Desktop or laptop testing: active with cursor

[todd rme]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Marco Martin <notmart at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 October 2011, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
>> On Tuesday, October 11, 2011 13:04:44 todd rme wrote:
>> > Is there a way to use a visible mouse cursor in plasma active?  I know
>> > that it is designed to be used with touch devices, but having some way
>> > (perhaps a keyboard shortcut) so desktop and laptop users can at least
>> > boot up the livecd and see what everyone is talking about would be
>> > nice (although it obviously won't give the real experience).  For
>> > people without tablets on-hand, seeing what is possible might
>> > encourage them to get one.
>>
>> We only need the mouse cursor when a mouse is plugged in, right? Or am I
>> missing cases here... ?
>>
>> In that case, I'd suggest we do what we planned to do a while ago already,
>> and switch on the cursor when a mouse is plugged in, and switch it off
>> when the mouse is plugged out, that makes for natural behaviour to me...
>
> iirc last time we tried was a bit tricky because often the drivers lied
> whether something was a mouse, a touchpad, a touchscreen or whatever?
> what are the low level facilities to detect this? is it reliable enough?
>
> another way that someone suggested me was something like this:
> https://gitorious.org/cordia/hildon-
> desktop/commit/f4116c14ed173a991f26ac2b8ca034b79db0437f
>
> basically hides the mouse when touch events arrive, shows it when mouse events
> arrive, similar to what also windows8 does, in the end as behaviour would be
> the best, but...
>
> besides becoming too much application specific, we again have the problem of
> drivers lying whether an even is mouse or touch (iirc on the suse image only
> mouse events arive atm, while on the meego image arrive both at the same time,
> and this makes the different behaviour on touch input that is easily
> osservable between the two)
>
> Cheers,
> Marco Martin

Would it be possible to, for instance, detect when the scroll wheel is
used or something, and enable the cursor then?  Or use something else
similar that a touch screen wouldn't have?

-Todd