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MouseLooper v1.1

I wrote this program because the Anderson Trackball Accelerator wasn't meeting my needs for fixing the trackball speed issue -- it caused my computer not to go into screen-saver or power-saving modes, for some reason. A built-in logitech looping feature on an old 2001 IBM desktop inspired me to write this.

By 'looping the mouse', I mean making the screen periodic both vertically and horizontally. Your screen goes, say, from 0 to 1279 in the x direction and 0 to 1023 in the y. The looper makes the coordinates (1279, y) equivalent to (0,y) and (x,1023) equivalent to (x,0). Thus, if you move the cursor 'off' the right end of the screen, it reappears on the left; and likewise, moving it off the top makes it reappear on the bottom. (To eliminate jumping back and forth on the boundary, my looper actually places the cursor 1 or 2 pixels into the screen when moving it to the other side.) The topologically equivalent system is a torus (a donut), though admittedly one that would be hard to make proportionally. Other examples you may have come across include the world map in early Final Fantasy games.

The pros of looping the mouse are that mathematically it cuts the longest distance you ever have to move your mouse in half. Now all the corners are the same point, so the furthest distance onscreen is from any corner to the center (instead of between opposite corners). This can be a major efficiency improvement, as long as one remembers to use it.

The major con of using a wrapper is that the design of window managers makes use of the special status of corners and walls. Basically, it's much faster to click a button in the corner than one in a random place in the middle of the screen: you can just ram your mouse into the corner and make a small adjustment, instead of carefully targeting. The looper eliminates that special status-- what you gain with a decrease in distance to objects, you have to make up for with precision once you get there.

But that's the strength of the AG5 trackball: it's high on precision and low on top speed. I find the wrapper pleasant and intuitive, having used it for a while. The looper can be downloaded here: https://alphagrip.pbwiki.com/f/HGR_MouseLooper.exe

Ideas for improvements? Write them here!

• Make the edge a little 'harder' to get over: so if you mouse against it slowly, it maintains its rigidity, but a more quickly moving cursor can get through

Thanks for trying! Hope you like it!

cheers, ~HGR