Touchpad configuration in 8.10. After gsynaptics, then what?

[Paul Johnson]

Hey, everybody:

In all previous editions of Fedora and Ubuntu, I've had no trouble
making the touchpad behave in the way I wanted.  I've been searching
for information about how to configure the touchpad and I find that
many users can't make the touchpad work at all, or the configuration
tools like gsynaptic don't work for them.

I don't have those problems.  I am able to use touchpad, and gsynaptic
allows me to adjust the min speed and max speed.

The problem I have is that, even after fiddling the sliders in
gsynaptic, I'm not able to make the touchpad work in the desired way.
The cursor swings about wildly, and it is starting to seem to me that
there have been some fundamental changes in the driver itself that
make the touchpad behave in a new way.  No matter what I try, I'm not
able to make the pointer move quickly sometimes and slowly sometimes,
and I never had this problem before.

I realize that I cannot put settings into xorg.conf anymore.  But I
wish I could, because if I could do that, then I might be able to get
the exact settings I want.  In gsynaptics, I don't have access to all
touchpad options, and I can't set them exactly (hate sliders).

On the other hand, in a terminal I can run synclient to reset values.
I've not yet found a combination of settings that has the same look
and feel as the old xorg.conf settings, but I'll keep trying.  If I do
find the correct settings, it does not appear to me that there is any
way to set them permanently in the X server.  Here's what I mean.
synclient shows these options, all can be reset from the command line,
but how are they to be saved, and applied for all users who log in??

$ synclient -l
Parameter settings:
    LeftEdge                = 120
    RightEdge               = 830
    TopEdge                 = 120
    BottomEdge              = 650
    FingerLow               = 25
    FingerHigh              = 30
    FingerPress             = 256
    MaxTapTime              = 180
    MaxTapMove              = 110
    MaxDoubleTapTime        = 180
    SingleTapTimeout        = 180
    ClickTime               = 100
    FastTaps                = 0
    EmulateMidButtonTime    = 75
    EmulateTwoFingerMinZ    = 257
    VertScrollDelta         = 20
    HorizScrollDelta        = 20
    VertEdgeScroll          = 1
    HorizEdgeScroll         = 0
    CornerCoasting          = 0
    VertTwoFingerScroll     = 0
    HorizTwoFingerScroll    = 0
    MinSpeed                = 0.45
    MaxSpeed                = 0.45
    AccelFactor             = 0
    TrackstickSpeed         = 40
    EdgeMotionMinZ          = 30
    EdgeMotionMaxZ          = 160
    EdgeMotionMinSpeed      = 1
    EdgeMotionMaxSpeed      = 102
    EdgeMotionUseAlways     = 0
    UpDownScrolling         = 1
    LeftRightScrolling      = 1
    UpDownScrollRepeat      = 1
    LeftRightScrollRepeat   = 1
    ScrollButtonRepeat      = 100
    TouchpadOff             = 0
    GuestMouseOff           = 0
    LockedDrags             = 0
    LockedDragTimeout       = 5000
    RTCornerButton          = 2
    RBCornerButton          = 3
    LTCornerButton          = 0
    LBCornerButton          = 0
    TapButton1              = 1
    TapButton2              = 2
    TapButton3              = 3
    ClickFinger1            = 1
    ClickFinger2            = 1
    ClickFinger3            = 1
    CircularScrolling       = 0
    CircScrollDelta         = 0.1
    CircScrollTrigger       = 0
    CircularPad             = 0
    PalmDetect              = 1
    PalmMinWidth            = 10
    PalmMinZ                = 200
    CoastingSpeed           = 0
    PressureMotionMinZ      = 30
    PressureMotionMaxZ      = 160
    PressureMotionMinFactor = 1
    PressureMotionMaxFactor = 1
    GrabEventDevice         = 1

I would have put this in xorg.conf before, but i don't understand what
is needed.

pj

ps.  In case you are one of the people for whom touchpad does not work
at all, please notice that many of the touchpad related programs have
not been updated to interact with the HAL framework that is now
managing devices.  Programs like gsynaptics will refuse to run and say
you need to turn SHMConfig on in xorg.conf, but they are giving
bad/outdated advice.  In order to make gsynaptics work, you need to
create this file shmconfig.fdi as shown in output below and then
re-start your PC. That will allow gsynaptics to run, and also should
make the "touchpad" panel appear under System-> Preferences -> Mouse.

$ cat /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi
<?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>




-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas