mouse driver standards?

[Paul Allen]

I'm trying to understand why some mouse-based applications fail to work in
a DOS window on a Sun 386i and others work just fine with the Sun mouse.
I'm posting to c.s.i.p in order to tap the expertise of users of rodents
on actual PC-class hardware and to the Unix/Sun groups in the hope that
users of DOS Merge-type products will have some insight.

What I'm really interested in is whether or not DOS mouse drivers all
present the same interface to applications.  The driver supplied by Sun on
the 386i is claimed to look like a Microsoft mouse.  Does this mean that
an application that expects a Mouse Systems mouse will not see the driver?
Or will the application see the driver and crash at some point because of
differences in the interface?  Does anyone have technical descriptions of
the interfaces presented by either Microsoft or Mouse Systems mouse
drivers?

[Note that I'm not interested in hardware-level interfaces.  I can hook a
mouse up to the com1: port on the 386i and everything's cool.  I want to
be able to use the regular Sun mouse for both Unix and DOS windows.  In a
DOS window, the Sun mouse is emulated by a driver that is supposed to be
Microsoft-compatible.  Before I can recommend that my organization buy any
of these beasts, I need to understand how to predict what will work and
what will not.]

If you've got information that might help me, please e-mail it.  I'll
summarize if there's interest.

Paul Allen

-- 
Paul L. Allen                       | pallen at atc.boeing.com
Boeing Advanced Technology Center   | ...!uw-beaver!bcsaic!pallen