8.2.2 Beta-1 test request

[Paul Fox]

milan wrote:
 > 
 > On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Martin Langhoff
 > <martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
 > >
 > > With these changes, the touchpads should move a little bit slower,
 > > have a bit more precision, and be a lot less 'jumpy'. In fact, when
 > > they data gets jumpy, the driver ignores the data instead of jumping
 > > wildly.
 > >
 > > Is the kangaroo mode gone? Is it more usable now? Are other effects
 > > creeping in?
 > 
 > I have ALPS touchpad.
 > 
 > The mouse movement is perhaps a bit less jumpy then in old 802, but
 > overall not very useable. There are times when it's ok (just slower
 > then on the default 802 version), but there are times when it stops
 > almost completely to respond to moving finger. Sometimes it has to be
 > nudged 10 times to move the width or height of the screen. I cannot
 > really tell why it is ok and why it starts behave like that. It comes
 > and goes. Several times it moved slowly by itself. In a way it appears
 > better when I do a continuos line draw (like when drawing spirals),
 > but when using it in an application (does not seem to matter which
 > app), and move the mouse quite a bit, it starts exhibit the "no
 > respond" behavior.

as with the old touchpad driver, the best thing to do when the
touchpad is behaving badly is to remove your finger from it for a
few seconds.  it will usually detect the condition, and
recalibrate.  the tricky part is that if your finger is still on
or very near the touchpad while the recalibration occurs, the
problem probably won't get better, and may get worse.

it's very frustrating that the laptops have such a crippled input
device.  all we can do in the driver is try and notice when things
"go bad", and make teh best of it, but we can't _prevent_ them
from going bad.

thanks very much for your testing.

 > 
 > >
 > > Comparison test drawing spirals:
 > >
 > >  - Grab 2 XOs with the same touchpad type, load the old stable 802 on
 > > one, and my test build (802B1) on the other. If you only have one XO,
 > > try one OS after the other...
 > >
 > >  - Open Paint and draw spirals
 > >
 > >    1) try to keep it reasonably tight
 > >    2) stop if you collide or get sloppy
 > >    3) count the number of cycles
 > >    4) try again N times
 > >    5) use the average cycles as a measure
 > 
 > well, I only have one XO 1 and did not go back to old 802. With 802b1,
 > I typically managed to do about 5 spiral cycles before it drew into
 > the previous line. But after changing brush size I got a completely
 > unpredictable behavior (non-responding or jumpy)
 > 
 > I can also tell that the right part of the pad is much less sensitive
 > (going up and down on the right does not move the mouse), this seems a
 > hardware issue i wonder what others see.

when you say "right part of the pad", i assume your finger is still in
the middle section, and not all the way into the right section.  the right
and left sections will definitely not respond.  if your finger is just
at the righthand edge of the middle section, then your touchpad may truly
be faulty.  you can run a diagnostic:  hold the "Check" gamepad key while
booting, and then hit ESC  to get an "ok" prompt.  then type "test /mouse".

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org