The Synaptics touch pad integrated into the ASUS EEE PC 1005-HAB has an interesting interaction with the mouse pad. I find the text cursor bouncing around when using Ubunutu Netbook (now running Maverick 10.10). I think it is because the mouse pad is very close to both the space bar and the right ALT key. There is a way to make this more liveable but it takes a bit of digging. Under System->Preferences->Mouse on the Touchpad tab, we find under General the precious Disable touchpad while typing checkbox.  Sadly, we find that the syndaemon process is being run with the odd parameters -i 0.5 . This disables the touchpad for only 0.5 seconds after typing. Apparently this is way too short for me :-( A futile hunt with "grep -ri --mmap" for the setting turns up nothing :-( Why? Apparently someone decided to HARDCODE the half-second timeout on the touchpad, rather than the default 2 seconds. Here it is in the source code: Apparently, I'm not the only one to get "testy" about this. :-) Ways around this include which boils down to a "syndaemon" command like below. Further options can be found by reviewing the man page with: man syndaemon The following example invokes syndaemon for 4 seconds after any keyboard activity (-i 4), except when modifier keys such as Alt or Shift are used (-K), and only disables tapping and scrolling (-t) for this period. syndaemon -i 4 -d -t -K To make syndaemon start up each time you login, add the desired command to the list of Startup Programs in System > Preferences > Sessions or System > Preferences > Startup Applications. See AddingProgramToSessionStartup. In Ubuntu Karmic (9.10) syndaemon is started automatically by gsynaptics-init but can be turned off in System > Preferences > Mouse > Touchpad > Disable touchpad while typing (which alters the gconf setting: /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/disable_while_typing ) So let us do this. First let us put the command and parameters in a file in our home directory and make them executable. Start up a terminal session. If you don't know how, Press ALT-F2, type in bash and click the Run in Terminal checkbox. Remember you can always press ALT-TAB to get back to your browser :-)  Once in a nice bash command shell, type cat >4sec syndaemon -i 4 -d -t -K followed by Control-D to close the 4sec file. Then type chmod +x 4sec to make the file executable.  Finally, we go to System->Preferences->Startup Applications and click Add and fill the fields with the file name, type the path of the file or enter it via Browse if you like :-) Here is what I have: I would like to make the Asus EEE PC's hardware "toggle the touchpad on and off" button work too. The keycode for it seems to be 0x6B as shown here:  and while picked up by the eeepc_wmi , the button is apparently not hooked to anything, yet :-) Thank, Chris Lent |
