to click. Because I'm clumsy, none of those computers would have been for me at any price. :/

Also please note that the QB64 IDE is an emulation of a text-console-mode program for MS-DOS, in which mouse support was "tacked on". Had to run a resident program provided by M$ to have mouse support before launching the QB.EXE executable. It had nothing to do with Windows for as long as QuickBASIC was sold, but Windows v3.1 was already taking names by the time Visual Basic for DOS then for Windows came around in the mid-1990's. This might be difficult for somebody to comprehend who has never seen 16-bit software in action, and/or who has never seen a console-driven operating system more severe than an ordinary Linux or MacOS terminal.

I'm bumping this thread to see if DSMan195276 or someone else sees it and replies to you. I didn't like that goose-egg for a few days for your thread...

[Fifi]

Did this mouse come with your computer or did you buy it separately? As far as I know a Mac mouse has only one button. To get the "right mouse button click" on Windows, have to hold "command" key and then click on MacOS, right? But a third button? You have to tell me about it.

It's going to be difficult to consider this, well, because I have seen enough MacBook Pros and other portable computers by ApCo and they don't even have any buttons south of the keyboard, just the finger pad. Tap to click. Because I'm clumsy, none of those computers would have been for me at any price. :/

Also please note that the QB64 IDE is an emulation of a text-console-mode program for MS-DOS, in which mouse support was "tacked on". Had to run a resident program provided by M$ to have mouse support before launching the QB.EXE executable. It had nothing to do with Windows for as long as QuickBASIC was sold, but Windows v3.1 was already taking names by the time Visual Basic for DOS then for Windows came around in the mid-1990's. This might be difficult for somebody to comprehend who has never seen 16-bit software in action, and/or who has never seen a console-driven operating system more severe than an ordinary Linux or MacOS terminal.

I'm bumping this thread to see if DSMan195276 or someone else sees it and replies to you. I didn't like that goose-egg for a few days for your thread...

Hi mnrvovrfc,
Thank you for your post and welcome to the Apple world.
For info, all the iMac (the desktop machines, not the notebooks) come with a device called "Magic Mouse" that is a bluetooth device for over 15 years.
If this mouse looks like a single button device, in fact it's a three button mouse with the classical left and right clicks as well as the scrolling action of the third button of the classic Linux and Windows devices just when gliding your finger over its top.
You can also plug a standard USB mouse with its scrolling button (this is what I do when I'm out of battery on my Magic Mouse).
And the macOS recognizes all the actions (left and right clicks and scroll up and down) without any modification nor any kind of driver exactly as it's for Linux and Windows OS.
If you take a quick look at my profile, you should suppose that I'm perfectly aware of the mouse behavior on old systems since I started professionally computing in 1976 with CP/M and MP/M Oses, then later with PC-MS DOS 1.0 up to 7.1 on real IBM PCs, PCjr and PS/2 machines, then MS Windows starting with its 1.0 release up to the last current 11 and in the interum with OS/2 from version 1.0 to its last 4.51 release as well as with a bunch of Linux distros starting early in 1997 with RedHat 3.
Currently, I use 2 iMac 27 machines, one "mid 2011" with an Intel i7 4 cores @ 3.4 GHz and 32 Gb of RAM with macOS 10.13.6 (High Sierra) that's my development system, and the second "late 2°12" with an Intel I5 4 cores @ 3.2 GHz , 8 Gb of RAM and macOS 10.15.7 (Catalina) that's mainly my test system and my own web server that you can reach here.
For Windows 7 (32 & 64), Windows 10 (32 & 64) and 11 as well as my multiple Linux distros (mainly Mint Cinnamon, but also  CentOS, Debian, Fedora, LMDE, Ubuntu, RHEL, Arch and Manjaro to name few of those), these OSes run in VMs (thanks to the best of all: VMware Fusion virtual machine commercial product) on my iMac 27 i7 and when I need to make tests on a baremetal system, I do it on my home made PC with an Intel i5 4 cores @ 3.25 GHz, 12 Gb of RAM and a 4 Gb HDD formatted in GPT mode to support multiple primary partitions (currently over 14) with the different boots managed with grub2.
So, to come back to the mouse actions on OS/X, they behave exactly like with other desktop environments.
However, I guess the interface of the macOS' mouse APIs are different than those of Linux and Windows and in order to manage them correctly, the QB64 and QB64PE devs must have a real iMac or a MacBook on witch they attach a Magic Mouse or a classic mouse device.
I don't know who's now in charge of the specific macOS developments but not long ago, that was Fellippe Heitor (the guy who gave the debugger for QB64 and now QB64PE as well as the "Dad" of InForm) who made a lot of them on this OS platform since he's an Apple aficionado like me.
To finish my post, this scrolling mouse problem on the QB64-QB64PE's IDE is known for a very long time but nobody ever took care of it.
I know that macOS is the poor relation of the operating systems here, but I wish it could be fixed once for all since without the scrolling actions, the IDE is almost unusable on Apple systems and forces users to use alternate editors such as CodeBlocks or the Apple development environment Xcode that are not appropriate to the QB74-QB64PE language nor are linked to the compiler.
Hope this message helps you to better understand the wonderful Apple world (no virus like with Linux but with a very cool designed GUI).
TIA for your concern.
Cheers.
Fifi

[mnrvovrfc]

Thank you for the detailed information and the insight about being an user of Macintosh.

I should have known a trick about that single button...

I have a computer which, from far away only has the finger pad. But the two buttons are concealed. It's still a bit crazy to me. The touchpad also has a special area that, when it's given a focused touch with the finger, it enables "numeric keypad" mode, or disables it if it was on previously.

What a shame that Mr. Heitor didn't look into the three-button mouse thing. It seems he didn't use it and he didn't think there was someone else trying to use QB64 on a Macintosh. It would be nice if he could return and contribute to the project even if he could do so infrequently.

There are a lot of lurkers to this forum, I'm sure. We need more people so this Phoenix Edition is as good on Macintosh as it is on the other two "major" operating systems. Then a few years later maybe for FreeBSD or something else...

[Fifi]

Thank you for the detailed information and the insight about being an user of Macintosh.

I should have known a trick about that single button...

I have a computer which, from far away only has the finger pad. But the two buttons are concealed. It's still a bit crazy to me. The touchpad also has a special area that, when it's given a focused touch with the finger, it enables "numeric keypad" mode, or disables it if it was on previously.

Hi mnrvovrfc,
Thanks for you note.
If you still have your whatever-mac, just plug a very classic mouse device with its two buttons and its scrolling wheel via any USB port and you'll get the same behaviors than with a "Magic Mouse".
However, what OS release runs on this "old" system? I hope it's not anymore a version 9 that's out of concern for qb64pe but you've any macOS 10.X.Y version on it.

What a shame that Mr. Heitor didn't look into the three-button mouse thing. It seems he didn't use it and he didn't think there was someone else trying to use QB64 on a Macintosh. It would be nice if he could return and contribute to the project even if he could do so infrequently.

I've been able to talk by phone and mail exchanges a lot of time with Fellippe in the past and I can tell you he's a very very very nice person.
Yes it's a real shame and I don't know and doesn't want to know why he had quit the project, but from the last exchange I'd a chance to have with him a couple of months ago, I can tell you that's a pity but I unfortunately think he'll never come back.
Whatever the reasons, this is a huge lost for this project and not only for the macOS part.
That's also very bad for InForm that's an excellent tool which could be integrated within the qb64pe project as it was planed but that needs a small fix that I'm not able to do unless I spend a crazy time to find the problem (remember, I'm not really a coder).

There are a lot of lurkers to this forum, I'm sure. We need more people so this Phoenix Edition is as good on Macintosh as it is on the other two "major" operating systems. Then a few years later maybe for FreeBSD or something else...

For what I know, FreeBSD isn't anymore the "base' of the last Apple "macOS" for the machines with the M1 chip.
Further, even if I truly appreciate all my current Apple machines (2 iMac 27 one of each has also a 27" Thunderbolt screen , 1 old iMac 20, 1 old eMAC and 2 MacBooks), I don't appreciate their last hardware policy (especially with the M1 chip) where all the components are glued or soldered on the motherboard and where you can't anymore proceed to changes, repairs or upgrades (even the official dealers can't).
So, I guess like a vast majority of Apple aficionados, I'll use my current machines as long as they'll live.
Then when I will not be able to repair my current systems anymore, this will be the end of my venture with Apple, and due to my age, may be to me also.

Cheers.
Fifi

Just for fun, below is a picture I just took of my iMac27 development environment on macOS High Sierra with it's second 27" Thunderbolt screen and where I run on the main screen a VM with Linux mint on which I'm sending this post to you and on the second screen another VM with Windows 10, all that thanks to VMware Fusion. There is also a White MacBook on which I look TV programs when I work.

[DSMan195276]

Hello,

The third mouse button (scrolling the content back and forth) doesn't work at all on the IDE under macOS.
Is there a fix planned soon since this problem was already reported long time ago and that without this capability, the IDE is almost unusable on a Mac.
TIA for news about that.

Cheers.
Fifi

I'll be honest, I wasn't aware of this and we don't have a bug report for it in GitHub, I'll see about making one. I feel like it worked for me the last time I tried QB64-PE on macOS, but that was probably a month or two ago now so I don't remember all that well (and I didn't know it was something I should check).

[Cybermonkey342]

Hello,

The third mouse button (scrolling the content back and forth) doesn't work at all on the IDE under macOS.
Is there a fix planned soon since this problem was already reported long time ago and that without this capability, the IDE is almost unusable on a Mac.
TIA for news about that.

Cheers.
Fifi

I'll be honest, I wasn't aware of this and we don't have a bug report for it in GitHub, I'll see about making one. I feel like it worked for me the last time I tried QB64-PE on macOS, but that was probably a month or two ago now so I don't remember all that well (and I didn't know it was something I should check).

AFAIK, it never worked.
The wiki states, the keyword_MOUSEWHEEL is not supported in macOS. So the mousewheel also can't work in the IDE, can it?
https://qb64phoenix.com/qb64wiki/index.php/MOUSEWHEEL

[mnrvovrfc]

AFAIK, it never worked.

Welcome to the forums.

[Fifi]

I'll be honest, I wasn't aware of this and we don't have a bug report for it in GitHub, I'll see about making one. I feel like it worked for me the last time I tried QB64-PE on macOS, but that was probably a month or two ago now so I don't remember all that well (and I didn't know it was something I should check).

I'll be honest too, I made such a report a very long time ago on the previous forum, but as Cybermonkey342 said, since the Wiki has long reported that the _MOUSEWHEEL keyword is not supported in macOS I thought this problem would never be fixed.
However, yes, please file a bug in GitHub as I assume there is no technical reason why this issue cannot be fixed in a future release as without this mouse wheel capability the IDE is almost unusable on macOS forcing Mac users to use any other external IDE such as CodeBlocks not interfaced with the compiler or the Wiki and the help.
Cheers.
Fifi