Howdy
I'd like to suggest a capability to be included in the Rawhide
project. The request comes from my attempt to setup a PS/2 Kensington
Expert Mouse on a Fedora system. The Kensington Expert Mouse is a
trackball designed for Windows systems. The trackball hardware is not
an issue. Setting up the Kensington mouse using the standard gnome
mouse program, the trackball maneuvers the cursor like a normal mouse
without problem.
The issue is a missing software control which is not available in the
standard mouse preferences program but which is available in the
Kensington Mouseworks program, a Windows specific program not ported
to Linux. Without the Mouseworks program installed on a system, the
trackball works the same in either a Windows or Linux environment.
With the Kensington Mouseworks program it is possible to set up
entirely different parameters for how the cursor is accelerated when
the mouse is moved slowly versus when it is moved fast. This allows a
user to zip the cursor to an area on the screen and then have slow,
precision control once there, as when editing a picture or selecting
any small item on the screen. This capability becomes more important
as screen resolutions increase and items on screen become smaller and
harder to pinpoint exactly. Such fine control would be beneficial for
use with any type of mouse and should be manufacturer independent.
From within the present mouse program a Fedora user can adjust the
acceleration of the cursor movement globally only, restricted to
using a single slider button. Neither is there the ability for the
program to detect when the mouse is being moved slowly. In the
Mouseworks program there is a box which must be checked to access the
fine control parameters. If left unchecked, only the standard
acceleration control is available and the fine controls are grayed
out. If checked, the Mouseworks program makes two additional slider
controls available; one for when the mouse is moved fast and one for
when it is moved slow. Once selected, when the program detects that
the mouse is being moved slowly it alters the acceleration of the
cursor according to user preferences. I don't know at what threshold
the program determines the movement to be slow. It seems to be a
gradual change, not a sudden shift from super fast to super slow.
This capability should not be available for use with a finger pad on
a laptop. Personally, I use a Wacom tablet, and, like a finger pad,
when I move the stylus slowly the cursor moves slowly and precisely.
There would be no use for such additional control on a tablet or a
finger pad, and the option should be grayed out unless the system
detects an external mouse connection, and then it should only be
applied to an external mouse.
Tony
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