Optimizing behaviour of Synaptics Clickpad on Sony Vaio Z13

[Peter Hutterer]

On Fri, Jan 04, 2013 at 11:41:59PM +0100, Markus Ellinger wrote:
> Am 04.01.2013 07:14, schrieb Peter Hutterer:
> >> Thanks, that's great. If this patch is added, will we still need to
> >> manually set a dead area on the buttons? Or is there a possibility
> >> to change the default config files so that if there are clickpad
> >> buttons, those are automatically marked as "dead area"?
> >no, I'd rather not make this a default. I'll add an example to the default
> >config file but people use their touchpads quite differently and we can't
> >tell. specifically, we configure the soft buttons to work as left/right on
> >non-apple clickpads but a user who enables tapping is less likely to use the
> >buttons. disabling the area for those users is a regression.
> 
> So how is the user who uses tapping supposed to do the right mouse
> button click?

usuall two or three-finger tapping. that's the reason why I don't want to
disable this area by default, the buttons take over a significant chunk of
the touchpad that would just stop reacting.

> I think what you're saying really depends on the type of trackpad
> used. For example, my touch pad looks like this one:
> 
> http://www.cnet.de/wp-content/uploads/legacy_images/story_media/41557080/sony_vaio_z21_tastatur_touchpad.jpg
> 
> The buttons are clearly visible as such and they also contain the
> finger print reader area. I doubt that anyone is temped to use those
> buttons for moving the mouse pointer.

we don't really see this in the driver though, all we see is a surface area
and that the touchpad only has a left-click. to the driver, your touchpad
looks almost identical to mine which merely has to thin lines to mark the
buttons:
http://static.trustedreviews.com/9dcc9f%7C1e55_15341-img9088s.jpg

> Just while I'm at it, is it possible to configure the buttons so
> that merely tapping (not pressing) them issues the right or left
> mouse click? Now that would be sweet.

no, we don't have code for that yet but I'm somewhat hesitant to add it.
given that all clickpads support multiple fingers, using double/triple-tap
gives you the same functionality and it's already integrated into the
various DEs.

Cheers,
   Peter