On Mon, 2008-12-08 at 20:15 +1030, Tim wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-12-07 at 20:46 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > I do my best to keep my thumbs away from that SOB, even using a
> > finger to tap the space bar when I'm composing an email, only to have
> > it do something off the wall cuz a finger or thumb got too close to
> > it.
>
> Mine does that, too, and it's bloody annoying. In prior releases I
> managed to EASILY disable touchpad tapping without disabling other
> touchpad features, and that solved the problem. For Fedora 9, I
> couldn't do so easily. Installing the obvious package to control
> (gsynaptics, since I use Gnome) it refused to do anything. The
> information about how to enable the package was lacking in useful
> details, i.e. *where* to put the extra settings into the xorg.conf file
> to get the SHMConfig enabling option to actually work.
This point in this thread seems as appropriate as any to mention
syndaemon. It's part of the synaptics (now xorg-x11-drv-synaptics)
package. When it runs, it disables the touchpad while the user is
actively typing on the keyboard and re-enables it after a brief pause
after the user stops typing. Sounds very neat. (I haven't felt the
need to actually use it, as I don't have too much trouble with
accidental tapping of my current touchpad.)
It does require setting SHMConfig, though, so that problem still needs
to be addressed.
>
> After making a bugzilla entry, which got cancelled for not really being
> a bug (I'm in two minds about that, because the package doesn't install
> itself in an operational way, and didn't provide enough information for
> you to manually enable it without the use of undocumented knowledge), I
> was left with information (on the final bugzilla entry) about how to
> disable my touchpad:
>
> 1. Reference the touchpad by adding "InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad""
> to the ServerLayout section.
>
> Which will allow me to use the gsynaptics program to twiddle my touchpad
> settings at will, and it's what I've done. But from time to time, in
> the middle of using the computer, it fails, and suddenly the mouse
> pointer has done something that it shouldn't do. Moments later, it's
> disabled again. And no amount of trying to abuse the touchpad will make
> it fail.
>
> 2. Add the options to the
> /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/10-synaptics.fdi file. This
> way you don't need an xorg.conf entry for the touchpad at all. Add
> each option in the form of
> <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">0</merge>
> to the respective section (info.product is Synaptics Touchpad in your
> case)
>
> But this would completely disable it for all users, with no way for a
> particular user to enable it, and I didn't like that idea.
>
> My BIOS gives me options to have the touchpad working or not working,
> with no auto-disable option. It's a laptop, I might need to use the
> touchpad when I'm mobile, but I generally prefer to use a mouse, and it
> can be handy for page scrolling without scrabbling for the mouse. An
> auto-disable when there's a mouse would be perfect for me, but I can't
> see a way to do it on Linux.
>
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
--
fedora-list mailing list
fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
