Another ALPS touchpad

Another ALPS touchpad

[Dylan Paul Thurston]

I just bought a HP Revolve 810 G1 laptop. (This is a convertible
ultrabook, normally sold with Windows 8.) The touchpad seems to be
another ALPS touchpad, not yet recognized by the kernel; I tried the
Debian package of 3.12 and linux-next-20131224 compiled from
source. Without the proper driver, it is unusuably sensisitive,
registering clicks when my hands are well away from the touchpad.
The relevant line from dmesg is

[    2.776630] psmouse serio4: alps: Unknown ALPS touchpad: E7=73 03 0a, EC=88 b3 18

Should I try hacking drivers/input/mouse/alps.c to see if one of the
existing protocols works?

Thanks,
	Dylan Thurston
	dpt@bostoncoop.net

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Dmitry Torokhov]

On Thursday, January 02, 2014 11:59:15 PM Dylan Paul Thurston wrote:
> I just bought a HP Revolve 810 G1 laptop. (This is a convertible
> ultrabook, normally sold with Windows 8.) The touchpad seems to be
> another ALPS touchpad, not yet recognized by the kernel; I tried the
> Debian package of 3.12 and linux-next-20131224 compiled from
> source. Without the proper driver, it is unusuably sensisitive,
> registering clicks when my hands are well away from the touchpad.
> The relevant line from dmesg is
> 
> [    2.776630] psmouse serio4: alps: Unknown ALPS touchpad: E7=73 03 0a,
> EC=88 b3 18
> 
> Should I try hacking drivers/input/mouse/alps.c to see if one of the
> existing protocols works?

Tommy, Yunkang,

Do you have anything in works to support this new model? Or it is
not an ALPS device at all?

Thanks!

-- 
Dmitry

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Tommy Will]

Hi Dmitry,

> Do you have anything in works to support this new model? Or it is
> not an ALPS device at all?

Yes, it's an ALPS device and we're now preparing the patch for this new one.
BTW, since it's a ClickPad without seperate buttons, simple resting
finger logic would be added.


-- 
Best Regards,
Tommy

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Dmitry Torokhov]

Hi Tommy,

On Sat, Jan 04, 2014 at 01:27:24PM +0800, Tommy Will wrote:
> Hi Dmitry,
> 
> > Do you have anything in works to support this new model? Or it is
> > not an ALPS device at all?
> 
> Yes, it's an ALPS device and we're now preparing the patch for this new one.
> BTW, since it's a ClickPad without seperate buttons, simple resting
> finger logic would be added.

Hmm, what finger resting logic? We already properly support clickpads in
X driver (as long as the kernel tells userspace that the device is a
clickpad) so what is missing?

Thanks.

-- 
Dmitry

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Tommy Will]

2014/1/4 Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>:
> On Thursday, January 02, 2014 11:59:15 PM Dylan Paul Thurston wrote:

>> Yes, it's an ALPS device and we're now preparing the patch for this new one.
>> BTW, since it's a ClickPad without seperate buttons, simple resting
>> finger logic would be added.
>
> Hmm, what finger resting logic? We already properly support clickpads in
> X driver (as long as the kernel tells userspace that the device is a
> clickpad) so what is missing?
>

I remember in previous kernel version, I tried to register the device
as clickpad but only left/right button click can be recognized by
X-Server. When putting 1finger still in button area and moving another
finger in normal area, X-Server would not consider it as 1finger
cursoring.

Looks like this:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1991841

Does X-server have already supported this feature? (I'm sorry I did
not try the latest X-Server)

-- 
Best Regards,
Tommy

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Dmitry Torokhov]

On Sat, Jan 04, 2014 at 02:08:26PM +0800, Tommy Will wrote:
> 2014/1/4 Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>:
> > On Thursday, January 02, 2014 11:59:15 PM Dylan Paul Thurston wrote:
> 
> >> Yes, it's an ALPS device and we're now preparing the patch for this new one.
> >> BTW, since it's a ClickPad without seperate buttons, simple resting
> >> finger logic would be added.
> >
> > Hmm, what finger resting logic? We already properly support clickpads in
> > X driver (as long as the kernel tells userspace that the device is a
> > clickpad) so what is missing?
> >
> 
> I remember in previous kernel version, I tried to register the device
> as clickpad but only left/right button click can be recognized by
> X-Server. When putting 1finger still in button area and moving another
> finger in normal area, X-Server would not consider it as 1finger
> cursoring.
> 
> Looks like this:
> 
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1991841
> 
> Does X-server have already supported this feature? (I'm sorry I did
> not try the latest X-Server)

It should as far as I know (I do not have any clickpad devices).

Thanks.

-- 
Dmitry

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Tommy Will]

2014/1/4 Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Jan 04, 2014 at 02:08:26PM +0800, Tommy Will wrote:

>> Does X-server have already supported this feature? (I'm sorry I did
>> not try the latest X-Server)
>
> It should as far as I know (I do not have any clickpad devices).
>

Got that, thanks! We would check that with latest kernel.

-- 
Best Regards,
Tommy

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Dylan Paul Thurston]

On Sat, Jan 04, 2014 at 01:27:24PM +0800, Tommy Will wrote:
> Hi Dmitry,
> 
> > Do you have anything in works to support this new model? Or it is
> > not an ALPS device at all?
> 
> Yes, it's an ALPS device and we're now preparing the patch for this new one.

Glad to hear it's being worked on! I'm eager to test out anything.

> BTW, since it's a ClickPad without seperate buttons, simple resting
> finger logic would be added.

I didn't quite follow this or the following discussion. One thing I
wanted to look into was whether it was possible to have a middle mouse
click in addition to the left and right clicks. I had reported
spurious clicks with the generic driver; I'm quite sure I'm not
actually touching the pad when this happens, in case that's relevant.

--Dylan Thurston

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Tommy Will]

2014/1/4 Dylan Paul Thurston <dpthurst@indiana.edu>:
>
> I didn't quite follow this or the following discussion. One thing I
> wanted to look into was whether it was possible to have a middle mouse
> click in addition to the left and right clicks.

Normally, clickpad only supports Left/Right click. I'm afraid middle
click would not be supported as standard.
However, if you have interest in middle click, based on our patch, you
can support that by yourself.
# Since it's a clickpad with only one button, you can report any
button event as you like by detecting the finger area when clicking.

> I had reported spurious clicks with the generic driver; I'm quite sure I'm not
> actually touching the pad when this happens, in case that's relevant.

I'm not sure where is wrong with generic driver. We would check the
behavior with latest kernel later.


-- 
Best Regards,
Tommy

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Dmitry Torokhov]

On Sun, Jan 05, 2014 at 10:53:52AM +0800, Tommy Will wrote:
> 2014/1/4 Dylan Paul Thurston <dpthurst@indiana.edu>:
> >
> > I didn't quite follow this or the following discussion. One thing I
> > wanted to look into was whether it was possible to have a middle mouse
> > click in addition to the left and right clicks.
> 
> Normally, clickpad only supports Left/Right click. I'm afraid middle
> click would not be supported as standard.

On devices that lack middle button middle click is usually emulated by
pressing both left and right buttons. Also, since this is multi-touch
device quite often middle click is mapped on 2- or 3-finger tap. All of
that is done in X driver and not in kernel.

Thanks.

-- 
Dmitry

Re: Another ALPS touchpad

[Tommy Will]

2014/1/6 Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>:
> On devices that lack middle button middle click is usually emulated by
> pressing both left and right buttons. Also, since this is multi-touch
> device quite often middle click is mapped on 2- or 3-finger tap. All of
> that is done in X driver and not in kernel.
>

Thanks for your info. Got that.

-- 
Best Regards,
Tommy