[pc110] Pad driver (and other stuff)

robin nospam at acm.org
Thu, 17 Jul 1997 09:42:29 +0100

A feature-enhanced version of the touch-pad driver, version 0.3,
is available in the usual place:
ftp://swan.ml.org/pub/pc110/pad-0.3.tar.gz

There are no bug fixes, just feature enhancements:-) It's
been out a week and tested by the Swansea PC110 Owners Group
(membership: 3).

Version 0.3 tweaks the timings to help improve the reliability
of the tap gesture recognition in the face of pad bounce,
and adds a ``sticky drag'' mode. It irritated me that when
navigating long menus using the tap-drag gesture one would
often hit the edge of the pad before the pointer reached the
desired spot. Previously, the only option was to let go and
try again, giving yourself a bigger run up at it. Instead,
sticky-drag means that the mouse stays held down for a short
time after the tap-drag gesture is over, so you can continue
the drag after moving to a different bit of the pad. I think
it is quite an improvement.

There are still a few things to do---a tool to adjust the
settings would be useful, and I should check that the digitizer
shuts down when the PC110 goes in to suspend mode---but they
are not high on my list of priorities. Also, I would really like
to teach gpm how to integrate the real buttons with the mad
movement, but I've looked at the gpm code and that would be
a non-trivial change to the flow of processing so I think I'll
leave well alone for now.

First, I'm polishing my IP-over-radio driver ``scarabd''
so it works nicely over IrDA. The radio version is stable
and works unmodified for PC110-to-PC110 communications
(ftp://swan.ml.org/pub/scarab/scarab-1.3.tar.gz) and I am
now refining a version that does PC110-to-desktop using the
Adaptec AirPort IrDA thingy.

After that, upcoming projects are to build a system that
will fit on a 15Mb CompactFlash and modifications to make the
``ical'' calendar/diary usable without all the menu navigation
it currently needs.

Robin.

--
R.M.O'Leary <robin nospam at acm.org> +44 973 310035  P.O. Box 20, Swansea SA2 8YB, U.K.