Bug 248007

Summary:	mouse pointer direction (and popup menus) should reflect mouse hand used
Product:	[Applications] systemsettings	Reporter:	Navid Zamani <navid.zamani>
Component:	kcm_mouse	Assignee:	Marie Loise Nolden <nolden>
Status:	RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	nate
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Gentoo Packages
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Navid Zamani 2010-08-16 00:08:23 UTC

Version:           unspecified (using KDE 4.5.0) 
OS:                Linux

This is a neat little idea:
It would save make the experience a lot nicer for left-handed people, if the mouse pointer images would automatically be flipped for people who use the left hand. It would also save designers a lot of time, since they wouldn’t have to do another set/package of them.

As a bonus, one could make it a more general thing. So that e.g. popup  menus, title bar icons/buttons, the K menu / task bar, menus, etc could also be aligned in the other direction.
Since this is the default in arabic languages, I bet it’s already implemented.

So all that would be needed, is a checkbox to “Automatically adapt $functionality to mouse hand”. Where “$functionality” would for example be “mouse pointer style”. And a small loop that creates a clone of the current mouse theme with flipped images, for when the checkbox is enabled and the hand is the left one.

It should be enabled by default, as pretty much 100% of the left-handed users want it anyway. (A right mouse pointer looks and feels weird/irritating when using the left hand.)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
n/a

Actual Results:  
n/a

Expected Results:  
n/a

Comment 1 Christoph Feck 2010-08-16 02:12:14 UTC

> Since this is the default in arabic languages, I bet it’s already implemented.

Yes, try running an application with the "-reverse" option, but I doubt that you want it :)

Comment 2 Navid Zamani 2010-08-29 13:10:40 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> Yes, try running an application with the "-reverse" option, but I doubt that
> you want it :)

LOL. Actually, I can see it as being quite useful in some cases. (I also notice, that Dolphin does not completely reverse things.)

But it does nothing to the mouse cursor. So, no. Not of much use. ;)

Maybe I’ll use ImageMagick and a loop, to mirror them.

Comment 3 Navid Zamani 2010-08-29 13:44:55 UTC

This is easier than it sounds. I looked into the source, and all the oxygen cursors, and many more, are generated trough a script, from SVG, via PNG, to the theme. So in the PNG step, simply mirroring the images with ImageMagick, and running running a replacement over the position value (where you click. forgot the name.), will do it. Easy.

I’d sumbmit a patch myself, if the build system would not use yet another (its own) language instead of a standard one.

How come this isn’t picked up yet? Doesn’t the maintainer have any left-handed friends? ;)
(If he fixes this, he gains at least one. Me! ;)

Comment 4 Nate Graham 2022-04-22 19:35:19 UTC

Flipping the cursor is easy, but flipping various (but not all) UI elements here would be close to impossible to achieve a reasonable UX. We can flip everything, and design for that. But we can't really flip only some things; the things that did get flipped would interfere with the things that didn't, and the overall effect would be not so good. And if we can't do that, there's really no point in flipping the cursor either. And with no duplicate reports, patches, or developer interest in 12 years, I think it's safe to say this won't end up happening, sorry. :)