mgsmith@hplabsb.HP.COM (Michael Smith) (02/15/91)
My wrists have started to hurt (probably due to Repetitive Stresss Syndrom as I believe it is called) so I have made a couple of changes. One is that I borrowed a track ball to see how I like it but it seems to be pretty much of a joke because it is really difficult to cut and paste using it. Basically it is difficult to move the pointer while holding down one of the mouse buttons. Therefore I would like to remap the keyboard such that one of the keyboard buttons (the lower left [Enter] button for example) can be used by the left hand for button1 of the mouse while the right hand would actually move the trackball. I looked at xmodmap but it didn't prove fruitful. Any ideas out there? My wrists would really appreciate it. Mike Smith HP Labs
mouse@lightning.mcrcim.mcgill.EDU (02/16/91)
> [...] Therefore I would like to remap the keyboard such that one of > the keyboard buttons (the lower left [Enter] button for example) can > be used by the left hand for button1 of the mouse while the right > hand would actually move the trackball. > I looked at xmodmap but it didn't prove fruitful. Right. The core protocol does not support "confusing" keyboard keys and mouse buttons. (Arguably it should - there is no obvious a priori reason to make a distinction between buttons on the mouse and buttons on the keyboard. Most likely nobody even considered the possibility of "confusing" them....) > Any ideas out there? I think that for the most part you're out of luck. The obvious thing to do would be to hack on the server. If you can't do that for some reason you could build a protocol filter than converts KeyPress and KeyRelease events for certain keycodes into ButtonPress and ButtonRelease events. However, this will interact badly with grabs, so it is at best a somewhat broken solution. (I don't think a mere protocol filter can diddle grab requests sufficiently to fix the problem entirely.) If it's enough for this to happen in just certain applications, you may be able to do things with the Translations mechanisms, or something analogous, depending on how configurable the application is. If the hardware is yours and you're not afraid of a soldering gun, you *might* consider opening things up and rewiring a couple of keyboard key switches so they actually do mouse presses instead. That's about all I have to suggest, I'm afraid. der Mouse old: mcgill-vision!mouse new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
adri@dutncp8.tudelft.nl (A.B. van Woerkom) (02/22/91)
mgsmith@hplabsb.HP.COM (Michael Smith) writes: >[...] Therefore I would >like to remap the keyboard such that one of the keyboard buttons >(the lower left [Enter] button for example) can be used by the left >hand for button1 of the mouse while the right hand would actually >move the trackball. I looked at xmodmap but it didn't prove fruitful. >Any ideas out there? My wrists would really appreciate it. >Mike Smith >HP Labs The following probably only applies to HP-equipment (I am on a HP9000/360), but seeing Mike's sig this shouldn't be a problem: The HP window server (or at least the one on my machine) looks in the file /usr/lib/X11/X?devices (? stands for the display number, e.g. if you are on thingy:0 X0devices is used) to see which devices to use as its keyboard and pointer. To use a keypoard as pointer it should contain the lines: first keyboard keyboard #use first keyboard on HP-HIL as keyboard first keyboard pointer #use same also a pointer first trackball other #trackerball also moves pointer When a keyboard is given for a pointer a device the server will also examine the file /usr/lib/X11/X?pointerkeys to find out which keys will move the pointer and which keys will be used for buttons. E.g. you can specify that the first three function keys will act as buttons by adding the lines: pointer_button1_key f1 pointer_button2_key f2 pointer_button2_key f2 For more details look in the files mentioned, the shouldy contain pretty detailed instructions. Hope this helps, Adri. -- A.B. van Woerkom, adri@dutncp6.tudelft.nl Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Applied Physics, Physics Informatics Group, section Computational Physics, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ DELFT, The Netherlands ________________________________________________________________________ "Unfortunately, the current generation of mail programs do not have checkers to see if the sender knows what he is talking about" (A.S. Tanenbaum)