Feature Proposal: Enable two finger touchpad scrolling by default

[Duncan McGreggor]

Chase Douglas wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> We've received a request to enable two finger scrolling by default in
> Ubuntu. After querying some of our uTouch and X developers, everyone
> seems to be in agreement that this is a good idea. With that, I'd like
> to ask for any comments on the change, positive or negative. If you
> believe two finger scrolling should not be enabled by default it is very
> important that we hear from you!
> 
> I have filed a bug for this issue (but please comment here on this
> mailing list, not in the bug):
> 
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/736829
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -- Chase

Reaction summary
================

Folks seem to be rightly concerned about a fallback option being present
for devices that don't support two-finger scrolling. I think we may be
in agreement if I say this:

If there is no fallback in place for Natty, we cannot enable two-finger
scrolling by default.

Follow up
=========

Some folks had mentioned the possibility of doing this in
gnome-settings-daemon, so I asked around a bit. I've talked with Seb and
Henrik Rydberg, who simultaneously (on two different IRC channels came
to the following conclusion:

This should be done at the driver level in X.

Seb's reasoning was multi-fold: we don't want to limit a fix to GNOME
only -- we have to think of kubuntu and xubuntu. Additionally, relying
on session software for this fix will most likely result in a buggy
experience; best to control this at the source.

Henrik said that we should check so see what the synaptics driver is
telling us by default, and use that to initialize the setting in the
desktop. The driver does all the checks necessary to enable what the
hardware can handle.

Actions
=======

Henrik and Chase will discuss this further to determine the level of
effort, potential impact on the system as a whole, and then reply to
this thread with their findings, planned approach, requesting further
feedback and sanity checking.

Thanks everyone!

d