The Touchpad, The Mouse and the xorg.conf in KDE 4

[DeathKitten]

This all started with me looking into how to make my laptop automagically disable the trackpad/touchpad/what-the-frell-every-you-call-that-stupid-frelling-thing whenever I plug my happy little Logitech mouse in to use instead. What I was able to find here on the forums and out in the great wide internet via Google told me that I would have to edit something into the input section of my xorg.conf file. This wouldn't be a problem, I don't mind mucking around in my xorg.conf, except that apparently something in KDE 4 says we're not supposed to use an xorg.conf so much anymore, something about letting the kernel handle everything "as it should be" or something.

Now, this leaves me in a little bit of a state of confusion... I am now lost on how to solve my mouse/trackpad issue. I find that the trackpad is constantly being bumped by my thumbs while I type, and I'll be going away at my super crazy fast typing speed, and I'll be three sentences along, only to notice that what I'm typing is getting inserted into the middle of something else because I accidentally bumped the pad while I was typing along. Frustrating. So I need to solve this issue. Any recommendations?

Also, I really don't like this new video configuration without the xorg.conf, as something about it leads my screen settings to not load up right unless I restart the x server one to two times when I turn on the laptop, or I have to open (not change anything, just open) the display settings from the control panel. It seems to default to an older not-widescreen aspect ratio for some reason, and this leaves black boxes on both sides of my display, and either the x server restart, or the opening the display settings module will get it to go over to the proper widescreen aspect, it's just annoying to have to do one or the other each time I turn on the laptop. So, anyone have any advice on that?

If it helps any, I've got a Toshiba Satellite Laptop, model L305-S5955 and a Logitech V220 mouse.

[kubicle]

Re: The Touchpad, The Mouse and the xorg.conf in KDE 4

This wouldn't be a problem, I don't mind mucking around in my xorg.conf, except that apparently something in KDE 4 says we're not supposed to use an xorg.conf so much anymore, something about letting the kernel handle everything "as it should be" or something.

That's not really KDE4, but xorg's new hal automagics.

Touchpad problem:
There are various tools to handle touhpad settings, but I've found the CLI 'synclient' tool works best for my needs (it's in 'xserver-xorg-input-synaptics' package). Synclient let's you change touchpad settings on the fly (I've set up a script that toggles touchpad tapping on/off via a keyboard shortcut).

For synclient to work, you need to set SHMConfig to "on" in hal input policy, you can create an fdi file (which is the "hal -way" of handling xorg options), Here's a sample /etc/hal/fdi/policy/15-my_synaptics_options.fdi:

?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- -*- SGML -*- -->
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device> 
  <match key="info.product" string="SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad">
   <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.TouchpadOff" type="string">2</merge>
  </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>

The first key turns SHMConfig on, and the second key sets the initial status of the touchpad to "no tapping" (The available values are 0=Touchpad on, 1=Touchpad off and 2=Tapping off)

After SHMConfig is on (you may need to restart hal), you can toggle touchpad settings with:

synclient TouchpadOff=[value]

Here's a sample script to toggle between "Touchpad on" and "No tapping":

#!/bin/sh

STATUS=`synclient -l 2>/dev/null | awk '/TouchpadOff/ {print $3}'`
if [ $STATUS -eq "0" ]; then
  synclient TouchpadOff=2
else
  synclient TouchpadOff=0
fi

Display problem:
AFAIK, if the xorg/hal automagics don't work with your display for some reason, you can still set up a xorg.conf file to set up your display

EDIT: This might be helpful as well https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Sy...hpad#shmconfig

[eddieg780]

Re: The Touchpad, The Mouse and the xorg.conf in KDE 4

Does your machine have a enable/disable touchpad button? Perhaps Fn and another key to turn it on and off. Most laptops have this feature. If not it's possibly in the bios. I know some computers have a selection in the bios like..enable, disable and auto that turns off the touchpad when an external mouse is connected. Just a thought.

[DeathKitten]

Re: The Touchpad, The Mouse and the xorg.conf in KDE 4

Does your machine have a enable/disable touchpad button? Perhaps Fn and another key to turn it on and off. Most laptops have this feature. If not it's possibly in the bios. I know some computers have a selection in the bios like..enable, disable and auto that turns off the touchpad when an external mouse is connected. Just a thought.

I don't see a button that's already specifically set up to enable/disable the touchpad. However, I will next explore the bios to see if there's an option there. If that doesn't work, I'll give a try to the solutions that kubicle has laid out for me.

Seems logical to me to run through the suggestions in the order of their ease of implementation. Why do more work than you have to?

[DeathKitten]

Re: The Touchpad, The Mouse and the xorg.conf in KDE 4

Okay, I have successfully set up my key bindings. Thank You kubicle!

I followed the instructions on the page you linked, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Sy...hpad#shmconfig, which led me to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Sy...ad/ShortcutKey

However, I did do one thing different. Instead of following the directions for xbindkeys I used Input Actions in the System Settings panel. I right clicked in the area that listed the various actions, selected New > Global Shortcut > Command/URL. Simply because I am a dork, I put "Ding Dong the Touchpad's Dead!" in the comments section. Under the Trigger tab, I clicked the button that said None, and then hit CTRL + F5 to assign that key combination to the task. In the Action tab, I included the location of the script for the enabling and disabling of the touchpad (I found the supplied bash script to work for me). Then I named the Input Action Touchpad On/Off.

I am most happy with this solution. Now to decide if I really want to frell with my xorg.conf file or if I'm okay with just restarting x whenever I turn on the laptop, before I login. If I decide to play with the xorg.conf, any recommendations for a resource that should guide me through the process? I know to always save a copy of the old working file before mucking around, but I'd be looking for mostly pointers on what I need to include and what information I need to know to effectly build the file.

[eddieg780]

Re: The Touchpad, The Mouse and the xorg.conf in KDE 4

That seemed like a lot of work. Toshiba site says the Fn+F9 key turns off the touchpad. Maybe yours is different.

[kubicle]

Re: The Touchpad, The Mouse and the xorg.conf in KDE 4

Raising up an old thread, but this might be of interest to some wishing to configure their touchpads.

There is a new systemsettings touchpad module available from kde-apps:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show...content=113335

Haven't tried it myself, I'm quite happy with my synclient/script/shortcut setup, but the module will probably be useful (at least once it matures) to anyone looking for an easy GUI way to mess with the touchpad.