Instruction Manual
18
Relative vs. absolute motion
Conventional mice are very simple devices. When they are moved across a desk, they
simply report to the computer how far they have been moved. If you move the mouse
left an inch, a relative number (say X=-400, Y=0) is reported to the computer. The host
O/S takes this number and applies some user preferences to it and moves the on-
screen mouse pointer to the left. Of course if the mouse is already in the top left corner,
then the on-screen mouse pointer doesn’t move.
When emulating a mouse, it is best if the controlled computer acts like a window
on your laptop screen. For that to happen, you want to direct the on-screen mouse
pointer to a specific screen location so we want to send absolute screen coordinates,
not relative motion events to the controlled host.
The USB H.I.D (Human Interface Devices) standard allows us to define a special USB
mouse that operates somewhat like a touch screen and simply tells the host where it
wants the mouse pointer to be. This works perfectly for modern Windows and Mac OS
X systems.
But there are USB KVM systems, USB to PS/2 convertors, DOS programs, simpler
operating systems and other situations where a simple USB relative mouse is needed.
For this reason, we support operation in relative mode.
In Relative mode, this program will `capture’ your mouse into its control window. This
must be done to convert your laptop mouse events back into relative events and send
those to the controlled system. While the mouse is captured, you cannot do anything
else with your system except control the attached computer.
Toolbar Menu
This menu provides a more direct way to control the toolbar. You can easily ‘dock’ or
‘float’ the toolbar, as well as hide or show it. The current status of the toolbar is shown
as check marks beside these choices.
The state of the toolbar (floating, docked, vertical, horizontal, position, etc.) is
remembered when the program is closed and then reopened. However, if you wish to
return to the default layout, use the Restore default window layout option.
