Bug#564951: xserver-xorg-input-evdev no longer honors EmulateWheelButton option from hal

[Julien Cristau <jcristau@debian.org>]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 13:43:25 -0800, Joel Becker wrote:

> Package: xserver-xorg-input-evdev
> Version: 1:2.3.2-3
> Severity: important
> 
> Like everyone else, when xorg switched to evdev I had to scramble with
> Google to figure out why my mouse no longer worked.  I found the
> information about setting up hal .fdi files, and xorg was happy again.
> It's been happy for a while.
> 
> Last night I updated xserver-xorg-input-evdev from 2.2.5 to 2.3.2-2, and
> it is no longer honoring The EmulateWhileButton setting.  I checked
> hal, and hal-device(1) shows the correct setting (contents of
> /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mousewheel.fdi and output of hal-device
> is included in this report).  I checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log, and I see
> EmulateWheelButton set to the default of 4 instead of the value 2
> provided by hal.  xinput(1) similarly reports 4.
> 
> I can't find any information about the hal options changing, so I'm
> reporting the bug.  My first pass of reportbug(1) told me that 2.3.2-3
> was in incoming, so I installed and tested that.  It is also broken.
> 
> Let me know any other information you need.  Please fix ASAP, lack of
> middle button scrolling is really really frustrating when away from my
> desk.
> 
X doesn't use hal anymore for input devices on linux (it relies on udev
directly).  You can use xinput to change the value of the property after
X startup (something like xinput set-prop <device> "Evdev Wheel
Emulation Button" 2).

In the future this will be configurable in xorg.conf, but for now
xinput(1) is the best we have (it's also possible to set the options in
udev rules, but that's not going to stay).

Cheers,
Julien