[Kde-accessibility] kmousetool idea

[Jeff Roush]

Hi Olaf,

On Thursday 23 January 2003 03:27 pm, Olaf Jan Schmidt wrote:
> I experienced a problem when testing kmousetool: When I click onto
> "Start", I often move the mouse one or two pixels without noticing. Then
> kmousetool turns itself immediately off again. The problem could be
> solved by waiting one second after the user has clicked onto "Start"
> before generating any mouse clicks. As one second is quite short, the
> user would very probably not even notice this.

I think a better solution to this might be to implement a "Dwell Zone" 
feature.  MouseTool for Windows has this; with it, the mouse always has to 
move more than X pixels before the program clicks.  Bumping the table 
shouldn't make the mouse click.  The user can set X, of course, and it can 
default to two or three pixels.  I'd like to put this feature into KMouseTool 
anyway, and doing so might take care of this problem.

> And what do you think about enhancing kmousetool into an applet (like
> kopete or ksirc)? Then it would fit much better to the way things are
> done in KDE generally - especially since you would have it minimized all
> the time anyway.

I keep changing my mind about this.  MouseTool for Windows runs in the System 
Tray when minimized, which means it is essentially an applet; its icon 
changes color and shape to show when the mouse is down or about to right- or 
double-click.  It would be nice for KMouseTool to behave this way too.

I hesitate because I don't know how that would affect the ability to run 
KMouseTool under other window managers.  I'd like people to be able to use it 
under Gnome, or Windowmaker, and so on.  

I guess the answer is to just have KMouseTool check to see if it's running 
under KDE, and either run as an applet or not, depending.  I'll have to look 
into doing that.

Jeff