xf86-input-synaptics 1.0.99.3

[Peter Hutterer]

On Wed, Mar 04, 2009 at 09:16:21AM +0000, Colin Guthrie wrote:
> On a related note here Peter, I'm getting hugely negative feedback on 
> the default two-finger-scroll and non-tapbutton1 settings. That's not a 
> problem here but essentially I'm going to have to tweak the defaults or 
> suffer lynching in the streets!

Yeah, I've seen bugreports that complain about these defaults too.

For tapping:
This is a definitive break to 0.15, with the feature being disabled now by
default on most touchpads. There's arguments to both sides, one being that
tapping enabled causes erroneous clicks, especially for those with reduced
dexteriority. The other argument is of course that it's a feature that makes
the touchpad attractive. Members from both groups can be quite vocal, so
either default is wrong in some way.

I don't care strongly enough either way. Tap has been disabled in the driver
since September now, so I want to stick with it. Subjectively bad but
predictable defaults are better than defaults that change every month.

For scrolling:
Many devices seem to be going towards multi-touch and for this reason I think
two-finger scrolling is the better default. That's pretty much the only
reason. 

Based on anecdotal evidence, those who are complaining tend to be the ones
that know how to configure it to their defaults anyway.
 
> 1. Are you tweaking things in Fedora (can't see anything obvious when I 
> peak!)

No, I don't. I did fix up gsynaptics and synclient though and I'm now telling
users that they can tweak it at runtime. IMO this is the best solution.

> 2. What would be the recommended way to tweak things?
> 
> I can do one of two things:
>   A. Patch the synaptics driver.
> or
>   B. Configure things in the FDI file, and patch the Xserver to ignore 
> synaptics in the same way it currently ignores keyboard and [vm]mouse. 
> If the user does not want to use hal then they wire it up themselves - 
> they should be canny enough to work out the configuration needed if they 
> are configuring their config in this way.
> 
> That said, I'm looking for the path of least maintenance too. I think B 
> is the "neater" solution, but only if you see this ultimately going into 
> the xserver.
> 
> So, in short WDYT?

If synclient/gsynaptics are insufficient, I'd patch the driver.
fdi files as configuration were always frowned upon and were mostly used
because of a lack of alternatives.
Patching the server to ignore synaptics xorg.conf devices will not only
increase maintainance for you (maintaining patches in two different repos,
different behaviour to other distros) but also create _a lot_ of complaints
about the xorg.conf devices not working. synaptics is about the only device
where xorg.conf sections have continued to work through the whole input system
rework. Breaking this will create a flood of bugs.

Cheers,
  Peter