tap-to-click feedback

[Paul Fox]

benjamin m. schwartz wrote:
 > Daniel Drake wrote:
 > > Really I think the biggest issue is that they
 > > press it by accident while typing or making other motions and have no
 > > idea why the screen has changed significantly (they don't understand
 > > that it's because they clicked, or that their hand was near the pad).
 > 
 > Normally, Synaptics touchpads use logic that (1) ignores large-area
 > contact, assuming it's an accidental touch with the palm, and (2) disables
 > the touchpad while the keyboard is active.  If those measures are not in
 > place, there will be a problem regardless of tap-to-click.
 > 
 > I don't know where in the stack this logic lives.  If that logic is
 > already active, then it sounds like further measures are warranted.

i'm not sure where that lives either, but the initial key to
the puzzle is that we don't currently use the synaptics kernel
driver, which i believe is required for disabling tap-to-click.

we tried the synaptics driver initially (when we got the new
touchpads) but by itself it caused extremely erratic (perhaps not
erratic, exactly, but just way-too-fast) mouse cursor behavior. 
at the time it seemed like we were going to need more changes
further up the stack (new X driver?  not sure), and since
behavior was reasonable with the generic mouse driver (with the
minor worry about tap-to-click), we left things as they were.

so:  to eliminate tap-to-click, someone needs to build a new
kernel with the synaptics driver enabled (maybe just the module
can be built), then they need to figure out how to make it all work well.

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