One thing this article, which is very thorough, and very good, doesn't mention is that all the signalling is in-band via control/escape sequences. Mgr had no analog to xterm. You telent'ed in to some other machine, your shell script did some control sequences, and presto, a new window with a shell on the remote machine showed up.
I believe this article touches on mouse button use. I think Stephen Uhler, the major author of mgr, was left handed, as the default button arrangement definitely was more ergonomic for your left hand.