One old problem (DivX), one new problem (synaptics)

[Michael T. Richter]

I'm still trying to get DivX videos to work with xine, mplayer, et al.
They work fine with VLC, but I really don't like the VLC player.  What's
the trick to get them working with xine, totem-xine, mplayer, etc.?  To
recap:

      * I have downloaded and installed every codec I could find both on
        and off the Ubuntu repositories.
      * One of those is the DivX 6 codec.  (The files are DivX
        5-encoded.)
      * Before I installed the DivX 6 codec, totem and xine would
        complain that they didn't know how to play DivX 5 format.
      * After I installed the DivX 6 codec, totem and xine promptly
        changed their complaint to not knowing how to play Xvid format.
        (WTF?  These are exactly the same files!)
      * All of these files worked just fine with all video players under
        Dapper.


So what's the next step in getting these to work?

The new problem: I had qsynaptics running under Dapper with no problem
after monkeying around with settings in xorg.conf.  What I specifically
needed it for was to turn off the touchpad while I'm typing because it's
really annoying having the mouse move because my thumb accidentally
drifted over the touchpad.  Of course with Edgy things changed and my
touchpad went back to its obnoxious old behaviour.  I downloaded
gsynaptics and qsynaptics both and, naturally, got told that it wouldn't
work because "SHMConfig" wasn't set to true in xorg.conf.  So I copied
the relevant lines from my old xorg.conf file -- which include prominent
"SHMConfig=true" lines -- and restarted.

It still complains that SHMConfig=true isn't set.

Apparently something has changes synaptics-wise from Dapper to Edgy.
What's the new magic incantation to get touchpads working and
adjustable?  A scan of Google gives all sorts of advice dating as far
back as Hoary, but nothing for Edgy that I can see.  (To be fair I only
went about three pages deep on the hits.)
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