How to edit touch pad functions

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

It would appear that on Aug 17, Sascha Güthling did say:

> On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Donn <donn.ingle at gmail.com> wrote:
>       On Thursday 13 August 2009 16:00:57 Sascha Güthling wrote:
>       > Is there another program
>       > that offers options?
> Try installing gsynaptics. It helped on my little Acer notebook.
> 
> Thank you for your replies.
> 
> Nils: mine works the same. I don't know why I thought it's double tap. man synaptics gave me
> some ideas but I still struggle to get everything working the way I want it to. More about
> that further down.
> 
> Donn: gsynaptics seems to be a nice tool but it doesn't give me any options to change the
> corner tap action of my touchpad.
> 
> 
> I found out, that the setup is not done in xorg.conf anymore. In order to activate SHM for
> gsynaptics I created a file shmconfig.fdi under /etc/hal/fdi/policy/ with the following
> content:
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
> <deviceinfo version="0.2">
>  <device>
> 
> 
>   <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
>    <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
> 
> 
>   </match>
>  </device>
> </deviceinfo>
> 
> Supposedly that does the same as having a line like
> "Option" "SHMConfig" "True"
> in your xorg.conf
> 
> This switched SHM on which allowed me to run gsynaptics.
> But when I added 2 more lines to switch the corner tapping off they didn't have any effect.
> Here is the complete file:
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
> <deviceinfo version="0.2">
>  <device>
>   <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
>    <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
>    <merge key="input.x11_options.RTCornerButton" type="integer">0</merge>
>    <merge key="input.x11_options.RLCornerButton" type="integer">0</merge>
>   </match>
>  </device>
> </deviceinfo>
> 
> Any ideas anybody?
> 
> Any help is appreciated.
> 
> Sascha

Well I think have some useful information for you Sascha... 

I was first exposed to this on my Sabayon 4.2 installation

In my case though I wanted to disable all tapping and all scroll wheel
functions. Tapping always renders my touch pad mouse unusable for me
because I'm unable to move the mouse pointer without triggering undesired
"click" events on every single clickable object between the current
mouse position and the spot I'm trying to move it to. And I was always
accidentally changing things by accidentally brushing the scroll wheel
portion of the keypad...

With Sabayon I did a web search that resulted in 
enough instructions for me to find out that it was now a hal
policy issue. And that  I'd find an existing file named

   /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/11-x11-synaptics.fdi
Note: in Kubuntu the file was:
   /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/11-x11-synaptics.fdi

Which needed to be edited... I gleaned enough info from several
different replies to make mine look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad">
        <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
        <!-- Arbitrary options can be passed to the driver using
             the input.x11_options property since xorg-server-1.5. -->
        <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.TouchpadOff" type="string">2</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.MaxTapMove" type="string">0</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">false</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.VertTwoFingerScroll" type="string">false</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.HorizTwoFingerScroll" type="string">false</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.CircularScrolling" type="string">false</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">0</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton2" type="string">0</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton3" type="string">0</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

Which not only shut down tapping, But thankfully also stopped
the right hand third of the touch pad from acting like a scroll wheel...
I think that for me the important part was the TouchpadOff line where
the value "2" was supposed to leave basic mouse function on, but
shutdown everything else...

I don't really understand the "hal policy". But that worked for me. Perhaps
it will serve as a guide for you to edit yours... 

There is also quite a bit of info that might interest you in the synaptics
man entry, such as:

       Option "RTCornerButton" "integer"
       Option "RBCornerButton" "integer"
       Option "LTCornerButton" "integer"
       Option "LBCornerButton" "integer"

	AND

       Option "TouchpadOff" "integer"

I note that "RLCornerButton" isn't there... But more to the point, I
also note that the TouchpadOff entry, like the corner button entries,
*_IS_* listed as an integer. Yet in my fdi file the working TouchpadOff
entry uses the term "string" instead!!??!! <shrugging cluelessly>

So perhaps the lines

 <merge key="input.x11_options.RTCornerButton" type="string">0</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.RBCornerButton" type="string">0</merge>

would work for you...

Hope this helps!

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