[Debian-eeepc-devel] problem with synaptics driver in sid/unstable

[Alan Jenkins]

On 1/14/10, Ben Armstrong <synrg at sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca> wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:21:52 -0500
> Shawn Lamson <shawn.lamson at att.net> wrote:
>> Nothing "official", just taking what worked for me and putting it out
>> there.
>
> Good intentions, but you should really file this as a bug on
> xserver-xorg-video-intel and usertag it so we can track it (see
> http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/Bugs/About ).  Then we can get the
> input of the Xorg maintainers and work towards an actual fix rather
> than promoting the use of workarounds such as you devised.

If it's not clear already - note that this isn't a workaround for a
hardware quirk or a driver bug.  The upstream default is to not
respond to taps on the touchpad (assuming it has physical buttons).
This has already been filed as debian bug  and documented (albeit for
HAL, not for udev - see #564549).  Also see #564211, which suggests
that Xorg 1.8 will let you fix this in xorg.conf.

I'm not sure why synaptics was changed in this way.  My guess is that
it's because for some laptops, it's very easy to knock the touchpad
while typing.  And that the real solution is to use one of the
touchpad applets which disables the touchpad while typing (which can
then safely enable tap-to-click).  But that's just a guess, I don't
have any evidence.

Alan