Thanks for your work Ulf.
By the way I brought a new laptop, X1 Carbon gen2 for you from Toronto.
It's a gift from deraadt@. It has a soft-button synaptics and a USB
touchscreen.
Cheers,
Martin
On 20/08/17(Sun) 22:17, Ulf Brosziewski wrote:
> As people might want to know what they have worked for, it's probably
> time for a summary of the first test results and my conclusions.
> (But please don't get that wrong: more tests and reports are and will be
> welcome.)
>
> Hardware: Most tests were made with (PS/2) Synaptics touchpads, and it
> seems there are no problems with common models of "OpenBSD laptops".
> Few quirks and bugs have been reported for older and less common ones,
> and concern things that should be handled by the hardware driver. Alps
> and Elantech models are rare, and it looks like most Mac users are on
> holiday.
>
> Driver mechanisms: No serious problem has come up. It has been
> observed that there are (too) long delays between the start of a scroll
> gesture and the first scroll event. I'm already testing an improved
> version of the handler. There will still be a short delay, because
> it reduces the risk that you produce scroll events unintentionally.
>
> Features: Not surprisingly, some people are missing certain features.
> What has been mentioned is 1) "disable-while-typing", 2) edge areas
> (where initial contacts don't move the pointer or generate tap events),
> 3) multi-finger clicks, and 4) "coasting" (that is, scrolling continues
> for some time after the scrolling fingers have been lifted). Up to now
> my impression is that 1) and/or 2) could be prominent, maybe 3).
> However, there are no decisions about additional features yet, each one
> would need some care.
>
> 1) and 2) are different approaches to the same task: suppressing outputs
> of accidental contacts, usually palm or thumb contacts, so in this
> context one might also think of: 5) palm and thumb detection based on
> contact width, pressure, and other attributes, perhaps. 1) is based on
> a simple principle, but it needs coordination with another driver, and I
> am not sure whether it is a good solution, or despair. What's a
> reasonable timeout here? If it's too short, it only mitigates the
> problem, if it's too long, it can be a nuisance. 5) might work well for
> some users, with some touchpads, but it may be difficult to find useful
> generalizations. I'm currently checking variants of 2), the basic
> mechanism is already present in the driver (it's required for software
> buttons and edge scroll areas). But again, it's too early for
> conclusions, and surely we want to avoid a patchwork of half-general and
> half-successful solutions.
>
> Default configuration: The defaults, including the "hidden" ones, seem
> to be acceptable for many models. I will increase the default scroll
> speed (moderately). In some cases, the height of the button area on
> clickpads is problematic. This is not as trivial as it may seem.
> Coordinate limits are not always correct, and resolution values can be
> unreliable - if they are present at all. There is actually a good deal
> of guess work in the configuration. Improving that will need more work
> on the hardware drivers.
>
> As I have written, not all touchpad drivers cooperate with the input
> driver up to now. I hope this will change soon. It's not ready yet,
> but some work on imt/hidmt has already been done, with help of Remi.
>
> Thanks again for the friendly, competent, and helpful feedback!
>
>
> On 07/31/2017 11:02 PM, Ulf Brosziewski wrote:
> > In the long run the synaptics driver, which handles touchpad inputs in
> > X, may be a dead end of the input framework, and it's time to prepare
> > an alternative. The kernel contains an internal touchpad input driver
> > now, it's a part of wsmouse(4). It provides standard features -
> > two-finger/edge scrolling, software buttons for clickpads, tapping -
> > and various kinds of plankton required for usability.
> >
> > If you have a new snapshot (from July 27 or later) on a laptop with a
> > Synaptics, Apple, Alps, or Elantech-4 touchpad, you could help with
> > tests [...]
>
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