synaptics bug 31636: non-uniform horizontal and vertical acceleration

[Martin Spacek]

On 12-04-03 02:24 PM, Chase Douglas wrote:

>> Chase, I find it incomprehensible how anyone could want this behaviour. Did any
>> of them explain why they prefer it? Could you maybe get them to comment on this
>> thread?
>
> The reason they gave was that you would need to drag your finger much
> farther with every additional monitor you add, when you need to go from
> one side of the X screen to the other.

Not a terrible argument, but by the same token you need to push a trackpoint 
longer, and an external mouse further, yet neither change their acceleration. I 
think the far more important point is that the user has to recalibrate himself 
every time a monitor is added or removed, and worse yet, recalibrate along only 
a specific dimension.

>> Again, the inconsistency with the multi-monitor behaviour of other pointing
>> devices within Linux is glaring, as is the inconsistency with touchpads on other
>> OSes. It would seem to me that going against the consensus across pointing
>> devices and OSes (at least, as perceived by myself) should require extraordinary
>> justification.
>
> I personally agree with you, but such a change would affect everyone who
> uses a trackpad with multiple monitors on X.org today. I think we can
> make the change and tell people to get over it :), but it's not just my
> call.

Naturally, it would be nice to change the default behaviour, but as I think was 
mentioned in one of the bug reports, could a configurable option be added to 
switch between the two behaviours, and leave the default as is to prevent 
controversy for now?

Martin