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> You completely missed my point. The part that is similar between a space space mouse and a trackpoint or joystick is that all of these essentially measure for

> You completely missed my point. The part that is similar between a space space mouse and a trackpoint or joystick is that all of these essentially measure force on them, with that input converted by software to velocity (or angular velocity). If you let go they move back to a neutral position instead of staying where you put them. They do not measure the direct displacement or rotation of some physical component or body part. This is different than the input of a mouse or a touchscreen or a knob or a slider or a trackball or a scroll wheel or a dial or a stylus, but similar to the input of an analog trigger or pedal or steering wheel. Yep, I did. I am sorry. I personally cannot stand using a trackpoint for precisely the same reasons as you're describing. Conversely, I tremendously enjoy using a space mouse and you would have to snatch it from my dead cold hands! It is so good, I don't know how to explain. > This is a non sequitur. But to answer you, I am perfectly happy to flip physical pages on a book for 5 hours straight, without my fingers ever getting tired. As compared to PageUp/PageDown? Which one do you think would make you less tired?

jacobolus 7y ago
The physical book is a lot easier to carry to different kinds of body positions on varying furniture, walk around with, etc. I suppose a tap on the iPad screen is probably technically the least effort, but I don’t find flipping book pages to be a hardship, and being able to write in the book margins, organize books on the shelf, etc. is nice. YMMV. The most stressful aspect of using a typical workstation computer to read a long document is probably sitting in a typical office chair. You could compensate for that with a standing desk, but the book is still nicer IMO. > It is so good, I don't know how to explain. This is mostly because a 2D mouse + keyboard is quite a poor tool for navigating in 3 dimensions. A multitouch screen could conceivably be decent with a well-designed interface, but the common ones aren’t great.

jacobolus 7y ago

The physical book is a lot easier to carry to different kinds of body positions on varying furniture, walk around with, etc. I suppose a tap on the iPad screen is probably technically the least effort, but I don’t find flipping book pages to be a hardship, and being able to write in the book margins, organize books on the shelf, etc. is nice. YMMV. The most stressful aspect of using a typical workstation computer to read a long document is probably sitting in a typical office chair. You could compensate for that with a standing desk, but the book is still nicer IMO. > It is so good, I don't know how to explain. This is mostly because a 2D mouse + keyboard is quite a poor tool for navigating in 3 dimensions. A multitouch screen could conceivably be decent with a well-designed interface, but the common ones aren’t great.