[H-GEN] synaptics pinching?

[mcconnell at southernphone.com.au]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:33:43 +1000
Russell Stuart <russell-humbug at stuart.id.au> wrote:


> If you use two fingers to touch the pad, the touch pad reports it as
> just one big bloody fat finger.  But, that happens to be
> distinguishable from 1 finger, the software can distinguish between
> you sweeping across the pad with 1 finger and 2 fingers and so it can
> do different things. Scrolling the area under the mouse say (ie 2
> finger scroll) versus moving the mouse if you use just one finger.
>
> This is all well and good.  But it is not multitouch.  You need
> multitouch to do something like pinch to zoom, because you need to
> sense the position of two fingers and how they are changing relative
> to one another.  From what I understand the hardware can do this and
> the Windows drivers provided by Synatics can use it.  But Synatics
> hasn't published the protocol and it hasn't been reverse engineered,
> and so on Linux we are stuck with the fat finger kludge.

  As an expert practitioner of kludging, I was naturally intrigued by
  this and spent a good five minutes trying to get as much finger on the
  touch pad to work two finger scrolling (ie emulate a fat finger) and
  found that this was impossible.

Obviously the so called "fat finger kludge" is not kludge at all.

Lets use the "Art of kludging" to come up with a solution to "the
problem"
A good kludger should only have have a rudimentary knowledge of what he
is doing. ie I have demonstrated this by trying to emulate a fat
finger.

State the problem, so that there is a solution.


people want pinch zoom.- no solution

people want to zoom with their touch pads.- solution

Beta solution: people can have edge scrolling or two finger scrolling
they are obviously spoilt for choice. hack code to change two finger
scrolling to two finger zooming.

Alpha solution: hack code to give people a choice between edge zooming
and two finger zooming.

Finally think of sound reasons why your solution is "better"

Pinching to zoom takes a lot dexterity, people with severe arthritis
may have trouble doing it.

regards

Peter