X: standard method for "switching off" left mouse button?

X: standard method for "switching off" left mouse button?

[Florian von Savigny]

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I thought this might be a common problem with laptops: I am using a
laptop with a touchpad (or whatever that's called) which has the
feature that tapping on it is transmitted as a left mouse button
click. Because of its position, my hands cannot stay away from the
touch pad (right between them) while touch-typing, and every few
minutes, they generate a left mouse button click which puts point in
an awkward position ... it is very annoying, especially if you
recognize it some ten keystrokes later ...

I think I'd be able to go the brute force approach of redefining the
bindings for the left mouse button to a command that does nothing, but
I wonder whether there's a more elegant way. It would be nice to have
a simple command to simply "suspend" the mouse bindings for the left
button, such that I can turn them back on when I need them.

Is there any such thing around? Can anybody give me hints apart from
that? I'd appreciate a lot.

-- 


Florian v. Savigny

If you are going to reply in private, please be patient, as I only
check for mail something like once a week. - Si vous allez répondre
personellement, patientez s.v.p., car je ne lis les courriels
qu'environ une fois par semaine.

Re: X: standard method for "switching off" left mouse button?

[Alan Shutko]

Florian von Savigny <florian265@uboot.com> writes:

> I thought this might be a common problem with laptops: I am using a
> laptop with a touchpad (or whatever that's called) which has the
> feature that tapping on it is transmitted as a left mouse button
> click. 

You don't want to turn off the left button, probably, you want to
turn off that annoying feature, or change the sensitivity so that
it's less annoying.  If you're using Linux, the answer may be
http://www.compass.com/synaptics/ .

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - I am the rocks.
Looking for a developer in St. Louis? http://web.springies.com/~ats/
"The place has all the atmosphere of a ground round." -- Nelson

Re: X: standard method for "switching off" left mouse button?

[gebser]

Ca va.  I experienced exactly the same very annoying problem.  The
best/quickest solution I found was to plug a regular mouse into the
laptop.

Another note: any emacs solution you implement should work only when the 
focus is on emacs, meaning that if the mouse pointer is on, say, a 
terminal window, when you accidently touch the mousepad, it'll bring up 
that terminal window.  So the disabling of the mouse should be done in 
X; look in /etc/X11/XF86Config* for the mouse section.  The problem with 
this "solution", however, is that you'd have to restart X every time you 
wanted to disable or enable the mouse... probably as much a hassle as 
dealing with touchpad accidents.

Now for a completely crazy idea: /dev/mouse is a symlink to /dev/psaux.  
It could possibly, conceivably, theoretically be possibly theoretically 
conceivable to disable the mouse by removing /dev/mouse and then enable 
it again with "ln -s /dev/psaux /dev/mouse".  You might try that (on 
your boss's computer when he's not around).  I'd be curious to know if 
that works, but not curious enough to try it on my own box.  B^+


hth,
ken

-- 
Thanks for your help with the revolution.
                              -- G. Washington


At 23:10 (UTC+0100) on 29 Mar 2003 Florian von Savigny said:

= 
= I thought this might be a common problem with laptops: I am using a
= laptop with a touchpad (or whatever that's called) which has the
= feature that tapping on it is transmitted as a left mouse button
= click. Because of its position, my hands cannot stay away from the
= touch pad (right between them) while touch-typing, and every few
= minutes, they generate a left mouse button click which puts point in
= an awkward position ... it is very annoying, especially if you
= recognize it some ten keystrokes later ...
= 
= I think I'd be able to go the brute force approach of redefining the
= bindings for the left mouse button to a command that does nothing, but
= I wonder whether there's a more elegant way. It would be nice to have
= a simple command to simply "suspend" the mouse bindings for the left
= button, such that I can turn them back on when I need them.
= 
= Is there any such thing around? Can anybody give me hints apart from
= that? I'd appreciate a lot.
= 
= 

Re: X: standard method for "switching off" left mouse button?

[Florian von Savigny]

gebser@ameritech.net writes:

> Ca va.  I experienced exactly the same very annoying problem.  The
> best/quickest solution I found was to plug a regular mouse into the
> laptop.

> Another note: any emacs solution you implement should work only when the 
> focus is on emacs, meaning that if the mouse pointer is on, say, a 
> terminal window, when you accidently touch the mousepad, it'll bring up 
> that terminal window.  

I think that would have been practical, since the problem only becomes
apparent to me when entering text in Emacs. Under X in general, the
feature was quite charming (I have now disabled it with the help of
tpconfig, see Alan's posting).

> So the disabling of the mouse should be done in 
> X; look in /etc/X11/XF86Config* for the mouse section.  The problem with 
> this "solution", however, is that you'd have to restart X every time you 
> wanted to disable or enable the mouse... probably as much a hassle as 
> dealing with touchpad accidents.

Hmm, I think that this is feasible if you can do without the mouse
altogether under X (not a bad idea on a laptop, I'd say).

> Now for a completely crazy idea: /dev/mouse is a symlink to /dev/psaux.  
> It could possibly, conceivably, theoretically be possibly theoretically 
> conceivable to disable the mouse by removing /dev/mouse and then enable 
> it again with "ln -s /dev/psaux /dev/mouse".  You might try that (on 
> your boss's computer when he's not around).  I'd be curious to know if 
> that works, but not curious enough to try it on my own box.  B^+


What's the rationale behind that? (I didn't try it - when your
proposal appeared, I had just installed tpconfig, which seems perfect).

Thanks a lot for your proposals anyway!

Florian

Re: X: standard method for "switching off" left mouse button?

[Florian von Savigny]

Alan,

thanks a lot, that was just great. Though I managed to trip myself
over by inserting a slightly wrong line in /etc/inittab (to start
tpconfig), which made the computer hang during the boot sequence, it
took me just an hour to fix that ;-) Now, the feature is indeed turned
off. I was thrilled to see a program that worked so immediately and
even fitted my hardware (it's a Compaq notebook).

I agree this is the cleanest way of dealing with the problem. Thanks
again. 

Florian

Re: X: standard method for "switching off" left mouse button?

[Daniel R. Anderson]

<snip>
> Hmm, I think that this is feasible if you can do without the mouse
> altogether under X (not a bad idea on a laptop, I'd say).
</snip>

You know how if you do an # xf86cnfg how you use the keypad to move
around if your mouse isn't set up right?  Maybe you could allow the use
of the keypad as a mouse -- that is if the only thing you're using in X
is emacs.  You could also write a script to rotate XFree86 config files
-- one with a mouse and one with the keypad if you /really/ need to use
Xemacs instead of plain old emacs.

-Dan