Remapping Synaptics Touchpad

[Peter Hutterer]

On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 09:28:27PM +0100, Tias wrote:
> Peter Hutterer wrote:
> >On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 02:26:03PM +0100, Harald Braumann wrote:
> >>On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 08:48:32 +1000
> >>Peter Hutterer <peter.hutterer at who-t.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>>no, evdev doesn't have any specific touchpad features to configure
> >>>this. generally, we encourage ppl to use synaptics for touchpads and
> >>>evdev for other devices, avoiding the duplication of functionality.
> >>>your case is a bit of a corner case, so you fall through the cracks
> >>>here. sorry about that.
> >>OK, thanks for all your help. One last question: will the evdev driver
> >>eventually become the one and only driver and also implement device
> >>specific properties, or is it planned to keep some device specific
> >>drivers, like synaptics?
> >
> >At this point, I don't know whether to say yes or no, but my tendency is
> >towards "no".
> >
> >evdev is a generic driver that's supposed to work with all devices (for some
> >value of "work"). synaptics has two specific features, one of which is that
> >it talks synaptics protocol (used on non-Linux systems) and the other is
> >that many of its features are specifically geared towards touchpads.
> >I don't want to mess up evdev with all the features synaptics has, it'd make
> >evdev a lot harder to read and fix bugs for.
> >
> >now, as you may have heard there are plans to move the drivers back into the
> >server.
> 
> Ah, that's interesting. Is there some place where we can hear more
> about this ?
> I've spent some time trying to understand how touchscreens were
> handled in the old days and now, and I would be interested to know
> where it might be heading in the future : )

http://www.mail-archive.com/xorg-devel@lists.x.org/msg02128.html
is probably the best starting point - this was AFAICT also the first mention
of it.

Cheers,
  Peter