[PATCH xf86-input-synaptics 00/12] Clickpad support

Chase Douglas chase.douglas at canonical.com
Thu Feb 9 18:52:54 PST 2012


This patch series adds proper clickpad support. Clickpads are trackpads that
have buttons integrated into their touch surface. In order to press the buttons
one has to be in contact with the touchpad. This causes all kinds of problems
today. For example, pressing with one finger and dragging with another is
interpreted as a two-touch scroll (where enabled).

This patch set attempts to work across all clickpads. The variants I am aware of
are:

Apple magic trackpad and unibody macbook trackpads
- Whole touch surface is one button

Synaptics ClickPads
- Whole touch surface is a button
- Left and right button areas are painted on
- Use "Synaptics Right Button Area" property to set the button area
- Taps and clicks in right button area will emit right clicks

Dell Synaptics ClickPads
- Only seen in older Dell netbooks, will never be produced again (hopefully)
- Bottom right of touchpad is left button
- Bottom right of touchpad is right button
- No other area physically clicks or is interpreted as a button
- Use "Synaptics Right Button Area" property so taps emit right clicks

Semi-multitouch ClickPads
- Some Synaptics ClickPads are semi-multitouch, some aren't
- This patchset includes quirk handling for these devices as well

These features are the most requested features for trackpads on Ubuntu. As it is
today, all clickpads are badly broken when used with xf86-input-synaptics. This
patchset should bring some sanity to the situation.

Note that there is still one ugly issue remaining on some synaptics trackpads.
On my Dell netbook if you release one finger and put another down somewhere else
at the same time it thinks the finger has moved. We probably need some better
filtering somewhere, but I'm not sure where yet.

The patches can be pulled from:

git://people.freedesktop.org/~cndougla/xf86-input-synaptics clickpad-synaptics

-- Chase


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