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[Bug 337935] Re: [Jaunty] MacBook 5.1 touchpad not fully supported

 

I'll try. The current docs describe how you should place a file in
/etc/hal/fdi/policy/ in order to enable tapping and two-finger scrolling
and such stuff. While this is still true for the initial settings of the
X server, once a user logs in, gnome-settings-daemon overwrites these
initial settings with settings derived from the user configuration. I'm
not sure how other desktop environments, in particular KDE, would deal
with this situation, so perhaps there should be a note about the fact
that initial config is determined by a hal fdi policy file.

Gnome users shouldn't have to bother, though. Instead, they could run
gnome-mouse-properties, choose the Touchpad tab, and enable tap to
click, choose two-finger scrolling as their desired scroll method, and
also enable horizontal scrolling. Settings will take effect immediately.
If tap to click is enabled, tap and drag (discussed in bug #356317)
seems to work out of the box.

The current settings of these configuration items can also be obtained on the command line:
gconftool -R /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad
The output might be useful in bug reports. Of course it would also be possible to set these values programmatically, but I guess there is little point for most users.

gnome-settings-daemon communicates with the device driver through X
device properties, listed in the synaptics(4) man page, as does
synclient without the -s. Therefore users can install synclient to have
a look at current configuration ("synclient -l"), and to change settings
not readily accessible through the Gnome control center, like e.g.
circular scrolling. I don't know what would be the most gnomish way to
make such settings persistent on a per-user basis, though. fdi files
would work for these as well, I guess.

One thing that still doesn't work as expected is the button integrated
into the touchpad. Under OS X, I can use one finger to move the cursor
and another finger to press the front part of the touchpad, generating a
left or right click depending on the part of the touchpad I pressed. On
Ubuntu, both fingers contribute to cursor movement, and the button
always works as button 1. So in that respect, the touchpad is still not
fully functional on Karmic beta. Want a separate report for that aspect?

-- 
[Jaunty] MacBook 5.1 touchpad not fully supported
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/337935
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