Bug 75322

Summary:	Put back support for absolute mode
Product:	xorg	Reporter:	Donarsson <donarsson89>
Component:	Input/synaptics	Assignee:	Peter Hutterer <peter.hutterer>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	medium	CC:	ambrose.li, peter.hutterer
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Donarsson 2014-02-21 13:12:57 UTC

Support for absolute mode was added in 2011 (Bug 30760), but was removed about a year later (commit a9d247d076b3d0d1df84f013b3733bd6297dd79b).

I used the feature for a project back then and now that I wanted to continue working on it, I found out it doesn't work anymore because absolute input isn't supported anymore. I'm aware of evdev, but since it doesn't support gestures, tapping and other advanced features unfortunately that's not an alternative.

Looking at the patch, it doesn't seem like a big deal anyways and I don't really understand why this potentially useful feature was removed.

Comment 1 Peter Hutterer 2014-02-23 22:09:43 UTC

No, sorry. The driver is almost unmaintainable even with the features that are commonly used. Having a direct-touch mode on the touchpad is not really what the touchpad is designed for in the first place, so it really has no place in the synaptics driver and I regret merging it in the first place.

Use a touchscreen driver and client-interpreted gestures if you need absolute mode.

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