Synaptics TouchPad driver for XOrg/XFree86 ------------------------------------------ Introduction ------------ This is a driver for the Synaptics TouchPad for XOrg/XFree86 4.x. A Synaptics touchpad by default operates in compatibility mode by emulating a standard mouse. However, by using a dedicated driver, more advance features of the touchpad becomes available, such as: - Movement with adjustable, non-linear acceleration and speed. - Button events through short touching of the touchpad. - Double-Button events through double short touching of the touchpad. - Dragging through short touching and holding down the finger on the touchpad. - Middle and right button events on the upper and lower corner of the touchpad. - Vertical scrolling (button four and five events) through moving the finger on the right side of the touchpad. - The up/down button sends button four/five events. - Horizontal scrolling (button six and seven events) through moving the finger on the lower side of the touchpad. - The multi-buttons send button four/five events, and six/seven events for horizontal scrolling. - Adjustable finger detection. - Multifinger taps: two finger for middle button and three finger for right button events. (Needs hardware support. Not all models implement this feature.) - Run-time configuration using shared memory. This means you can change parameter settings without restarting the X server. Note that depending on the touchpad firmware, some of these features might be available even without using the synaptics driver. Note also that some functions are not available on all touchpad models, because they need support from the touchpad hardware/firmware. (Multifinger taps for example.) Installation ------------ See the INSTALL file for detailed installation instructions. Compatibility ------------- The driver has been reported to work on a number of different laptop computers. See the COMPATIBILITY file for the list. If your computer is not listed, please let me (petero2@telia.com) know if the driver works on your computer. Parameters ---------- The driver behavior can be configured with parameters. These parameters are options in the InputDevice section in the XFree86 config file. See the INSTALL file for a working example. If you have the SHMConfig parameter enabled, these parameters can also be changed at runtime with the synclient program. Parameter: Type: Description: Device String Synaptics device Protocol String "auto-dev" (automatic, default), "psaux" (raw) or "event" (linux 2.5 kernel events) SHMConfig Bool switch on/off shared memory for configuration LeftEdge Int coordinates for left edge RightEdge Int coordinates for right edge TopEdge Int coordinates for top edge BottomEdge Int coordinates for bottom edge FingerLow Int When finger pressure drops below this value, the driver counts it as a release. FingerHigh Int When finger pressure goes above this value, the driver counts it as a touch. MaxTapTime Int max. time (in milliseconds) for detecting a tap MaxTapMove Int max. movement of the finger for detecting a tap MaxDoubleTapTime Int max. time (in milliseconds) for detecting a double tap ClickTime Int the duration of the mouse click generated by tapping FastTaps Bool Makes the driver react faster to a single tap, but also makes double clicks caused by double tapping slower. VertScrollDelta Int move distance of the finger for a scroll event HorizScrollDelta Int move distance of the finger for a scroll event EdgeMotionMinZ Int finger pressure at which minimum edge motion speed is set EdgeMotionMaxZ Int finger pressure at which maximum edge motion speed is set EdgeMotionMinSpeed Int slowest setting for edge motion speed EdgeMotionMaxSpeed Int fastest setting for edge motion speed EdgeMotionUseAlways Bool If on, edge motion is also used for normal movements, if off, egde motion is used only when dragging Repeater String repeater device MinSpeed Float min. Speed factor MaxSpeed Float max. Speed factor AccelFactor Float acceleration factor UpDownScrolling Bool If on, the up/down buttons generate button 4/5 events. If off, the up button generates a double click and the down button generates a button 2 event. EmulateMidButtonTime Int max time (in milliseconds) for middle button emulation. TouchpadOff Int Switch off the touchpad. Valid values are: 0 : Touchpad is enabled 1 : Touchpad is switched off 2 : Only tapping is switched off GuestMouseOff Bool switch on/off guest mouse (often a stick) LockedDrags Bool If off, a tap and drag gesture ends when you release the finger. If on, the gesture is active until you tap a second time. RTCornerButton Int Which mouse button is reported on a right top corner tap 0=No action, 1=Left Button, 2=Middle Button, 3=Right Button RBCornerButton Int Which mouse button is reported on a right bottom corner tap 0=No action, 1=Left Button, 2=Middle Button, 3=Right Button LTCornerButton Int Which mouse button is reported on a left top corner tap 0=No action, 1=Left Button, 2=Middle Button, 3=Right Button LBCornerButton Int Which mouse button is reported on a left bottom corner tap 0=No action, 1=Left Button, 2=Middle Button, 3=Right Button TapButton1 Int Which mouse button is reported on a non-corner one-finger tap 0=No action, 1=Left Button, 2=Middle Button, 3=Right Button TapButton2 Int Which mouse button is reported on a non-corner two-finger tap 0=No action, 1=Left Button, 2=Middle Button, 3=Right Button TapButton3 Int Which mouse button is reported on a non-corner three-finger tap 0=No action, 1=Left Button, 2=Middle Button, 3=Right Button CircularScrolling Bool If on, circular scrolling is used (see below) CircScrollDelta Float Move angle (radians) of finger to generate a scroll event CircScrollTrigger Int Trigger region on the touchpad to start circular scrolling 0=All Edges, 1=Top Edge, 2=Top Right Corner, 3=Right Edge, 4=Bottom Right Corner, 5=Bottom Edge, 6=Bottom Left Corner, 7=Left Edge, 8=Top Left Corner CircularPad Bool Instead of being a rectangle, the edge is the ellipse enclosed by the Left/Right/Top/BottomEdge parameters. For circular touchpads. PalmDetect Bool If palm detection should be enabled PalmMinWidth Int Minimum width at which touch is considered a palm PalmMinZ Int Minimum finger pressure at which touch is considered a palm CoastingSpeed Float Coasting threshold scrolling speed. 0 disables coasting. The LeftEdge, RightEdge, TopEdge and BottomEdge parameters are used to define the edge and corner areas of the touchpad. The parameters split the touchpad area in 9 pieces, like this: LeftEdge RightEdge v v | | Physical top edge 1 | 2 | 3 ------------------- TopEdge | | 4 | 5 | 6 | | ------------------- BottomEdge 7 | 8 | 9 | | Physical bottom edge ^ ^ Physical Physical left edge right edge Coordinates to the left of LeftEdge are part of the left edge (areas 1, 4 and 7), coordinates to the left of LeftEdge and above TopEdge (area 1) are part of the upper left corner, etc. A good way to find appropriate edge parameters is to enable the SHMConfig option and run "synclient -m 1" to see the x/y coordinates corresponding to different positions on the touchpad. A tap event happens when the finger is touched and released in a time interval shorter than MaxTapTime, and the touch and release coordinates are less than MaxTapMove units apart. A "touch" event happens when the Z value goes above FingerHigh, and an "untouch" event happens when the Z value goes below FingerLow. The MaxDoubleTapTime parameter has the same function as the MaxTapTime parameter, but for the second, third, etc tap in a tap sequence. If you can't perform double clicks fast enough (for example, xmms depends on fast double clicks), try reducing this parameter. If you can't get word selection to work in xterm (ie button down, button up, button down, move mouse), try increasing this parameter. The ClickTime parameter controls the delay between the button down and button up X events generated in response to a tap event. A too long value can cause undesirable autorepeat in scroll bars and a too small value means that visual feedback from the gui application you are interacting with is harder to see. The MinSpeed, MaxSpeed and AccelFactor parameters control the pointer motion speed. The speed value defines the scaling between touchpad coordinates and screen coordinates. When moving the finger very slowly, the MinSpeed value is used, when moving very fast the MaxSpeed value is used. When moving the finger at moderate speed, you get a pointer motion speed somewhere between MinSpeed and MaxSpeed. If you don't want any acceleration, set MinSpeed and MaxSpeed to the same value. The MinSpeed, MaxSpeed and AccelFactor parameters don't have any effect on scrolling speed. Scrolling speed is determined solely from the VertScrollDelta and HorizScrollDelta parameters. To disable vertical or horizontal scrolling, set VertScrollDelta or HorizScrollDelta to zero. When hitting an egde, movement can be automatically continued. If EdgeMotionUseAlways is false, edge motion is only used when dragging. With EdgeMotionUseAlways set to true, it is also used for normal cursor movements. Edge motion speed is calculated by taking into account the amount of pressure applied to the touchpad. The sensitivity can be adjusted using the EdgeMotion parameters. If the pressure is below EdgeMotionMinZ, EdgeMotionMinSpeed is used, and if the pressure is greater than EdgeMotionMaxZ, EdgeMotionMaxSpeed is used. For a pressure value between EdgeMotionMinZ and EdgeMotionMaxZ, the speed is increased linearly. Since most synaptics touchpad models don't have a button that corresponds to the middle button on a mouse, the driver can emulate middle mouse button events. If you press both the left and right mouse buttons at almost the same time (no more than EmulateMidButtonTime milliseconds apart) the driver generates a middle mouse button event. Circular scrolling acts like a scrolling wheel on the trackpad. Scrolling is engaged when a drag starts in the given CircScrollTrigger region, which can be all edges, a particular side, or a particular corner. Once scrolling is engaged, moving your finger in clockwise circles around the trackpad will generate scroll down events and counter clockwise scroll up events. Lifting your finger will disengage circular scrolling. Use tight circles near the center of the pad for fast scrolling and large circles for better control. When used together with vertical scrolling, hitting the upper or lower right corner will seamlessly switch over from vertical to circular scrolling. Coasting is enabled by setting the CoastingSpeed parameter to a non-zero value. When coasting is enabled, horizontal/vertical scrolling can continue after the finger is released from the lower/right edge of the touchpad. The driver computes the scrolling speed corresponding to the finger speed immediately before the finger leaves the touchpad. If this scrolling speed is larger than the CoastingSpeed parameter (measured in scroll events per second), the scrolling will continue with the same speed in the same direction until the finger touches the touchpad again. FAQ --- * Is this free software? Yes, the source code is released under the GNU General Public License. * When will the driver be included in the XOrg distribution? This is unlikely to happen because of copyright issues. Although the GPL license is compatible with the license used by the XOrg X server, the XOrg project doesn't want to include GPL code in their source code, because it would effectively make the whole XOrg project GPL. The synaptics license can't be changed unless all copyright holders agree to change the license, but previous attempts to find all copyright holders for the synaptics source code have failed. So unfortunately, the best we can currently hope for is that the synaptics driver is included as a separate package by the major distributions. * How do I use this driver with Linux kernel 2.6.x? You need to have the "evdev" driver loaded or compiled into the kernel (CONFIG_INPUT_EVDEV). Set the "Protocol" parameter in the X configuration file to "auto-dev". Also, if you set the "Device" parameter to "/dev/psaux", the same X configuration file should work for a 2.4.x kernel. When configuring the kernel, enable PS/2 mouse support (CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2). * It still doesn't work with a 2.6 kernel. Some distributions come with an incomplete /dev directory. The driver needs the /dev/input/eventX device nodes. Try to create them manually if they don't exist already. (Look at /proc/bus/input/devices to figure out how many nodes you need.) # mknod /dev/input/event0 c 13 64 # mknod /dev/input/event1 c 13 65 # mknod /dev/input/event2 c 13 66 ... * How can I configure tap-to-click behavior? If you set MaxTapTime=0 in the X config file then the touchpad will not use tapping at all, i.e. touching/tapping will not be taken as a mouse click. If, instead, you set MaxTapMove=0 in the X config file, then the touchpad will not use tapping for a single finger tap (left mouse button click) but will for the two and three finger tap (middle and right button click). * Why did tap-to-click stop working after I upgraded from an old version? Time is now measured in milliseconds instead of "number of packets". In practice, this means that if you are upgrading from an old version, you need to change MaxTapTime and EmulateMidButtonTime to make "tap to click" work. Good values are 180 and 75 respectively. * Gnome scrollbars scroll too much when using tap-to-click. Why? The ClickTime parameter is probably too big. Try setting it to 100. Gnome scrollbars use auto repeat, ie if you press the left mouse button and keep it pressed, the scroll bar will move until you release the button. This will lead to problems if the tap time is longer than the delay before auto repeat starts. * Vertical and horizontal scrolling events are mixed up. How come? Probably because some X startup/login script uses xmodmap to remap the mouse buttons. Correct settings for the touchpad are: xmodmap -e 'pointer = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7' You can check the current settings by running: xmodmap -pp * Horizontal scrolling doesn't work in some programs. Is it a driver bug? No, probably not. Support for horizontal scroll events must be handled by the application programs. Not all programs do that yet. Ask the authors of the application in question to implement support for horizontal scroll events. You can use the "xev" program to check if the synaptics driver generates the horizontal scroll events. * Can the driver be used together with gpm? No, not reliably, if you are using a 2.4.x kernel. The gpm driver and the X driver both try to read data from the touchpad, and if they try to read at the same time, both drivers see incomplete data and don't know how to interpret it. If you are running a 2.6.x kernel though, there should be no conflict, because the kernel driver will make sure both user space drivers receive all events from the touchpad. * How do I compile the driver? Beginning with version 0.11.8, it should be possible to compile the driver by simply running "make". This will compile a driver for XFree86 4.2.x, which will also work for 4.3.x versions of XFree86. If you have an older version of XFree86, you will need an installed X source tree. On an RPM based distribution, you can build a suitable source tree by installing the XFree86 source RPM and compile it. For example, in RedHat 9, use the following commands: # rpm -vU XFree86-4.3.0-2.src.rpm # cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS # rpmbuild -bb XFree86.spec Then change the TOP variable in the Makefile to match the version of XFree86 you are using. In the example above, set TOP = /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/XFree86-4.3.0/xc * Can I use this driver with an ALPS Glidepoint device? Yes, see the README.alps file for more information. * The driver says "reset failed" and the touchpad doesn't work. What can I do? This problem has been reported for some Compaq models. It's currently not known why it happens, but removing the reset command from the driver appears to make it work. If you use a 2.4 linux kernel, replace the contents of the ps2_synaptics_reset() function in ps2comm.c with a "return TRUE;" statement. If you use a 2.6 linux kernel, remove the while loop in synaptics_query_hardware() in the file drivers/input/mouse/synaptics.c in the linux kernel source code. Authors ------- Many people have contributed to this driver. Look at the top of synaptics.c and ps2comm.c for details. The current maintainer is Peter Osterlund .