Re: Mouse Bindings with gnome

[Miles Lane <miles megapathdsl net>]

Matthias Warkus wrote:

> +++ Mon, Dec 11, 2000 at 03:18:46PM -0800 +++
> Miles Lane e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
>
> > Noone from Helixcode or the Gnome core team
> > has yet addressed the need for handling USB keyboards
> > and mice.
>
>
> Why should they? Device drivers are a kernel affair, handling pointing
> devices is an X server issue. AFAIK, GNOME does not include any
> efforts to work on OS kernels or on X servers (apart from, maybe, the
> Render extension, which has got nothing to do with supporting mice).

Well, there is the control center, which has a mouse configuration
interface, including a right-left mouse option.  Doesn't that option
set the interpretation of button signals from a particular device?
I am looking at the UI right now and it doesn't have an option to
specify which mouse device to modify, so it is probably defaulting
to /dev/mouse (which on my machine is a link to psaux).

Now, granted, the signals get to X from the kernel, but the
*interpretation* of the mouse button signals could be modified
at many stages (within the kernel, within X, within some usermode
program layer that interfaces between X and the window manager/Gnome).

Now, what happens when I select the left-mouse option with the
Control Center is that the mouse button functions are reversed for
all button clicks seen by both Gnome and my window manager.  This
happens whether my window manager is Sawfish or Enlightenment.
I'm am not sure what this means the Control Center is changing.
It DOES tell me that the Control Center is modifying the interpretation
of button-click signals from either /dev/psaux or /dev/mouse.

So, I have to say that you are clearly incorrect in stating that
Gnome has nothing to do with the mouse button signals.

In my XF86Config file, I have the following mouse entries (I am running
XFree86 4.0.1Z from CVS):

Section "InputDevice"
     Identifier  "USB Mice"
     Driver      "mouse"
     Option      "Protocol"   "IMPS/2"
     Option      "Device"     "/dev/input/mice"
     Option      "ZAxisMapping"   "4 5"
     Option      "Buttons"        "5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier	"Mouse0"
    Driver	"mouse"
    Option "Protocol"    "PS/2"
    Option "Device"      "/dev/psaux"
    Option "Emulate3Buttons"
EndSection

So, XFree86 is mixing events from /dev/input/mice
and /dev/psaux.

Now, I am guessing that the Gnome Control Center setting for mouse
button function must be setting a value for the window manager.
Is this right?  If so, then Sawfish needs to support USB mice and
provide you a configuration value to set.  If Gnome is actually
intercepting signals from the /dev/mouse device and passing the
signals off to the window manager reversed, then Gnome needs to
have support for doing the same thing for /dev/input/mice or
/dev/input/mouse[0+].