[SOLVED] Disabled touchpad while typing?

salparadise · 11-16-2012, 01:04 AM

I have Slack64 14 running on my Asus X54C laptop (everything except two finger right clicking on the touchpad worked out of the box and that was solved with the addition of the kcm_touchpad package from slackbuilds).
The problem I'm getting is the familiar one of accidentally touching the touchpad while typing and having the cursor move to an unwanted part of the screen.

There doesn't appear to be a "disable whilst typing" option. Someone on a different forum directed me to an Ubuntu package called "touchpad-indicator". The contents of the source code is a bunch of stuff ending in .py
Not having ever run anything of this nature I'm somewhat at a loss as to how to get it working.
I found a mandriva rpm for the package and converted it using rpm2tgz and installed it. It shows up in the menu but won't launch. The directory is in /usr/share/touchpad-indicator and contains lots of what I presume is python type stuff.

I have to type up part of a 12,000 word thesis on this laptop and if I have to keep deleting text that's in the wrong place I'm going to go nuts.
Any pointers or ideas would be gratefully received.

ponce · 11-16-2012, 01:30 AM

with my synaptics touchpad I do it with synclient (but I have an external usb mouse)

Code:

synclient TouchpadOff=1

as the mouse will be turned off, you can launch this in a terminal and switch back with alt-tab to it to re-enable

Code:

synclient TouchpadOff=0

salparadise · 11-16-2012, 01:43 AM

I have a USB mouse I can use (though prefer not to) but the code works fine.

It's a fix of sorts.

Thankyou

emgee_1 · 11-16-2012, 02:03 AM

I use the following little script (in my openbox autostart file:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
syndaemon -i 6 -d

syndaemon has a man file

Code:

syndaemon(1)                                                      syndaemon(1)

NAME
       syndaemon  - a program that monitors keyboard activity and disables the
       touchpad when the keyboard is being used.

SYNOPSIS
       syndaemon [-i idle-time] [-m poll-inverval]  [-d]  [-p  pid-file]  [-t]
       [-k] [-K] [-R]

DESCRIPTION
       Disabling  the  touchpad  while typing avoids unwanted movements of the
       pointer that could lead to giving focus to the wrong window.

Marcel

salparadise · 11-16-2012, 03:18 AM

I use the following little script (in my openbox autostart file:

Code:
#!/bin/sh
syndaemon -i 6 -d

That is about perfect. Just what I was looking for.

Many thanks.

lkraemer · 11-16-2012, 03:53 AM

Checkout the following:

Code:

man synclient
synclient -l

Larry

corvid · 11-16-2012, 01:32 PM

How interesting... I'd been using xinput --set-prop all this time...