Ubuntu QA:
BlogBrainstormPackage status
Log in
Ubuntu QA
The Ubuntu community has contributed 21986 ideas, 135057 comments, 2615221 votes
Idea sandbox Idea sandbox
Popular ideas Popular ideas
Ideas in development Ideas in development
Implemented ideas Implemented ideas
Idea #20789: Allow touchpad to match rotated screen on netbook

Written by CelticBhoy the 25 Jul 09 at 00:09. Category: Hardware support. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
With the rise in popularity of netbooks, I think that a feature should be added to the touchpad driver to allow the touchpad to calibrate to the screen orientation direction. By that I mean a lot of people rotate the screen and hold the netbook like a book for reading text. Rotating the screen is easily done, but the problem is that the touchpad maintains its original orientation, making the netbook difficult to use.
Tags: (none)

219
votes
up equal down
Solution #1: Option to rotate touchpad in Prefs-->Display
Written by CelticBhoy the 25 Jul 09 at 00:09.
a simple checkbox in the display module to select whether the touchpad rotates with the screen when changed. (If using a mouse the orientation can be swapped, but not with a touchpad.) This means the driver would need to be updated also.
130
votes
up equal down
Solution #2: Add motion sensor support.
Written by Darwin Survivor the 29 Jul 09 at 05:24.
Some laptops (apple specifically) have built-in motion detectors that can determine orientation. It would be cool if you could put your laptop on it's side and have the screen and touchpad automatically rotate accordingly.
16
votes
up equal down
Solution #3: In addition to #1 arrows keys should match rotated screen too!
Written by xoen the 5 Nov 09 at 22:45.
When the screen is rotated is common to use the arrows keys too, these keys should match the screen rotation too of course.

Propose your solution

Attachments
No attachments.


Duplicates


Comments
sf_007 wrote on the 26 Jul 09 at 20:54
Good idea

Chocwise wrote on the 29 Jul 09 at 22:36
True. I've got an EeePC as well. Of course with Ubuntu. And I tend to read Ebooks vertically as well. But using the touchpad with a rotated screen ist nearly impossible.

aitvo wrote on the 4 Aug 09 at 00:32
I have a patched Jaunty deb at statux.org that rotates the touchpad.

Eee PC ACPI Utilities will rotate the touchpad with the screen.

blazemore wrote on the 30 Aug 09 at 22:49
I disagree with the motion sensor. Most people don't hold their laptops upright, they lay them on a table.

Darwin Survivor (Brainstorm moderator) wrote on the 6 Sep 09 at 11:17
@blazemore really? Most laptops have quite a narrow viewing anble which would make the part of the screen furthest from the viewer VERY hard to read unless you stuck your head right out overtop of the laptop.

Compintuit wrote on the 23 Sep 09 at 22:10
This is a really, really brilliant idea. Maybe I could finally learn to like reading pdf's, if I could see the whole screen at once.

xoen wrote on the 5 Nov 09 at 22:54
I guess I've used "too" *too* times :P, sorry I need to sleep :D.

sjxm9203 wrote on the 8 Feb 10 at 18:49
This would be wonderful.

aapo wrote on the 2 Nov 11 at 08:50
Patched driver to add orientation option to the synaptics: http://cc.oulu.fi/~rantalai/synaptics/
(no GUI checkboxes)

Video using automatic motion detection (on ThinkPad T500): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOQds5DfC60

sup wrote on the 14 Feb 12 at 23:09
Relevant bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/+bug/800 064 and a commit message of the patches upstream (should propagate to precise): http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2011/11/msg00163.html

wolneykien wrote on the 15 Feb 12 at 22:36

Hi!

I\'ve written a small utility that dynamically rotates the coordinate system of an XInput device monitoring the screen (output) orientation:

https://github.com/wolneykien/xrandr-align

May be you will find it interesting. If so, please, advertise it a little. Thanks.


Paul.

P.S. Currently, I\'m working on the code, that monitors a g-sensor/accelerometer (presented as an input event device or a joystick) to dynamically rotate the screen.


Post your comment