Hi,
I just got my hands on an old RollerMouse from work.
(http://www.ergonow.ca/i/WE_Mice/RollerMousePro_LG.jpg)

It's pretty neat, however I think it would be killer if I could remap the roller (which is just a mouse) to function like a two-way scroll-wheel, and maybe the buttons as special shortcuts.

Does anyone know if this can be done? I figured it's not a standard part of anything, so I'll at least have to make some script or changes to a driver, but I have no idea where to start..

ooooh, i so want one of those now It sounds like a very good idea, i've occasionally considered doing something very similar, just not had the time.

anyways, long story short, yes, it is possible to re-map your mouse-keys and such. however, it can be time-consuming to re-map every single button of a huge keyboard like that.

There's a cool peice of software called 'imwheel' that allows you to remap buttons on an application-by-application basis (eg button3 == back in forefox, or quote in kate, paste for everything else, etc). there's a *very brief* little introduction to it here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ManyButtonsMouseHowto

You can also fiddle about in your xorg.conf and manually remap buttons, but on a more complex and limited fashion, but this is not recommended if it's your first time (check out: man xorg.conf )

There's lots of ways that you can go, and it is certainly possible, it's just a question of finding the easy way to do it

have fun!

Thanks a lot, that page eventually lead me to the program easystroke, which almost work the way I wanted.

Here's what I did, if anybody is interested:

I set the mouse to mode A (switch underneath), which maps the button a little differently (i presume this so the windows driver will be easier to make).

There's an annyoing double press when you press the roller-thinge, which activates both button 8 and 1. So I disabled button 1:

xinput set-button-map "Contour Design RollerMouse" 0

The left mouse button and the roller is now button 8 (as far as I can see, there's no way to make the two buttons activate different buttons). The right button is button 9 and the middle is button 3.

I disabled all other devices in easystroke and mapped button 8 to "instantly" activate scroll. That way you either press the roller down and scroll, or you press the left button and use the roller to scroll.

Then i mapped the middle to shift the workspace left and the right to shift it right.

1 members found this post helpful.

awesome, glad to hear you found your way to a solution, and more importantly, came to tell everyone so other people can do the same thing.

good luck with your linux adventure!