[kde-linux] How do I enable horizontal scrolling?

[Bill Wells]

On Tuesday 20 July 2010 15:56:16 Duncan wrote:
> Mun Johl posted on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:27:50 -0700 as 
excerpted:
> > My apologies if this is not the appropriate forum for
> > my inquiry.
> >
> > My Platform:
> >    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client release 5.5
> > (Tikanga) Qt: 3.3.6 KDE: 3.5.4-25.el5_4.1 Red Hat
> >
> > I have a Microsoft mouse with 4-way scrolling and I was
> > wondering how to enable the horizontal scrolling
> > feature?
>
> I was thinking that in general it should "just work", but
> then I took a look at your platform.  No offense intended
> but in all honesty, it's ancient!  kde 3 isn't officially
> supported by kde itself (thus these lists) any more,
> altho many people still use it and we do try to answer
> questions on it, but even for kde3, your kde is old, as
> 3.5.10 was the last release, August, 2008, with the 3.5.4
> released two years before that in August, 2006, now four
> years ago.
>
> Now I don't run Red Hat, but assuming the rest of the
> platform is equally old, there have been a LOT of changes
> since then, particularly in the areas of "just works"
> xorg configuration and plug-n-play detection (with
> xinput2 only really working from last year), and the
> related kernel input system it's based on.  Back then, it
> was possible to get things like horizontal
> scroll-wheeling working, but it involved jumping thru
> quite a few more configuration hoops than it does with a
> recent kernel and xorg (In terms of hardware, kde for the
> most part simply provides a front-end for using the
> services provided by the kernel, xorg, etc.)
>
> So upgrading to something semi-recent is the simplest
> alternative, but assuming that's not a viable option in
> your case or you'd have done it long before now, where
> I'd start is with xorg.conf (usually /etc/X11/xorg.conf,
> depending on the distribution).  The mouse configuration
> should be in an InputDevice section, so that's what
> you'll be interested in.  (You'll probably have two such
> sections, one for the mouse the other for the keyboard.) 
> The xorg.conf manpage should give you an idea of the
> various possible options and what they do.
>
> Depending on the age and configuration of your kernel,
> the device used may be /dev/psaux (the really old way) or
> the somewhat newer /dev/input/mouseX (with
> /dev/input/mice being the single devicefile used if you
> have multiple pointer devices.)  The newer, much more
> plug-n-play method of course uses the evdev driver and
> /dev/input/eventX devices for both mice and keyboards,
> but that's almost certainly newer than what you're
> running.  If it's psaux, configuring the mouse gets
> somewhat complicated, and I've happily allowed myself to
> forget most of it.  You'll have to ensure that you have
> the correct mouse type set, as the default probably
> doesn't have the necessary number of "buttons" available
> to be configured for horizontal scrolling.  If it's
> input/mice or input/mouseX, configuration is MUCH less
> complicated as the kernel itself takes whatever actual
> hardware you have and emulates a single standard pointer
> device. (Of course, evdev is less complicated still,
> but...).
>
> Once you have the proper device configured, then you have
> to tell xorg which of the additional "buttons" (to xorg,
> a scroll-wheel is two buttons, one for each direction
> up/down or left/right) to register for horizontal
> scrolling.  Again, I've long forgotten the details, and I
> now use the evdev driver so don't have the legacy mouse
> driver docs installed, but IIRC there were a number of
> settings related to X-axis and Y-axis scrolling and the
> "buttons" configured for them.
>
> That should at least get you pointed in the right
> direction.  Beyond that, I'd suggest trying a Red Hat
> specific list.  Hopefully, as they're in the business of
> supporting "Enterprise" users who tend to run far older
> versions of stuff, they'll have a list with people still
> familiar with installations that old.  Alternatively,
> Debian certainly has community lists and Debian Stable
> tends to be software that's older, so you could try
> there, altho you'd have to do some "impedance matching"
> for things such as file locations, package names, and the
> package manager used.
>
 <Snip>
From my notes on Slackware 11.0(?) thru 12.0, 
1)  I know that Slackware and Red Hat are configured somewhat 
differently:
2)  I cannot (and my notes do not say) what my mouse was at 
that time.
but here are the changes I made to get my mouse to work.

in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

line 282 I commented out
added line 283 Option   "Protocol"              "IMPS/2"
added line 289 Option   "ZAXISMAPPING"    "4   5"
note:  this line may be: 
	         289 Option   "ZAxisMapping"     "4   5"

I think that line 283 set the mouse as PS/2  so that should 
give you an idea of where to look in xorg.conf.

depending on the number of features your mouse has, as I 
recall, the numbers can be "4    5     6    7     8" etc.

Google ZAxis Mapping for a lot more info.

Bill Wells