Touchpad issues

[illoai at gmail.com]

On 7 August 2014 23:47, David Benfell <benfell at parts-unknown.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 07, 2014 at 12:22:34PM -0400, illoai at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> I strongly dislike xorg taking over the kernel rôle of
>> mediating hardware, so I don't have a HAL-ified xorg,
>> & I have
>> hw.psm.synaptics_support=1
>> in my /boot/loader.conf
>> & I use the old, simple "Driver" "mouse" with /dev/sysmouse
>> (Options "Protocol" "auto").  Letting moused(8)
>> handle the plugging & unplugging of USB mousies
>> works fine & everything I need does what I need.
>>
>> I'm not saying this is the best way to handle it, but it
>> does give edge scrolling & such, & a bunch of tunables
>> under hw.psm that I've never fiddled with.  It's a bit
>> touchy for my taste, but dropping your wrists while
>> typing is a bad habit anyway.
>>
>> I also don't know how well moused(8) works with a HAL-
>> ified xorg & hot-plugging USB mousies, I don't care to
>> test it.
>>
> Do you allow hald to run at all? If so, how do you tell it to ignore
> the mouse? If not, am I overestimating the difficulty of dealing with
> hot-plugged USB devices?
>
> When I am on the road, I will sometimes plug a trackball mouse into
> the thing. It's *much* easier to deal with than the touchpad and it's
> USB.
>
> As for sensitivity, that's my problem. If my wrists are within six
> inches of that touchpad, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, it's
> liable to move the cursor and sense a click. Text winds up getting
> typed in completely the wrong places--which is a real problem when
> you're a Ph.D. student writing 20-plus page tomes.
>
> To maybe--only maybe--limit this, I would have to type with my hands
> held vertically, which is unlikely to be healthier or preferable
> technique to letting your wrists drop. ;-)
>

No HAL at all (you have to build xorg-server from ports).  I also have
hald_enable="NO" (& dbus_enable="NO") set in /etc/rc.conf because
I simply dislike those abominations.  moused(8), handles USB mousies
just fine for my purposes.

Set up basically just like https://wiki.freebsd.org/SynapticsTouchpad
The default min_pressure of 16 has worked okay for a couple of
years, it only reacts when my palm actually brushes the touchpad.

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