[vox-tech] Pointer Trouble with Touchpad

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin ME <dugan@passwall.com> 
> (On my mistake with gdp instead of gpm...)
> 
> On Fri, 28 Jun 2002, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > mike, what's gpd?  normally i'd say it was a typo, but "d" and "m" are
> > pretty far away from each other.   :)
> 
> Really bad brain-squelch-typo! gpm (not gdp). Let' I have problems with
> these: "gdb" (GNU DeBugger), "GDP" (Gross Domestic Product), "GNU" (GNUs
> Not UNIX), "GPG" (GNU Privacy Guard), GMT, (Grenwich Mean Time) and out
> friend "gpm" (General Purpose Mouse)
> 
> gee... I mean, wow. Sorry about that.
 
wow mike.  you don't do anything small, do you?   whatever you do, it
always has to be larger than life...   ;-)

> > what IS necessary is instructions on how to send wheel events to (mostly
> > older) applications that don't look for wheel events.  for instance, if
> > you use old netscape.  there's a site that collects snippets of code to
> > paste into your .Xdefaults that give hints to older apps on how to use
> > the events.   the dude who maintains the site is something like "nicols
> > colas".   a search on +wheel +mouse +linux +colas should turn his site
> > up.
> 
> Nope, it is a typo.
> 
> http://koala.ilog.fr/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/
> has links to patches to imwheel and gpm that I was writing about, but the
> link is broken.
> 
> imwheel it seems was also needed.
> 
> Perhaps, since I cant find the links out there, the changes have been
> included within gpm?
> 
> Check out the man pages to imwheel it discusses use of a modified gpm
> and a new fifo /dev/gpmwheel
> 
> I see references to wheel support in my Debain
> /usr/doc/gpm/changelog.Debian.gz
 
ah, ok.  now that i know we're talking about gpm...

imwheel is no longer necessary.  it's an application that has no purpose.
you can safely remove it from your system.

imwheel *was* necessary for very old versions of applications under old
versions of X.  for example, old versions of netscape.

imwheel took button events (which are wheel events) and using .Xdefault
info turned them into keyboard events.  this is how you were able to
scroll xterms. your wheel would be interpretted as a button press which
would be converted into something like page-up.

we don't need this anymore.  every modern application i know of already
understands the extra button events.  in addition, X 4.x now knows how
to handle 5 and 7 button wheelie mice.  under X 3.x, all the extra
buttons on, say, the boomslang 7 button wheelie mouse, were useless.   i
now have full use of all my buttons.

in addition, i've read that imwheel acts poorly with gnome applications.
i don't know the details (i don't use gnome or kde) but i remember
scanning some articles and the author mentioned that imwheel doesn't
play nicely with gnome/kde's button capture routines.

the colas website is also outdated for the same reason.

pete