Strange behaviour of Mx700
 

Hi,
Whenever I use the "Cruise Control" Up button (just above the scroll, for constant upward scrolling), rather than behaving correctly as the bottom one does and acting like I am scrolling continuously, it instead at the start and end of the button press also sends Button 6, causing a firefox (and other browsers) to go back if I scroll up using it. The output from xev explains it best (button 4 is what I want, scroll up, button 6 I don't (when this button is pressed), as it is configured to back in most applications):

ButtonPress event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x2000001,
root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 734489, (109,0), root:(114,540),
state 0x0, button 6, same_screen YES

ButtonPress event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x2000001,
root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 734505, (109,0), root:(114,540),
state 0x0, button 4, same_screen YES

ButtonRelease event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x2000001,
root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 734505, (109,0), root:(114,540),
state 0x800, button 4, same_screen YES

ButtonRelease event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x2000001,
root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 734561, (109,0), root:(114,540),
state 0x0, button 6, same_screen YES

As I said, this does not occur when using the down button.

The same thing happens regardless of whether imwheel (1.0.0pre6) is running, so presumably either the XF86Config file is at fault (though I can see nothing wrong with it), or the xmodmap instructions in initrc are misbehaving. I include the relevent parts of each:
XF86Config:
Identifier "Logitech Mx700"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "Buttons" "7"

initrc:
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5"
imwheel

Also, this does not occur in Windows XP, so it can't be a hardware problem.

Thanks...this confuses me...

What is the ExplorerPS/2 Protocol? Never heard of it (and I've just checked two XF86Config How-Tos to try and find out about it).

Do you mean ImPS/2 (which is the standard for PS/2 wheel mice, and also is said to work with USB mice)? Have you tried using "Auto" in this setting?

And may I point out that the fact that any given piece of hardware "works in Windows XP" does not mean that the hardware is not faulty (although I don't think your mouse is faulty in this instance).

Microsoft has not become one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and their product has not achieved overwhelming market dominance, by being standoffish from hardware manufacturers. The fact that Microsoft works closely with hardware manufactureres and uses the information gained in this way to "bend the rules" so that cheap or unreliable hardware works perfectly under Windows has long been a key support in achieving said market dominance.

As soon as you take Windows away, though, and replace it by an OS that has stricter requirements, you lose those hackarounds, and suddenly the hardware doesn't work. What a shock.

I'm using ExplorerPS/2 as the several setup guides I found on the web, as well as various Logitech Mx700 topics here all said to use it. Therefore I presume it is the correct protocol to use.

I just tried using the Auto protocol - the scroll wasn't detected and it took about 5 seconds of moving the mouse before it was registerred.

As for the ImPS/2 protocol, it only supported 5 of the 7 buttons, which is unacceptable (the thumb buttons were listed as 1 and 2 as well as the left and right mouse buttons). The same thing still happened using ImPS/2, only button 2 was incorrectly registerred at the beginning and end of pressing cruise up, rather than button 6.

Presumably therefore the ExplorerPS/2 protocol is an extension of ImPS/2, with 7 button support.