[Virtual-pkg-base-maintainers] Bug#469198: Xorg.conf file in "/etc/X11/" incorrectly recognises "Alps-Glidepoint" as "Synaptic Touchpad"

[Venigalla Sayikiran]

Package: base
Severity: important

I am using Dell Latitude D520 n series laptop. My laptop uses a
Alps-Glidepoint touchpad. When i installed
debian etchv4.0, i was not able to use the tapping feature in my laptop.
However, i was able to use touchpad to
move my mouse pointer. The mouse pointer moved at snail pace with touchpad
as well as external USB mouse device.
Then i opened /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, and i found this:
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "Synaptics Touchpad"
    Driver        "synaptics"
    Option        "SendCoreEvents"    "true"
    Option        "Device"        "/dev/psaux"
    Option        "Protocol"        "auto-dev"
    Option        "HorizScrollDelta"    "0"
EndSection
In order to increase the speed of my mouse pointer, i had to add few more
lines to above settings. It worked for
me. To enable tapping feature i had to go through two more steps:
Step 1: In order to find out hardware information about my touchpad
cat /proc/bus/input/devices
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=7321
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/class/input/input4
H: Handlers=mouse2 event4 ts2
B: EV=f
B: KEY=420 0 70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3
B: ABS=1000003
Its clear that from above output that "etchv4.0" detects my hardware as
Apls-Glidepoint, which indeed is as supplied from
Dell computers. Somehow xorg.conf doesn't recognizes betwwen Alps-Glidepoint
and Synaptic Touchpad. Well i don't
know which package actually controls xorg.conf file.
Step 2: Then i changed xorg.conf file as shown below
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "Alps Glidepoint"
    Driver        "alps"
    Option        "SendCoreEvents"    "true"
    Option        "Device"        "/dev/psaux"
    Option        "Protocol"        "auto-dev"
    Option        "HorizScrollDelta"    "20"
    Option        "VertScrollDelta"    "20"
    Option            "MaxTapTime"     "180"
    Option            "FastTaps"         "1"
    Option            "MaxDoubleTapTime" "100"
    Option            "TouchpadOff"         "0"
    Option        "MaxTapMove"        "110"
    Option        "MaxSpeed"        "1.00"
    Option        "MinSpeed"        "0.50"
EndSection
Now i am able to use tapping feature perfectly. I still want to know more
about xorg.conf, like how to configure
it, what does each section mean, and what options does it support. I think a
detail documentation is needed. I also
tried all permutations and combinations of "Identifier" and "Driver" field
with both synaptic and alps, but none of
them worked for me. The only combination that worked is shown in step 2. I
hope from next time this problem
shouldn't be repeated in future versions of debian OS.

Regards
V.Sayikiran

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-6-686
Locale: LANG=en_IN, LC_CTYPE=en_IN (charmap=UTF-8)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/virtual-pkg-base-maintainers/attachments/20080304/30a6afd2/attachment.htm