Left-Mouse Select: Why All The Fuss?

[SUB][This is not a thread about how good or bad the LMB Select issue feature is/will be. It is about WHY people make a big deal of it when there are so many other UI issues they could have chosen. Please flame about why RMB Select is so much better in another thread. Thanks in advance.][/SUB]

OK, something that continually comes up in UI/UX discussions is the question:

“Why is LMB Select such an issue for people?”

At a glance, the question has an incredibly obvious & valid foundation. After all, the bugs & inconsistencies introduced by switching to LMB Select in the user options is not really that much more/worse than other inconsistencies in the Blender UI we all learn to live with. If one can change the setting, it’s not as big a deal as everyone makes out right?

To answer that question one needs to accept that using the left-mouse button to select is an almost universal standard across all modern applications that “edit” things the user is creating. Be it a graphics application, desktop publishing suite, or scientific tool - using the left mouse button to select elements the user can see before them is a consistent standard that applies across the UI. If one cannot or will not accept this foundation, you might as well stop reading now because you’ll never understand the issue. I’m not going to argue about it here (it’s been shown repeatedly in the forums and is accepted by the UI team - so that’s enough for me). It is, however, an axiom that you need to accept in order for this to make sense.

So despite over a decade of people pointing out the issues in Blender’s flouting of standards that existed well before it started and hasn’t shown any signs of going away, the default in Blender is still RMB-Select. Despite attempts by sebastian_k and others to justify it, the choice of right-mouse over left-mouse is relatively arbitrary. If one ignores tablet users (for whom the reasons to have left-mouse select are even more numerous), pretty much any argument one can make for RMB-Select applies to LMB-Select. So, if one ignores the idea of standards from elsewhere, the argument between RMB-Select & LMB-Select is simply one of choice, switch all right-clicks to left-clicks in the code and the arguments for/against one become arguments for/against the other.

In other words, what Ton/BF choose as the default is a matter of choice for them… if he/they ignore the rest of the world’s software and the standards that have evolved out of the morass of choices over the decades we’ve been developing/using them in the home & office for graphics & visual editing purposes. And this is the issue in a nutshell.

Ton/BF like RMB-Select. It’s been stated multiple times and it’s his/their veto that has prevented a change multiple times in the past. The reason we have had the default application violate probably one of the most commonly accepted standards in mouse usage in a graphics application for over ten years is due to the personal preferences of those at the top of the Blender development chain of command. And that is the reason LMB-Select is such an issue for people…

LMB-Select has become representative of other arbitrary UI (& even non UI) decisions that make no sense beyond the personal preference of Ton/BF. It’s not the most important issue in the minds of those who are frustrated with decisions made about what is & isn’t good for users (I can think of at least three UI changes I would rate as highly). It is, however, one of the easiest to point to as an example of stubborn intransigence, arbitrary decision-making, what-have-you from the gatekeeper(s) of Blender trunk/main. It encapsulates most of that which frustrates those that see good ideas (& good patch implementations) shot down at the hands of Blender leadership and it affects every user of Blender equally (whereas, say, coloured wireframes is something most users could ignore).

Everyone using Blender is affected by the choice, the decision is arbitrary if one ignores UI standards, and people looking to change it for both new users & those using Blender in a pipeline get shut-down due to the personal preference of those at the top. It would be hard to find any other issue that brings all those grievances together under the one umbrella.

tl;dr: LMB-Select is an issue, not because it’s so much more important than every other UI decision, but because it is representative of the struggle people have getting Ton/BF to let go of features/decisions they have a personal attachment to. If he/they cannot do so for something as obvious as abiding by the LMB-Select standard adopted by pretty much every other graphics application out there, what chance is there for objective decisions elsewhere in the development process?

This is a “slippery slope” argument. It also does not explain how changing the default from right-mouse-select is important. According to you, the actual problem is “Ton’s stubbornness”, not the odd default. That’s more of an interpersonal issue, isn’t it? If you want to make a fuss about that, at least be honest.

As it stands, right-mouse-select works a bit better in Blender, so it’s not a bad choice to make it the default, as it has been like that for twenty years. Making a fuss about defaults is bullshit, when you can change your preferred input method right on the launch screen. If for example Maya users first launch Blender, and the Maya preset is actually broken shit, then that’s the actual problem! Same for the “Blender 2012” preset, which has left-mouse marquee select as default!

The RMB-LMB discussion is like endianness. Do you open your soft-boiled egg on the big end or the small end?

Very therapeutic!

I have some problems with my shoulders, so I alternately use the mouse with my left hand and my right hand (changing the mouse settings in the system). So with all that, I have not problems in using the default selection mode in Blender. Anyway with all the fuss about this, hopefully soon developers can properly implement the selection with the LMB. And when that happens, I wonder what will be the next unimportant topic to generate fuss.

It wasn’t meant to. That argument has been had over & over before. More importantly, it is already the conclusion of the UI Team that left-click select is to become the new default. Provided the UI Team does not have their efforts vetoed (at which point all hell is going to break loose) - that discussion/debate/argument ha already been concluded.

If that’s what you are taking away from the above, there is nothing more to discuss. A brief overview of my posts will demonstrate I have no problems calling Ton out when I think he deserves it. Your implication I am being dishonest is a blatant troll & an attack on my character. I’m not interested in such petty tit-for-tat flamebait.

Again, that is not the subject of this thread. See the first paragraph of the post. If you want to argue that one, please take it elsewhere. That argument is done & dusted (UI Team is going with LMB Select Default) and this thread is not about the arguments behind that.

Yes, it is quite like that. In the absence of other standards & tools - the choice is quite arbitrary. No arguments there. As such, ignoring the standard set by the rest of the world’s software, the choice between the two is neither here nor there.

Contrariwise, when one does take into account the fact there is a standard (whether Ton/BF like it or not), there is no good reason to choose RMB Select over LMB Select… and yet changing it has been vetoed for over ten years. This fact, amongst others, is why LMB Select has become representative of the frustrations felt when good (or at least, intuitive) changes to the UI are shot down because of personal preference from Ton/BF.

More importantly, it is already the conclusion of the UI Team that left-click select is to become the new default.

Can you please provide a reference for this statement? all i know they were trying to do is make the switching between left and right click select to have the same functionality, not left click select being a default.

Default Keymap: Review and/or Rework Selection.

There has been nothing since to alter this conclusion, though I’d be very interested in seeing such if you know of it.

So you write an entire post titled “Left-Mouse-Select: Why All The Fuss?” that is pretty much entirely about your frustrations with Ton. The things I said that are actually related to left-mouse-selection, you are dismissing as “off-topic”. The UI team already decided to make left-mouse-select the default. Then how the fuck is this post really about selection? It isn’t! It’s about your frustration. And that’s really fine for you to write about that, except if you didn’t put it under the headline of “Left-Mouse-Select”, nobody would give a shit? Indeed, using that headline seems a tad dishonest, doesn’t it?

By the way, if I remember correctly from some Blender Conference Q&A, Ton doesn’t actually have a strong preference for either mouse button.

Regarding endianness: Little-Endian is clearly the correct one.


I am a noob, But this is the window to fix that non-issue right?

I think this is the bigger thing, is that its not a simple switch they can do to make it work perfectly out of the box… I think the aim right now is to bring both of the interactions with left and right mouse buttons to the same… that way it doesn’t really matter what the default is, blender will work correctly (and consistently) for both.

No, I didn’t. Read the OP again.

Congratulations, you managed to understand the OP, if perhaps inadvertantly. It isn’t about whether of not Left Mouse Selection is better, worse, or equivalent to Right Mouse Select. It is about why people keep bringing up Left Mouse Select when a discussion about the UI & improvements to it is raised in the forums.

No, because I was clear, upfront, and honest that the thread wasn’t about the argument between Left Mouse Select & Right Mouse Select. As much as you might want to argue about that, I’m happy with the conclusion reached by the UI Team and don’t need to keep arguing the matter. As stated in the first paragraph, if you want to quibble about that, try one of the many other threads to spill your bile about the issue. This is about why the issue keeps coming up, not why my opinion on the LMB/RMB issue is better.

Also, for the sake of openness, as you refused to acquiesce to a polite request to refrain from questioning the integrity of people in the thread - I have raised the post with the mods.

“There is some agreement that we will make left click select the default”
That is a conclusion?

I agree there are MANY more important things for developers to consider, especially since there is nothing wrong with RMB select with the exception of a few inconsistencies(which are just that, it’s not broken). Honestly, I have no idea why people keep bring it up.
Cinema4D is one of those “industry standards” with LMB select, but you have to select the selector. You also need to hold down a hotkey to rotate the 3D view. It’s no small wonder people love modeling in Blender as opposed to other programs.
I say, fix the LMB option for those who can’t wrap their heads around selecting with RMB, and leave RMB select alone.

@joseph raccoon: Yes, but it is slightly inconsistent across the board(just fine if you only want to select stuff with the LMB). They are working on it.

You are a noob if you think this is a “non-issue”

Yes that option does switch the buttons, but also breaks a number of commands and functions while doing so. Also the other problem is the fact that RMB select is default which confuses new users who don’t know how to change it yet.

Please pardon the sidestep, but this needed to be cleared up for the new guys.

When read in context of the link I gave - yes, it is the conclusion. This is further bolstered by private conversations I have had with various people involved in the process, however I will not provide you with quotes from private correspondence. Feel free to ask them directly if you believe I am in error. I myself asked for clarification on that comment, hence being more than satisfied on the matter.

Feel free to bring it up with them. From the public comments one can read in the tracker and from private conversations, the conclusion reached is that as long as experienced Blender users can easily get back to the old keymap, the new one (with LMB Select) will be the default. In other words, the very argument RMB-Select proponents have been using to prevent LMB-Select becoming the default is being applied to the other foot (i.e. as it’s just a setting in options, you can change it in seconds).

Honestly, and I hate to repeat myself, this thread isn’t about arguing which is better, which should be kept, etc. It was simply to inform people asking why the issue kept coming up in UI discussions. The answer being it is about more than just the feature itself but that it has become representative of a variety of other issues as well.

I think the issue keeps coming up because for all intent and purposes it hasn’t been solved yet. Most people who are not aware of internal development talks will base their opinions and discussions on what they can see now in the program and on what has been officially stated, and as far as I know there have been no official statements about the matter yet (for example in the development blog).

I don’t actually want to argue for or against any mouse buttons, and I haven’t. You were criticizing the decision to keep the default, and I gave a rebuttal to that. It’s just not such a bad decision as your premise makes it out to be.

Also, for the sake of openness, as you refused to acquiesce to a polite request to refrain from questioning the integrity of people in the thread - I have raised the post with the mods.

Thanks for the openness, I got a good chuckle out of that!

No, I wasn’t. Read the OP again.

I don’t doubt it.

Indeed, there is a bit of that involved as well. The key elements of Andrew Price’s polls, discussion, and subsequent presentation that were agreed upon by enough users to turn BA into a flaming cyclone of user interface argument are not yet resolved and that lends (undeserved?) weight to those wanting to troll the Blender Foundation whilst alo discouraging those who saw the creation of the UI Team as a way of moving the UI forward.

I understand why there isn’t official word on the matter in the development blog, twitter, etc. Namely, as Jonathon Williamson has stated elsewhere, the task is taking a long time with the current level of resources & effort they can dedicate to the task given everything else on their plates. Last thing you want is an official statement on the subject only to take it back later as things develop (see Steam/Gooseberry funding debacle some months back).

I actually read the majority of that link, but the part you posted is really the only thing that even suggests LMB being the new permanent default select. No matter, I would imagine that is still a ways off, years anyway.
But hey, as long as RMB stays as it is now and I can just switch back to it if LMB becomes default, I’m cool with that. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll learn it and move on.
As for it being about “more than just the feature itself”, well, I suppose by saying “it has become representative of a variety of other issues”, you mean devleopers not listening/Ton ruling with an iron fist, etc.(correct me if I’m wrong, please)? I don’t know about that, and I don’t want to know about that. What goes on behind closed doors is not my business(although it’s open source, so it can be), when the issues at hand are nothing even remotely close to something like “Blender now costs a thousand bucks”. My personal concerns with Blender are more along the lines of what I can do with it, and if it works properly. :slight_smile:

It is most definitely not meant to be years off. That’s actually one of the frustrations people have with the development.

That is indeed the intention from everything I’ve read and been told.

Amongst other things and without the dramatic adjectives, but yes that is a reasonable characterisation of what I am saying. People do want LMB Select, quite a few of them if one goes back to read the @#$%-storm this forum turned into when Andrew Price presented the results of his poll & made his presentation on the matter, but that is not the reason it comes up in every UI thread.

It’s a lodestone issue that touches enough of the underlying issues people have with development, developers, and how Blender is managed that it takes on more importance to people frustrated with the whole process. Think of it like those mascot animals sports teams and frat houses adopt - as just another pig/lamb/chook/etc, the animal itself is not that important, but people invest more of their emotional energy into it due to what it has come to represent. It is symbolic of more than just whether or not LMB is better than RMB for selection purposes.