Touchpad (mouse) driver with adjustable pointer speed (not acceleration)???

Synaptics laptop touchpad
Windows 98SE

I'll define two terms so we're talking about the same thing.

Pointer speed is the multiplier that defines how far the mouse pointer
moves per unit of movement of finger on the touchpad. This relationship
is independent of how fast the finger moves.

Acceleration is a dynamic parameter that defines a nonlinear
relationship that depends on how fast the finger moves. Faster finger
movement means that the mouse pointer moves farther per unit of finger
movement.

What I want is a touchpad driver that has adjustable pointer speed
and ZERO aceleration.

The Alps drivers do this, but are keyed to alps touchpads.
Won't work on the Synaptics pad on my laptop.

Logitech drivers do the pointer speed properly, but their scrolling and
gesture functions suck.

Synaptics drivers have no pointer speed adjustment. The label says
pointer speed, but they only adjust the acceleration. All my other
touchpads have zero acceleration and I just can't get used to that
nonlinear motion. But their scrolling and gesture functions are very nice.

I remember seeing mouse driver documentation that mentioned registry
keys to control pointer speed. But I searched the registry and didn't
find anything I recognized as such.
Is there a secret mouse registry key that I can add to change the
pointer speed on the synaptics drivers?
Is there a more generic driver?

FWIW, I searched high and low for LINUX touchpad drivers. They have
pointer speed adjustments, but they do it by skipping pixels. IF you
don't want acceleration, you can't even reach all the pixels with the
mouse pointer. I'm also looking for a LINUX touchpad driver that has
pointer speed adjustment that lets you access all the pixels
WITHOUT ACCELERATION.

This shouldn't be that hard...

And yes, I've tried laptop vendor touchpad drivers without success.
Thanks, mike
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Windows itself is the entity doing the acceleration. It's extremely
unlikely that your Alps touchpads had no acceleration. I've played with
doing that and the device is completely unusable. What you really want
is *different* acceleration.

We've written it to be best we've been able to find by doing large(ish)
usability studies, but the sad fact is that different people are
different, and there's a limit to how many axes of flexibility you can
reasonably provide.

We've thought about doing this, but the problem is that you'd then have
*2* pointer speed controls, because the one that's currently there is
actually the OS's standard mouse speed control. Yes, we've tried
removing the OS control but then people complain about not being able to
adjust their USB mice.

For Win9x, you can find the registry values that change when you slide
the Pointer Speed slider (HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseSpeed,
MouseThreshold1, and MouseThreshold2) and just set MouseSpeed to 0. This
effectively turns off Win9x's built-in ballistics (but for all devices,
not just TouchPads).

I think you'll find that this isn't actually what you want. It will take
you forever to get across the screen.

If we provided a speed slider of our own, you could then speed this up,
but what you would find is that you wouldn't be able to hit single
pixels, not because the cursor jumps over pixels, but because you
couldn't control your finger that accurately.

This is demonstrably not true. But I respect your opinion that it seems
that way and that you prefer it.

Sadly or not, there isn't a simple registry key to change pointer speed
for TouchPads in the Synaptics driver. You can do it by writing an
application that uses our COM API... If you want to go this route, take
a look at our API
(http://www.synaptics.com/decaf/utilities/SynCOMAPIv1_0.zip) and I'll
tell you what codes you have to send down to do this.

In the mean time, you can also turn on the "Slow motion cursor" feature
if you need more help with fine positioning when you have the speed
cranked up. This is in the control panel (cursor moves more slowly when
a modifier key is held down).

But this is starting to get non-device-driver-development-related.

 

I concede. My Cirque pad is set so that a slow swipe of my finger moves
the mouse 1280 pixels...one screen width. If I swipe my finger as fast
as I can, I can traverse the 1280 pixels in about 80% of a touchpad width.
Technically it only FEELS like zero acceleration.

So, I modify my request to a driver that has ALMOST zero acceleration.
The Synaptics drivers that I've been able to find have a LOT of
acceleration if I expect to get across the screen in one swipe.

Two speed controls is FINE with me as long as it gets me where I want to go.

That's perfectly fine cause I only have one pointing device per machine.

Thanks for the pointer, I'll experiment with the values. Is there a
written tutorial on what the threshold values do? I'm writing this on a
system with a Cirque touchpad and MouseSpeed, MouseThreshold1 and
MouseThreshold2 are all zero. There are registry entries under Cirque
for Acceleration = 1 and Pointer Sensitivity = 350.

I must admit that I have almost zero understanding of the Windows
Registry. I've seen many "fixes" for various issues reported in
newsgroups where the expert
says, "add this magic undocumented registry key and you'll be fixed up."
I can experiment changing values. But I have no way to add a key that I
know nothing about.
Not at all clear how you find out about these things without stumbling
across someone who happens to know...

I don't have any problem navigating my system with the Cirque touchpad
set to give me 1280 pixels in one swipe. It sure feels like I can get
at every pixel.
I have noticed what you describe with ALL the LINUX touchpad drivers
I've encounterd.

Ok I conceeded above. Just want it to FEEL like zero acceleration.

Thanks, but that is WAY over my head.

Thanks, I don't want ways to work around the fact that the driver gives
me insufficient flexibility. I've got ALPS and Cirque touchpads that
give me the motion that I want. Would be nice if the Synaptics drivers
could do that, cause I REALLY LIKE the Synaptics scrolling and gesture
capabilities.

I went to a swapmeet today and sold off my problem laptop. I'll have to
start over with the experiments on another one.
Thanks for your help.
mike


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