Magnifer and touchpad in Kubuntu

[Hugh Sasse]

I've just started working on a laptop which I'm trying to make
accessible for me, and it has Ubuntu, and is setup with KDE.  At the
moment I have no preferences for KDE or Gnome, as I've not really
used either successfully.  I normally use Solaris, and nowadays
normally from a Windows machine using PuTTY.

My problems are that I need about 4x or greater magnification,
usually 4x will do, and that I've been having problems with the
touchpad.  I've been finding that when I move the mouse over some
icons in order to magnify them, they are activated as if I have
double-clicked on them.  I don't know if this is some function of
the touchpad on the toshiba touchpad or of some configuration
somewhere, but I'd like this behaviour to stop.  I have enough
difficulty positioning the cursor accurately with the touchpad as it
is, and it may be as a result that I'm pressing too hard.  Trying to
use a separate mouse, I have the mouse lock up (on logout) so I'm
not confident about that working properly with all programs.

Now, the magnifier, I can get it to display with enough
magnification, but I can't seem to control the size of magnified
display; I can set it to doc with the top of the screen but I can't
vary it's vertical height.  Maybe there's a configuration file I can
set.  I've tried to find stuff in the manual (man(1) command) and on
the web sites, to no avail.  Can anyone point me at specific docs
for these, please?

        Thank you,
        Hugh