Re: GNOME 3.2: mapping extra mouse buttons

[Peter Hutterer <peter hutterer who-t net>]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 01:10:27AM +0000, Sergey Udaltsov wrote:
> Folks
> 
> These days there are many many mice with > 5 buttons (3 + scroll). For
> a moment the only solution for them is not very user-friendly imwheel.
> Would it make sense to provide mapping for those extra buttons? On
> windows, people use them for switching apps, copy/paste, back/forward
> etc. Why cannot we provide comfortable GUI for that configuration?
> Could it be done within keyboard panel - or do we need extra panel (or
> extra tab in the "Mouse" panel)? Should we map "buttons->actions" or
> "buttons->keys" (so shortcuts would be picked automatically)?

having an implementation for keys in the wacom driver, I can assure you that
mapping buttons to keys is painful. it's probably less so in the client, but
in the driver all we know is keycodes and they may or may not map to
actual keysyms. so a simple Ctrl+Q will fail for layout us,fr, not even
counting the myriads of options.

now, gnome is obviously more aware of keyboard layout changes than the
driver is (who doesn't know at all) but I'd still be careful of button ->
key mappings.

mapping buttons to actions would likely be easier.

Cheers,
  Peter