Touchpad (ksynaptics) is driving me crazy

[Duncan]

Alexander Puchmayr posted on Sun, 01 Jan 2012 13:27:33 +0100 as excerpted:

> Is there a possibility to deactivate the touchpad on a laptop while
> typing on the keyboard? It happens over and over again that I come too
> near to the pad causing clicks somewhere, marking and deleting/replacing
> text anywhere. This is becoming really a PITA (Happened at least 10
> times during typing this message)
> 
> As far as I remember there was once (more than one year ago) a version
> of ksynaptics offering dead-time between typing and mouse events, but
> for some reason this option has been removed.

I haven't updated my netbook (with the touchpad) in awhile (it's the 
workstation I use most of the time and keep updated, running the kde 4.8 
release candidates now, a live-git 3.2-prerelease kernel, etc), but 
AFAIK, the xorg driver (xf86-input-synaptics) still has the 
functionality.  I've never even had the kde tool for it installed, only 
the regular driver, which I configured using a Section "InputDevice" file 
dropped in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/, as described in the xorg.conf (5) 
manpage and the synaptics (4) manpage.

Here's the file I use (with xf86-input-synaptics-1.4.0).  Again, see the 
synaptics (4) manpage for the details of each one.

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier              "syntouch"
        MatchIsTouchpad         "on"
        MatchDevicePath         "/dev/input/event*"
        Driver                  "synaptics"
        Option                  "SHMConfig"

        Option                  "VertTwoFingerScroll"
        Option                  "HorizTwoFingerScroll"

        Option                  "TapButton1"                    "1"
        Option                  "TapButton2"                    "2"

        Option                  "EmulateTwoFingerMinW"          "10"
        Option                  "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ"          "47"
        Option                  "EmulateMidButtonTime"          "500"

        Option                  "FingerHigh"                    "35"
        Option                  "FingerLow"                     "28"
        Option                  "FingerPress"                   "255"
        Option                  "MaxTapMove"                    "442"
        Option                  "TrackstickSpeed"               "5"

        Option                  "EdgeMotionMinZ"                "35"
        Option                  "EdgeMotionMaxZ"                "68"
        Option                  "EdgeMotionMinSpeed"            "1"
        Option                  "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed"            "201"
        Option                  "EdgeMotionUseAlways"
EndSection

There's functionality that allows you to disable the touchpad while 
typing (see the syndaemon manpage), but I found that once I was running 
the synaptics driver instead of the evdev driver, it calmed right down 
and I didn't need to disable it while typing.  It was only when running 
the normal evdev input driver that's not really designed for touchpads 
that the pad was so super-sensitive that I needed it disabled for 
typing.  Once I had it running the synaptics driver, even before I 
configured the finger sensitivity, it IMMEDIATELY calmed down, as the 
default sensitivity with the synaptics driver is already **WAY** better 
than the WAY over-sensitivity of the default evdev driver when it's 
driving a touchpad.

That the functionality disappeared on you is another indication that you 
might be using the default evdev driver instead of the syntouch driver.


-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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