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Comment by pronik | Hacker News Reader

For such a niche area, it's astonishing how many of these projects miss some or indeed all of relevant features of the TrackPoint. In this particular case, it has already been mentioned that this doesn't make any sense outside of the keyboard. Additionally, it looks really awkward to use for someone used to the classic and there seems to be no button suitable for scrolling. It really looks like a "we heard geeks like trackpoints, let's do one" kind of project.

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Exactly. People love trackpoint because it's right there in the middle of the keyboard, and you don't have to move your hands.

Any variation of trackpoint where you have to move your hand away from the keyboard, is a failure IMHO

I’ll give you a use case. People with disabilities who can’t use the keyboard. Ploopy stuff has been absolutely amazing.

Does it work better than a trackball (thinking of the Kensington ones) in that respect ?

Depends on the disability. Not a homogenous group. "Work better" for whom?

I’ve provided a lot of different of the balls. Last one was for someone in bed and needed to control the whole pc with his chin. We adapted the base to fit on a mount. Other uses for people with ALS with reduced hand function - altered the ball shape to hold the hand.

Yes. Then I couldn't come up with a case where the trackpoint would work great but not a trackball.

Probably my lack of imagination, the article is about desk setup, and while you can move a trackball with basically anything that has friction, a trackpoint is a lot smaller and finicky. A joystick could be a better version if we're thinking adaptive input.

Use those a lot to (always try and focus off the shelf first). But for cases where we need to position differently we often need something custom

Thanks! About off the shelf but customizable, slightly off topic, but Keychron is producing one of the smaller trackballs with full button mapping management:

https://keychron.co.jp/pages/nape-pro

Anyone wanting one that could fit anywhere on any side of a keyboard could be interested.

In X11 (and probably in Wayland, since this is a libinput thing) you can define a button as a scroll lock.

So, hold down the scroll lock button and the thumbstick becomes a scroller. That leaves three buttons for left, middle and right.

Sure, but which of those buttons would be suitable? Keep in mind, it will be your thumb that needs to land naturally on that button while your index finger rests on the trackpoint. And the scroll button is also usually the middle button even though there are cases where you need middle-mouse drag (looking at you, Blender) for which a fourth button might go quite nice.

I'm right handed, so I would pick the bottom left button as the scroll lock, with the top left button as 1, top right button as 2, and bottom right as 3.

"scroll button is also usually the middle button" -- these functions are completely separable in libinput.

Meaning you would be pressing LMB and RMB with your index finger, moving it from the trackpoint itself? I can imagine controlling the trackpoint with the middle finger and use the index and ring finger to press the buttons, but it's far away from the "original" way to do it.

I have a tendency to tote around a trackball since I cannot stand using a trackpad for extended periods. I would imagine there are people who think similarly, but would want to use something more compact.

it feels like someone promoted ai on what to build and kept going with that same process. the other products sre just as odd lol. fun site though!

I'm not sure they're odd? They're using a 3D printer. If the CAD design is open, you could even assemble your own repair parts.

I can highly recommend the Azeron Cyro [1] (cannot comment on their other products, but they look interesting). It is partly 3D printed, but also repairable and mod-able. It is the only vertical mouse I am aware of, with a modest amount of keys (15 + scroll wheel + analog thumbstick). I say keys since, well, in software they're recognized as such. You can also make it a Bluetooth mouse (I use USB2BT+), though obviously you suffer a bit from latency.

[1] https://azeron.com/collections/cyro

I can promise you it isn’t. This totally predates llms. Been using them for a long time

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