I would like to adjust the threshold that determines whether I am pressing a button or dragging. I find that a number of times I try to press something on the home screen it is interpretted as a drag. However the drag is only of a few pixels. Clearly not a worthwhile drag! I'd prefer to be able to say "if my finger wiggles only a few pixels still consider it a press."

Is there such a sensitivity configuration available? Perhaps some magic gconf parameter of GTK or hildon?

I'm having the opposite problem. When I have to do multiple scrolls to get where I want in a list, one of my scroll attempts very often gets interpreted as a tap. It is particularly annoying when this results in some action that is not trivially reversible and there is no confirmation dialog.

I generally dislike confirmation dialogs, but I really need them in maemo 5.

Sounds like regardless of whether the user wants more sensitivity or less sensitivity there is a need for an adjustment option.

Any idea where this threshold lives in the software stack? X11? GTK? Hildon?

i dont think its sensitivity that needs to be adjusted. Maemo could maybe be more intelligent to "guess" what happened. There are other factors such as... how long before was the last touch? Was that interpreted as a scroll? How long is the current touch? How much pressure is applied?

Assume the following situation:
You scroll through a list quickly. Your finger moves from the lower part of the screen upwards, then you start again at the lower part and so on. Then suddenly something goes wrong and you you the screen in a way that could be a single tap as in "I want to select this item". It could also be dragging movement that somehow was interrupted.
You could just interpret this one touch like everything else. You could, though, put it in context and interpret it as "there's a moving list, it's even still scrolling, there was a touch witch a slight movement upwards which I'm not sure about... But it fits the pattern of the previous touches, it ,matches the scrolling of the list, so let's interpret it as a dragging movement, not as a single tap."

I think this is what we need, not a general setting. The algorithm probably exists and is patented.

I hate tapping a link just to see it highlighted our oulined by hashmarks. If it got the tap, go why don't you!!