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Re: How to use many (more than 6) button mouse devices?



Hi Ian,

Thanks for the reply.  I've tried various combinations of the Buttons 
and ZAxisMapping (ie. Buttons=12, ZAxisMapping="11 12") along with the 
appropriate xmodmap changes following the pattern laid out mouse(4x)
and many of the "help get me mouse working with X" web pages.  I've also
tried ignoring the 6 special button and treating my trackball as a 6 button
mouse (4 + wheel) and making the suggested changes to my XF86Config file.

It seems that the "optimal" settings require that the ZaxisMapping option
must be "4 5" and Buttons can be anything >= 5.  By optimal I mean I get
three working buttons and the wheel works.  Anything else breaks the wheel
(and limits the number of usable buttons if I set Buttons below 3 of
course).

Are 3-button mice hard coded into XFree86 (and/or the kernel)?  It looks to
me like all of the support for devices with more buttons (ie. wheel mice)
is special-cased in for each particular model.  Is there any work in
progress to develop a more abstract approach to mouse-like devices?

-- Brad

-- 

On Sat, 08 Mar 2003, Ian Eure wrote:

> On Friday 07 March 2003 08:28 am, Brad Sawatzky wrote:
> > I've got myself a Kensington ExpertMouse Pro USB trackball.  The thing has
> >   6 "special" buttons (ie. intended for exe launching, etc)
> >   4  regular buttons
> >   1  wheel
> >
> > My current XFree86 (v 4.2.x) Config block is:
> >   Section "InputDevice"
> >         Identifier      "TurboMouse"
> >         Driver          "mouse"
> >         Option          "CorePointer"
> >         #Option         "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
> >         Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/mice"
> >         Option          "Protocol"              "ImPS/2"
> >         Option          "Buttons"               "12"
> >         Option          "ZAxisMapping"          "4 5"
> >   EndSection
> >
> > This gives me three usable regular buttons (ie. right, left, middle),
> > and a working wheel.  In 'xev' the fourth regular button generates a
> > button3 event, and none of the special buttons register at all.  The
> > XF86Config "Buttons" option doesn't seem to do much at all...
> >
> > I tried the Protocol options "auto" and "usb" but X bailed with an error
> > that it couldn't find a working mouse (or something to that effect).
> >
> > I've googled usenet and the web for a couple days now without any success.
> > There is a sourceforge project called jamd <http://jamd.sourceforge.net/>
> > that looks like it might work but it appears to have been idle for quite a
> > while.  Ideally, I would be happy if I could export the "extra" button
> > events as keypresses (which could then be mapped as I chose).
> >
> > Any suggestions?
> >
> Take a look at http://www.deadman.org/X/xbuttons.html, 
> http://www.xfree86.org/current/mouse.html and mouse(4x).
> 
> Haven't tried it myself, but maybe I will when I get back to my system with 
> the Intellimouse.
> 
> 
-- 
Brad Sawatzky <bds9e@virginia.edu>
University of Virginia Physics Department
Ph: (434) 924-6580    Fax: (434) 924-4576



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