Hacker News Reader

Comment by r00fus | Hacker News Reader

How do you get by with the trackpoint/trackpad? (my current thinkpad has both)... my experience has been that the trackpoint still (to this day over a dozen+ years after it was introduced) still exhibits ghost motion, and the trackpads on PCs all still suck at palm rejection and responsiveness while typing.

When I want an super-portable laptop in "lap mode", I need the pointing device that doesn't suck. The only one that delivers is the Macbook. With all my PCs I've needed to connect a mouse for decent productivity, which really sucks for portability.

View on HN

> ... and the trackpads on PCs all still suck at palm rejection and responsiveness while typing.

FWIW: this is not a hardware problem. This is an issue with trackpad drivers on PCs, which have been shit since the dawn of time.

I'm typing this from a MacBook Pro running Arch. It took me quite some time to configure the trackpad so that it was comfortable and half-usable. There's a driver for X called "mtrack"[1] which handles clickpads (i.e, where the entire trackpad surface is a button) properly. It's a more configurable fork of the "multitouch" driver that comes with most popular Linux distros these days. It does tap-to-click, tap and drag, drag lock and multitouch just fine. mtrack's palm detection is better than most trackpad drivers, but still not perfect, which is why I ended up having to turn off tap-to-click entirely because I'd get accidental mouse input while typing even with the trackpad sensitivity turned way down.

Now my trackpad works great. I still can't use guestures, though, because (1) X has shitty guesture support and (2) the GNOME folks haven't yet added guestures to Shell. The situation will (hopefully) be fixed with a future release of X and GNOME. I did get some guestures working using an unholy combination of xbindkeys, xdo and a Python script, but it wasn't worth it.

If you're running Windows on your MacBook and using Apple's drivers, you're fine. OTOH, if you're using a non-Apple notebook running Windows and your trackpad vendor doesn't give a fuck about writing good drivers, you're totally and utterly screwed.

This same trackpad works flawlessly on OS X. Clearly, the folks at Apple have spent a lot of time analyzing trackpad input patterns and determined the types of input that should be ignored.

[1] https://github.com/BlueDragonX/xf86-input-mtrack

Oh boy. We really need to push this into X as soon as possible. Not only it would make using Linux on Apple hardware halfway decent, it could also help pretty much every other laptop out there.

Personally, I use keyboard shortcuts whenever possible, making the mouse less necessary. I will now hit 'reply' using a keyboard shortcut

yep, after you use the clitmouse of a loooong time (mostly after I play a round of league of legends) and you try to move the cursor just slightly, it will ghost a little down or up. just pressing the red cap once will stop it until after the next game session.

but it's a damn small price to pay for the clitmouse.

no self respecting programmer should use any other mouse device. my bottom touchpad is configured in X to be 100% scrolling

> my bottom touchpad is configured in X to be 100% scrolling

hey, that's a good good idea. i have always just had mine disabled. thanks!

> my bottom touchpad is configured in X to be 100% scrolling

How exactly did you set this up? I tried Googling for it, but nothing relevant came up.

You want to remap the axis. This may help.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_configure_the_TrackPoin...

no self respecting programmer should use any other mouse device.

Besides, perhaps, a proper mouse?

The trackpoint is very cool in that you don't have to move your hand, but extended use can become very uncomfortable.

My wife has the same problem ;)

>no self respecting programmer should use any other mouse device. Hmm... I find the touchpad nothing but a pain. but that may be becoz of my hand position while typing. it keeps shifting the cursor. But other than that, i have developed a distaste towards reaching for the mouse. sometimes it's absolutely necesary, but i am on a mission to setup software to use my computer mouse-free. (i.e switching to a tiling window manager,etc..) but looks like that's too hard/unnatural

I am using my laptops for more than 10 years without a mouse. I am so happy about this decision that I made ago - it is definitely possible and gives a boost of productivity and if you are traveling you do not need to care with you a mose. But it comes with a dependency - all my laptops need a trackpoint, and the best ones by far are on thinkpads. Before going mouse free I had to learn blind-typing (10 fingers, without looking at the keyboard). Then I started to learn VI(M) as editor and at some point it became so unnatural to move the hands from the keyboard that I started to use less and less the mouse until I realized that I do not need it at all.

I already do blind-typing and infact the unnaturalness of reaching for mouse is what makes me wanna go mouseless. I really haven't tried thinkpad after i moved to blind-typing. and sometimes do wish for it. Am curious How big of a dependency can a trackpoint become?? am i just naive to think keyboard operations should be sufficient enough??

touchpad IS PAIN!

that's why i said clitmouse, not touchpad.

my touchpad was ignored until i transformed it in a square-scroll-wheel.

that's a clitmouse http://www.clickykeyboard.com/2005/trackpoint/14288_classicd...

I feel that no self-respecting person would use that term, especially on the semi-professional HN site. It's distracting from your technical advice and overly dismissive opinion of people who do things differently from you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com