Touchpad stylus mode

[Zephaniah E. Hull]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 09:08:30PM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
> Bert Freudenberg and Jim Gettys had the right idea on March 7th.
> It goes something like this:
> 
> a. Mode switches do not move the pointer.

Mode switches themselves do not move the pointer, however the only way
to trigger a GS to PT switch is to put a stylus on the unit, immediately
after switching to PT mode we get coordinate data for the stylus, which
does cause the pointer to move.

> b. On one device (probably the middle), jumps do not move the pointer.

The GS is set in X to be a relative pointer, there are no jumps.

> c. On the other device, jumps move the pointer. There is no acceleration.

Correct, that's already how things work.
> 
> By "jump" of course I mean lifting your finger/stylus and moving
> it to some other location rather than sliding it to that location.

There's an ALPS bug related to that, however we have worked around it in
the kernel driver for now.
> 
> I tend to think that an equal-cost plain touchpad would be a lot
> more reliable and usable though. Putting the buttons on the side
> (replicated on both sides maybe) would have allowed more front-back
> distance and made two-handed use much easier.

Not my department, I'll leave that for someone else.
> 
> There doesn't seem to be a good solution to unintentional mode switches.
> It will be especially bad when accidentally invoking the relative device

The PT to GS mode switch has a 50ms debounce on it, this can be tweaked
if need be.  However keep in mind that the mode switch just doesn't take
that long.

Zephaniah E. Hull.

-- 
	  1024D/E65A7801 Zephaniah E. Hull <warp at aehallh.com>
	   92ED 94E4 B1E6 3624 226D  5727 4453 008B E65A 7801
	    CCs of replies from mailing lists are requested.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/attachments/20070317/ec9d4fd1/attachment.sig>