pbbuttons-users

USB trackpad: dim and wakeup

[Magnus R. <cmr...@fo...>]

Hello again,

while Johannes Berg hopefully tries to add the notap feature to the
appletouch driver, I send you 2 further problems with the USB trackpad,
which maybe could be solved by pbbuttons:

The trackpad does not reset the dim timer. So sometimes I have to press a
key to make the screen go bright again. This happens only when used with
the synaptics driver in X11. Without the synaptics driver the dim timer
works alright.

Just the other way round: Touching the trackpad or pressing the trackpad
button wakes the iBook from sleep. So if I grab the sleeping iBook with
closed lid right above the trackpad, the trackpad button is pressed by the
bending display and the iBook wakes up. I compared this with my G3 iBook
and there touching the trackpad does not cause it to wake up.

cu, Magnum

-- 
Carl Magnus Rosenbaum M.A.                          Tel: 089 - 700 666 26
Administration - Programmierung - Weiterbildung     Fax: 089 - 700 666 86
http://cmr.forestfactory.de/                      Mobil: 0163 - 700 666 2
PGP Fingerprint: DEBC 3C99 EF1D 74F0 D4C7 EFF5 C268 3690 0EA1 7641

Re: USB trackpad: dim and wakeup

[Kristian B. <kb...@op...>]

The problem is with the event layer in the kernel. The synaptics driver
must grab the event device to make sure the events does not propagate
into /dev/input/mice. If it does not grab the event device, when X is
reading /dev/input/mice and you scroll using the synaptics driver, it
get the scrolling right, but it also get the mouse move.

So the solution is to patch the synaptic driver in such a way that is
does not grab the device. Configure your X to use /dev/input/eventX
instead of /dev/input/mice. The only problem left, is plugging a USB
mouse while X is running.

I'm planning on modifying the kernel event layer to have an event
aggregate like mice but configurable so you can tell it which event must
be aggregated together. The problem is to find the time to make it, but
it should'nt be to hard.

For the patch, see the from march 2006 named "pbbuttonsd not loading
every dev event".

Kristian


On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 21:18 +0200, Magnus Rosenbaum wrote:
> Hello again,
> 
> while Johannes Berg hopefully tries to add the notap feature to the
> appletouch driver, I send you 2 further problems with the USB trackpad,
> which maybe could be solved by pbbuttons:
> 
> The trackpad does not reset the dim timer. So sometimes I have to press a
> key to make the screen go bright again. This happens only when used with
> the synaptics driver in X11. Without the synaptics driver the dim timer
> works alright.
> 
> Just the other way round: Touching the trackpad or pressing the trackpad
> button wakes the iBook from sleep. So if I grab the sleeping iBook with
> closed lid right above the trackpad, the trackpad button is pressed by the
> bending display and the iBook wakes up. I compared this with my G3 iBook
> and there touching the trackpad does not cause it to wake up.
> 
> cu, Magnum
> 

Re: USB trackpad: dim and wakeup

[Matthias G. <mat...@us...>]

On Wed, 03 May 2006 21:18:45 +0200
Magnus Rosenbaum <cmr...@fo...> wrote:

> The trackpad does not reset the dim timer. So sometimes I have to press a
> key to make the screen go bright again. This happens only when used with
> the synaptics driver in X11. Without the synaptics driver the dim timer
> works alright.

As Kristian already explained, this is a problem caused by the
synaptics X11 driver. There are other programs out that filter mouse
events (mouseemu for instance) and need block those input devices for
exclusive use. But all this programs create a new virtual input device
and forward unused events to it, so that other programs (like
pbbuttonsd) will miss only some mouse events but not the whole device.
The synaptics X11 driver behave very uncooperative here.

> Just the other way round: Touching the trackpad or pressing the trackpad
> button wakes the iBook from sleep. So if I grab the sleeping iBook with
> closed lid right above the trackpad, the trackpad button is pressed by the
> bending display and the iBook wakes up. I compared this with my G3 iBook
> and there touching the trackpad does not cause it to wake up.

This is a hardware issue and can't be solved or worked around by
software (except Apple has implemented some hardware registers allowing
to configure this behaviour, but I don't know about such registers.)

  Best Regards
   Matthias

Re: USB trackpad: dim and wakeup

[Magnus R. <cmr...@fo...>]

Hello Matthias and Kristian.

Matthias Grimm wrote:
> But all this programs create a new virtual input device
> and forward unused events to it, so that other programs (like
> pbbuttonsd) will miss only some mouse events but not the whole device.

In the synaptics sources I found that there is an option for a "Repeater"
device:

---8<---
#  Option       "Repeater"      "/dev/ps2mouse"
The Option "Repeater" is at the moment for testing.
---8<---

I enabled it and /dev/ps2mouse appeared. But I can't read anything from
the device with cat.

Is this in any way related to the "new virtual input device" you mentioned?

cu, Magnum

-- 
Carl Magnus Rosenbaum M.A.                          Tel: 089 - 700 666 26
Administration - Programmierung - Weiterbildung     Fax: 089 - 700 666 86
http://cmr.forestfactory.de/                      Mobil: 0163 - 700 666 2
PGP Fingerprint: DEBC 3C99 EF1D 74F0 D4C7 EFF5 C268 3690 0EA1 7641