examples of using xinput?

[Tom Horsley]

OK, I've been trying to understand the "official" new way to configure
my trackball for draglock and to shuffle buttons around to my liking,
and while I can tell from web searches that the "xinput" tool may indeed
be the way to do this, I am left completely bumfuzzled by how the heck
I am supposed to use it. The man page is utterly cryptic and many hours of
web searches have turned up zero examples that might give me a hint.
Or if the xinput tool isn't really what I want, what is the tool I want?

I warn you, I'll soon be forced to go back to setting AutoAddDevices to
false in xorg.conf and doing things the old way, then what are all these
"improvements" for? :-).