Howto: Enable circular scrolling and more on your laptops synaptics touchpad

Do you love the way you scroll on your ipod? Ever wished to enable it in your laptop? Wait no more...follow the below instructions...

First make sure you have the synaptics touch pad driver for XOrg/XFree86 installed.If you are using Ubuntu Hardy it will be installed by default...
Just make sure that xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package is installed.

In arch linux install the synaptics package with

pacman -S synaptics

Then edit your xorg.conf file

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

find the input section

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"

Add the following lines in BLUE to that section

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "on"
Option "VertEdgeScroll" "on"
Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "on"
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "on"
Option "CornerCoasting" "on"
Option "PalmDetect" "on"
Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
Option "CircScrollTrigger" "3"
EndSection

Done .. logout and login again and enjoy the jail broken iPad :-)

Oh wait..forgot to tell you what those options does.

Circular Scrolling

Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
Option "CircScrollTrigger" "3"

Instead of (or additional to) scrolling horizontally or vertically, you can scroll circularly. Some users find this faster and more precise.The option CircScrollTrigger may be one of the following values, determining on which edge circular scrolling should start:

0 All Edges
1 Top Edge
2 Top Right Corner
3 Right Edge
4 Bottom Right Corner
5 Bottom Edge
6 Bottom Left Corner
7 Left Edge
8 Top Left Corner

Specifying something different from zero may be useful if you want to use circular scrolling in conjunction with horizontal and / or vertical scrolling. If you do so, the type of scrolling is determined by the edge you're starting.
To scroll fast, draw small circles in the center of your touchpad. To scroll slow and more precise, draw large circles

Two Fingers scrolling

Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "on"
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "on"

Instead of just scrolling on the side of your touchpad you can also scroll using two fingers togheter. You might have seen this on Macbooks which uses this approach as default on Mac OSX.

You will get a two finger enabled touchpad which supports top-bottom and left-right scrolling as well as regular lateral scrolling

The normal stuff + Corner coasting

Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "on"
Option "VertEdgeScroll" "on"
Option "CornerCoasting" "on"

VertEdgeScroll enables vertical scrolling when dragging along the right edge.
HorizEdgeScroll enables horizontal scrolling when dragging along the bottom edge.
CornerCoasting enables edge scrolling to continue while the finger stays in an edge corner.

PalmDetect

Option "PalmDetect" "on"

Turns on palm detection. Ignores if your palm touches the pad while typing

Two finger and Three finger taps
If the touchpad is tapped with two fingers, it will emulate a middle click. If the touchpad is typed with three fingers, a right click will be emulated. Its enabled by default.


Home page of synaptics driver
http://web.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/index.html

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