Karmic touch pad request

[Alan Pope]

2009/9/27 Rick Spencer <rick.spencer at canonical.com>:
> 1. I've asked a few Windows XP users about this, and none of them know
> about this feature.

Yeah, my wife didn't know about tap-to-click, now she does and she
uses it all the time.

> 2. I have turned this off for users who complain that their computers
> randomly move the cursor the around on them. This is because they have
> no idea what tap to click is, so they can't begin to fathom why this
> would happen. It happens when their palms hit the touchpad.
>

I think you're confusing two entirely separate things. Tap to click
causes stuff to get _clicked_ on when people inadvertently tap the pad
when they didn't mean to. However what you seem to be describing is
just accidentally tapping the touchpad area by accident, causing the
mouse pointer to move. These are two separate issues.

Turning off tap-to-click will _not_ resolve the issue you mention in
2) above. The way to resolve that is to switch off the touchpad, and
use an external mouse. My wife used to have this issue with an older
laptop. It was an HP laptop which had a hardware switch to turn off
the touchpad completely. Which was useful when the OS had no software
switch for it.

> The current "off" default seems right to me.

And it seems wrong to me, so you'll never find consensus on what it
should be, there will be people on both sides.

However, it's reverted from what it used to do, which is default on,
so at the least its a regression bug.

Cheers,
Al.