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Posts: 381 | Thanked: 336 times | Joined on Jan 2011 @ Stockholm, Sweden
#2051
Originally Posted by sulu View Post
You want an on-screen touchpad? In principle the button/movement part is possible with xdotool.
One would need another program to create the interface that grabs the mouse actions. Zenity could do the mouse buttons but I have no idea if it could do something like a touchpad.

It would have to be some transparent form covering the whole screen but then there is the problem how to tell the difference between a simple mouse movement and a a marking action. And one couldn't simply click on any elements on the desktop unless the mouse pointer is exactly above it. So the usual touch-screen feeling would get lost.
I don't think that it's feasible with a reasonable effort and to a reasonable level of usability.

What I think could be useful is some kind of d-pad. This could either be on-screen or on the hardware keyboard (switching between d-pad and normal keyboard via some modifier - much like the num-pad switching on laptop keyboards without dedicated num-pads). I think the latter option would be better.
Could we somehow use the camera button for that switch? I know there is a program in the Maemo repository that allows to customize the action that is performed when the camera button is pressed. But I haven't tried it so far.

I dont understand everything you write since i dont know anything about the transports of the actions under the hood in linux (why zenity?).
But i am comparing the simplicity to use the touchpad on my notebook and how difficult, and sometimes impossible (OnMouseOver() doesnt work for instance), it is to use the stylus.
A Dpad would ofcourse be a big improvement over the stylus and from the youtube videos i have seen just about everyone has a problem with the stylus.

The thing i would like to have is a simple mousecontrol that doesnt need a concentration of 110% like the stylus need, and which cant mess things up if i slip, like when i try to hit something in a menu for instance (Like load previous document instead of save)

After all, the interface was made for a mouse and not for a stylus, so it isnt so strange that it is hard to use.