[NC10] How to fix the sensitivity of the touchpad

[voria]

The touchpad on NC10 works out-of-the-box on linux, but it has sensitivity problems. To be more precise, the vertical sensitivity is much higher than horizontal one, so it's a shame to use the touchpad.

The problem has been fixed by Nathan Hamblen, who wrote a patch which enables the user to set a factor that changes the sensitivity on y-axis. It's easy to use: this factor (default to 1, ie the sensitivity is not changed) is a number which is multiplied with the value of sensitivity on y-axis. For example, if you set it to 2, the sensitivity will be twice the original one.
After some tests, I ended up with a value of 0.6 for my touchpad, ie almost half the sensitivity.

Here you can find more informations about the patch.

*
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you use this patch for fixing the touchpad sensitivity, DO NOT ADD ANYTHING in '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' or else there will be conflicts with settings.
*

Because I had to rebuild the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package on my ubuntu to apply the patch, I decided to use the latest sources taken directly from jaunty, the next to-be-released Ubuntu. Furthermore, I set up the factor value to 0.6 directly in the package, so all you have to do is to install it.

If for any reason you want to change that value, just edit as admin the file /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/11-x11-synaptics.fdi and change the line

Code: Select all

<merge key="input.x11_options.VertAdjustmentFactor" type="string">0.6</merge>

to the value you need.

You can download the package from my repository.

As usual, for any problem or information just post here.

[iStealth]

First of all thanks for the great wiki, everything works as expected, so no plans to use XP anymore.

Is it possible to provide some wiki how to configure and use the tapzones of the touchpad? It looks like they are configured, but can they be used for example to minimize active windows, etc, using metacity? I read that it is possible to configure compiz by specifying for the synaptics driver values like RTCornerButton = 2, LTCornerButton = 5, and then use the keybinding as "Button2" and "Button5", but it does not work with metacity if I go in gconf-editor to apps->metacity and configure window_keybindings. So, is it possible to use that functionality now, and how? The next step would be to configure the multitouch option, but I believe it does not work yet.

Thanks!

[voria]

I never tried to change the default options for the touchpad, I don't know how to do that.
However, I think we only need to "play" a bit with the 'synclient' utility, I'll collect more informations about that.

Concerning the multitouch support, I have not investigated the problem yet. It's another thing to add to my TODO list.

[FabriceV]

Dear voRia

I have found a tweak to obtain multitouch but I have not implemented it. I have stopped to test OS and softwares... I am waiting to Jaunty and currently need to spend more time on my job tasks.

Regards

http://ubuntu-snippets.blogspot.com/200 ... ptics.html

[FabriceV]

Hello,
not a so good tweak. Anyway this feature is under development for ubuntu. So wait and see...

[kadrach]

This is not true multitouch anyway, but simply an emulation - the touchpad does not recognize two separate pointers but only registers the added pressure due to the second finger (the Emulate setting is the minimum pressure required for a "two finger" event).

[voria]

Exactly as kadrach said it's an emulation, and in my opinion it does not work well on NC10 (at least for me).
Using one or two fingers makes no differences in pressure, so it's impossible to set a good value for the "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" option. I think it would be better to wait for a proper multitouch support from the driver (I think the support has to come from the kernel).

[kadrach]

First off, the driver does not support multitouch in its true meaning. Using the synaptics tool, you'll see that only one finger is registered. Does the nc10 support true multitouch in windows? I never tried.

Secondly, the current X.org server does not allow for multiple pointers, this is as far as i know still a work in progress.

[voria]

First off, the driver does not support multitouch in its true meaning. Using the synaptics tool, you'll see that only one finger is registered. Does the nc10 support true multitouch in windows? I never tried.

Well, I was supposing that NC10 touchpad had a real multitouch support, but who knows?
Trusting the current driver it has not, and I don't know if in windows the multitouch is real or emulated.

Secondly, the current X.org server does not allow for multiple pointers, this is as far as i know still a work in progress.

Anyway, I think we will never need such a support on NC10.

[voria]

Is it possible to provide some wiki how to configure and use the tapzones of the touchpad? It looks like they are configured, but can they be used for example to minimize active windows, etc, using metacity? I read that it is possible to configure compiz by specifying for the synaptics driver values like RTCornerButton = 2, LTCornerButton = 5, and then use the keybinding as "Button2" and "Button5", but it does not work with metacity if I go in gconf-editor to apps->metacity and configure window_keybindings. So, is it possible to use that functionality now, and how?

It seems that the problem is in metacity. The current version does not support mouse binding for commands, so there isn't much to do right now.

I don't know if the newer version included in jaunty adds the support to it, I'll test it as soon as I can.

[kadrach]

I don't know about metacity, but you can enable "zones" with synaptics touchpads. X.org allows for the following configuration:


Lets say your touchpad has a width of 6000 (arbitrary units). By setting "left edge" to eg 600, everything left of pos. 600 is an extra zone.
By setting all 4 parameters (left/right/top/bottom edge) you get a total of 9 zones.

See http://www.debuntu.org/2006/06/18/67-ho ... lete-guide for more. The author of the guide uses an ALPS touchpad, the NC10 touchpad is of the synaptics type.

[ossas81]

I ran the NC10 repository fixes, etc. Everything seems to work, except this horizontal sensitivity issue. I went into that file, and no matter what I set the vertical parameter, i still get the "egg" shape on screen when making circles on the touch-pad. Is there anything else special I need to know? (I'm relatively new to linux).

[voria]

Is the vertical sensitivity affected in any way by different values for the 'VertAdjustmentFactor' option in the .fdi file? Note that you have to restart both hal and xserver to apply any change you have done in the .fdi file. You can instead use the 'synclient' command line utility to change options on the fly.

If different values for the option make no difference in vertical sensitivity, then make sure you are using the custom 'xserver-xorg-input-synaptics' package from my repository.

[ossas81]

I re-installed the 'xserver-xorg-input-synaptics' package, and now I can see the difference. Maybe it was because I upgraded to everything in this package, from an older (locked) kernel, all at once. thanks!

[booyau]

I installed all of the packages from the modified NC10 repository, including xserver-xorg-input-synaptics. The first thing I noticed was that the overall sensitivity of my trackpad decreased significantly. One swipe across the trackpad now goes only about 2 inches across the screen. I fooled with the Gnome Mouse settings, but sensitivity doesn't seem to do anything. If I turn acceleration all the way up to max, the trackpad is usable again, but difficult due to the high acceleration. It seems mostly OK as gdm comes up, but once I login and Gnome starts, the sensitivity drops by about half.

I checked the .fdi file, and it says VertAdjustmentFactor is at 0.6 - i assume you changed your default value? However, even if I change the factor to 4 in the.fdi file or use synclient, it doesn't have any effect on the pointer.

Any ideas? Otherwise, your repository packages were fantastic and fixed everything I had been trying to decipher off of your Italian blog for a couple of weeks, using Google's translation feature!

FYI: I'm running kernel 2.6.28-8. I'm not sure if that makes any difference. I believe that's the kernel that my system thinks is the most "up to date".