Hello! I'm just wondering what people think of the little "pointer glide" thing I submitted. Here would be a better place for discussion than on bugzilla, if anyone is interested :)
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19525 The mouse is a successful input technique because the physical device makes sense. It "feels" like the mouse pointer on the screen and obeys the laws of physics if someone throws it (not that anyone would do that). The important part is that the user controls the pointer directly and those motions translate accurately on screen. In the real world, the interaction here would be understandable with any similarly sized object floating through whatever surface the mouse is being used on. With a touchpad, everything is an indirect type of motion without any physical feedback (which is perhaps why it has been, until now, widely despised). The touchpad doesn't move; it just acts as a window through which the pointer is nudged. At the moment the pointer is a difficult object to nudge. A bit like pushing it through syrupy goo. It just doesn't move unless the user PUSHES it at all times. It doesn't make as much sense and it doesn't feel like it applies to the real world, no matter what paper-like texture the manufacturer puts over the touchpad. (They should really be using a sticky goo texture if they want it to feel natural). My idea is to give the pointer a more believable, and at the same time more comfortable presence when using the touchpad. Since the device itself doesn't provide any kind of feedback, we have to assume "the pointer" is fairly light, with a small amount of friction so it can be pushed easily. This way the user can interact more naturally. Silly, but I'm sure this can all be linked to some pseudo-scientific psychology babble. This is all achieved through ridiculously primitive physics, of course! I have the pointer continuing along its path when the finger is released, slowed down gradually by a set friction and capped with a maximum speed to avoid anything weird happening. The pointer glide behaviour only gets in the way if one is expecting it, and defaults to being turned off. To test, you will need to build both the patched driver and synclient. The configuration can be done via xorg.conf, but synclient makes it much more pleasant. Run synclient PointerGlide=1 to turn the behaviour on, then you may need to configure it with the other PointerGlide options available under synclient -l. I really do think this improves ergonomics in an interesting way. At least, it has for me! Bye, -Dylan McCall
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