Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

[Snowhog]

As you can see in my signature, I run both Kubuntu and Ubuntu on my laptops. In Kubuntu, the kde-config-touchpad package provides me with the ability to have the touchpad disabled when the mouse is plugged in - very handy. However, in Ubuntu, no dice. There isn't a package in the repo's that provides this same function for Ubuntu.

ppa:atareao/atareao to the rescue! This package provides me with this ability, and doesn't pull in a lot of dependencies with it.

touchpad-indicator allows you to configure the touchpad to be disabled when a mouse is plugged in, and enable it when the mouse is unplugged.

Sweet. 8)

[GreyGeek]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

Installed the Lucid version. Wouldn't run from the menu, so I ran it in a Konsole to catch any error messages:

jerry@sonyvgnfw140e:~$ /usr/share/touchpad-indicator/touchpad-indicator.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/touchpad-indicator/touchpad-indicator.py", line 33, in <module>
import appindicator
ImportError: No module named appindicator
jerry@sonyvgnfw140e:~$

Even though I could log into my launchpad account, I could not post a bug on the author's launchpad bug page.

[Snowhog]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

His email address is in the /usr/share/touchpad-indicator/touchpad-indicator.py file on line 13.

[kubicle]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

Installed the Lucid version. Wouldn't run from the menu, so I ran it in a Konsole to catch any error messages:

jerry@sonyvgnfw140e:~$ /usr/share/touchpad-indicator/touchpad-indicator.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/touchpad-indicator/touchpad-indicator.py", line 33, in <module>
import appindicator
ImportError: No module named appindicator
jerry@sonyvgnfw140e:~$

Even though I could log into my launchpad account, I could not post a bug on the author's launchpad bug page.

Looks like the applet can't find the appindicator python module, have you tried installing 'python-appindicator' (if it's not installed)?

[wizard10000]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

Couple thoughts here -

kde-config-touchpad even disables my touchpad if I'm using a bluetooth mouse - which I think is pretty cool.

That said, syndaemon is also pretty effective at touchpad control and has a smaller memory footprint than synaptiks - out of the box syndaemon disables your touchpad until two seconds after you stop typing; and if you're typing two seconds is a long time

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] [-d] [-p pid-file] [-t] [-k] [-K] [-R] [-s]

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

OPTIONS
-i <idle-time>
How many seconds to wait after the last key press before enabling
the touchpad. (default is 2.0s).

-d Start as a daemon, ie in the background.

-p <pid-file>
Create a pid file with the specified filename. A pid file will
only be created if the program is started in daemon mode.

-t Only disable tapping and scrolling, not mouse movements, in
response to keyboard activity.

-k Ignore modifier keys when monitoring keyboard activity.

-K Like -k but also ignore Modifier+Key combos.

-R Use the XRecord extension for detecting keyboard activity instead
of polling the keyboard state.

-s Use a shared memory area to enable/disable the touchpad instead of
device properties. WARNING: The SHM mechanism is not secure if you
are in an untrusted multiuser environment. All local users can
change the parameters at any time. This option requires the driver
Option "SHMConfig" to be enabled.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
DISPLAY
Specifies the X server to contact.

CAVEATS
It doesn't make much sense to connect to a remote X server, because the
daemon will then monitor the remote server for keyboard activity, but will
disable the touchpad on the local machine.

AUTHORS
Peter Osterlund <petero2@telia.com>.

This man page was written by Mattia Dongili <malattia@debian.org>

SEE ALSO
Xorg(1), synclient(1), synaptics(4)

X Version 11 xf86-input-synaptics 1.3.99 syndaemon(1)

[GreyGeek]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

....
Looks like the applet can't find the appindicator python module, have you tried installing 'python-appindicator' (if it's not installed)?

Yup.

python-appindicator:
Depends: libappindicator0 (=0.0.19-0ubuntu4) but 0.0.19-0ubuntu5 is to be installed

The app requires a version 4 of libappindicator which is older than version 5, which is what I have installed.

jerry@sonyvgnfw140e:~$ sudo apt-cache depends libappindicator0
libappindicator0
Depends: libatk1.0-0
Depends: libc6
Depends: libcairo2
Depends: libdbus-1-3
Depends: libdbus-glib-1-2
Depends: libdbusmenu-glib1
Depends: libdbusmenu-gtk1
Depends: libfontconfig1
Depends: libfreetype6
Depends: libglib2.0-0
Depends: libgtk2.0-0
Depends: libindicator0
Depends: libjson-glib-1.0-0
Depends: libpango1.0-0
Recommends: indicator-application
jerry@sonyvgnfw140e:~$ sudo apt-cache rdepends libappindicator0
libappindicator0
Reverse Depends:
libbrasero-media0
deja-dup
transmission-gtk
rhythmbox-plugins
nautilus
libbrasero-media0
gnome-settings-daemon
gnome-control-center
deja-dup
transmission-gtk
rhythmbox-plugins
python-appindicator
policykit-1-gnome
nautilus
libbrasero-media0
libappindicator0.0-cil
libappindicator-dev
gnome-settings-daemon
gnome-power-manager
gnome-control-center
gnome-bluetooth
brasero

I don't think I'll be downgrading to version 4.

[Snowhog]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

That said, syndaemon is also pretty effective at touchpad control...

The issue with this approach, at least here on my HP, is that my touchpad is a touch sensative 'screen' adhered to the front of the laptop below the space bar. Think of a touch screen. As such, my palms brush against it when typing, and that causes the cursor to move and reposition itself, or for the window to scroll. Not a good thing when typing. So, the touchpad-indicator application is a must for me when running Ubuntu.

[wizard10000]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

The issue with this approach, at least here on my HP, is that my touchpad is a touch sensative 'screen' adhered to the front of the laptop below the space bar. Think of a touch screen. As such, my palms brush against it when typing, and that causes the cursor to move and reposition itself, or for the window to scroll. Not a good thing when typing. So, the touchpad-indicator application is a must for me when running Ubuntu.

I don't get it - syndaemon disables the touchpad while you're typing. I used it for quite awhile and the default two second delay was good for most everything but there's certainly nothing wrong with synaptiks (or touchpad-indicator) either - it's what I use now

[Snowhog]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

You are refering to running in Ubuntu, yes? I have no problem with my HP touchpad in Kubuntu utilizing the synaptiks utility. With that, I just tell it to disable the touchpad when the mouse is plugged in.

[wizard10000]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

You are refering to running in Ubuntu, yes? I have no problem with my HP touchpad in Kubuntu utilizing the synaptiks utility. With that, I just tell it to disable the touchpad when the mouse is plugged in.

I used it in Ubuntu - on older hardware if RAM is an issue syndaemon uses considerably less memory than synaptiks.

[Snowhog]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

...syndaemon uses considerably less memory than synaptiks.

Agreed. I looked at installing synaptiks in Ubuntu, but didn't want all the KDE dependencies that it would bring in. Again, for me, the touchpad-indicator app form the ppa is just what I was looking for. Light, and it does what I want.

[kubicle]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

....
Looks like the applet can't find the appindicator python module, have you tried installing 'python-appindicator' (if it's not installed)?

Yup.

python-appindicator:
Depends: libappindicator0 (=0.0.19-0ubuntu4) but 0.0.19-0ubuntu5 is to be installed

The app requires a version 4 of libappindicator which is older than version 5, which is what I have installed.

Hmm...dependency problems seem relatively common with ppas (especially if one uses many of them), but the version of libappindicator0 in the standard lucid repos seems to be (0.0.19-0ubuntu4), where have you gotten your installed version (0.0.19-0ubuntu5) from?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

.....
Hmm...dependency problems seem relatively common with ppas (especially if one uses many of them), but the version of libappindicator0 in the standard lucid repos seems to be (0.0.19-0ubuntu4), where have you gotten your installed version (0.0.19-0ubuntu5) from?
...

That's a question I asked myself. I checked back in the histories for both Synaptic and KPackageKit for the last year and could not find any reference to the installation of libappindicator0. So, my assumption is that it was loaded with one of the foreign deb packages that I installed. I haven't installed any of the rdepends packages that require it, so a foreign deb seems logical.

But, I'm not sure it matters. My hands and fingers shake too much to use the touch pad (always inadvertently tapping while trying to drag, etc...) and I used to run a script which used synclient to turn the touchpad off when I booted up. I haven't paid any attention to the touchpad in months and until this discussion assumed that my touchpad.sh script was still being run by KDE during startup. I checked a few days ago and noticed that it is no longer being run. Not only that, System Settings, Input Devices, Touch Pad, shows my touch pad as being active, but it is not ... save for the ability to hold the left touch pad button down while pushing a finger on the touch pad... which causes a four sided arrow to pop up to allow moving the selected windows around the desktop. That's the only thing which works.

But, as long as my touchpad isn't functioning and stays out of my way, I don't care.

[kubicle]

Re: Now you can disable your touchpad when your mouse is plugged in

But, I'm not sure it matters. My hands and fingers shake too much to use the touch pad (always inadvertently tapping while trying to drag, etc...) and I used to run a script which used synclient to turn the touchpad off when I booted up.

I hear you. I also don't need a daemon to manage my touchpad, and disable it during boot (Well...actually I just disable the tap-to-click feature so I can still move the cursor and scroll with it while avoiding the annoying accidental clicks)...and use a script via keyboard shortcut to enable (and disable again) the tapping if I want it activated (which is very rare...can't remember when I actually used it).

Just wanted to offer some suggestions, in case you were wondering why the applet didn't work for you.