In the J2SE 1.4.2 JDK API HTML online docs for java.awt.event.MouseEvent, reference is made to values returned by methods referring to buttons BUTTON1 BUTTON2 BUTTON3 etc. (e.g. getButton(), getModifiersEx())
However it is not clear which buttons BUTTON1, BUTTON2, BUTTON3 refer to.
For example, are buttons reversed for left-handed mouse users?
Is BUTTON2 always the middle mouse button? On my linux machine, BUTTON2 refers to the middle mouse button, but is this the case for Windows? Is BUTTON3 still the right mouse button on a 2 button mouse? If BUTTON2 is the 'secondary' mouse button why is it the middle one?

Also in javax.swing.SwingUtilities there is nothing to say whether isLeft/Middle/RightMouseButton() behaves identically for both left and right-handed users.

There needs to be a clear explanation as to what developers can expect, so that applications work across all platforms for all users.

I searched the internet using Google and saw various conflicting accounts as to what behaviour I should expect. So I think this needs clarification.


###@###.### 2003-09-11