Arch Linux

phunni

Member

From: Bristol, UK

Registered: 2003-08-13

Posts: 770

Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) Button Configuration

I'm trying to set up my trackball mouse. Most of the buttons etc. work out of the box, but I need to make a couple of tweaks. 

I've spent ages trawling the net and the arch wiki  and I simply can't get my head around this. Especially with the new xorg changes and most of the docs now being out of date.

The mouse has 4 buttons + a scroll wheel.  I've managed to map them using xev:

Bottom Left Button: 1
Top Left Button: 2
Bottom Right Button: 3
Top Right Button: 8

Scroll up: 4
Scroll down: 5

At the moment 1 is a left click and 3 is a right click.  Button 8 seems to be "back" and button 2 seems to be middle click. The scroll wheel works as expected.

What I want is for button 2 to be a double left click and button 8 to be a right click.  Can anyone help me figure this out?

MoonSwan

Member

From: Great White North

Registered: 2008-01-23

Posts: 881

Re: Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) Button Configuration

Off topic but my girlfriend is looking for a decent trackball, so would you kindly post a link to yours from the Kensington site?  Much thanks and sorry I can't really help with your configuration issue.

phunni

Member

From: Bristol, UK

Registered: 2003-08-13

Posts: 770

Re: Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) Button Configuration

This is a later version of the one I have: http://eu.kensington.com/kensington/en/ … kball.aspx

No-one have any ideas on this one?

phunni

Member

From: Bristol, UK

Registered: 2003-08-13

Posts: 770

Re: Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) Button Configuration

Does anyone even know if it's possible to map a double click to one mouse button?

cl10k

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2008-12-24

Posts: 92

Re: Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) Button Configuration

I'm also interested in the button mapping!

Just a side note: I found the expert to be very uncomfortable - it's simply to high - your wrist is always bent...
I finally decided for the new Kensington slimblade and it's still a bit too high  but better.
Just as a tip, I ordered both from amazon and tried them for a couple of days and sent the one I didn't like back...

phunni

Member

From: Bristol, UK

Registered: 2003-08-13

Posts: 770

Re: Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) Button Configuration

I use the included wrist rest and find it very comfortable.

phunni

Member

From: Bristol, UK

Registered: 2003-08-13

Posts: 770

Re: Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) Button Configuration

Bump

PirateJonno

Forum Fellow

From: New Zealand

Registered: 2009-04-13

Posts: 372

Re: Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) Button Configuration

put the line
pointer = 1 8 2 4 5 6 7 3
in ~/.Xmodmap

you might need to run 'xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap' at login if your desktop environment doesn't do it automatically. see http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Get … p_tweaking

This will set button 8 to right-click, button 3 to middle-click and button 2 to button 8, which you might want to change.

Then you might be able to use xbindkeys combined with something like xdotool to map button 8 to double-click, although I'm not sure exactly how to do it (probably you'd have to run two "xdotool click 1" commands in close succession)

---

"You can watch for your administrator to install the latest kernel with watch uname -r" - From the watch man page

phunni

Member

From: Bristol, UK

Registered: 2003-08-13

Posts: 770

Re: Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) Button Configuration

I've figured out how to do the double click thing :-) Here it is for anyone else interested:

1) Run xev and move your mouse pointer into the white square.  Now click the button you wish to map to a double click.
2) Make a mental note of which button number xev reveals that mouse button to be - in my case, the top left button is button 8
3) install xbindkeys and xautomation - the latter can be found in AUR
4) run:

xbindkeys --defaults > /home/your-user-name/.xbindkeysrc

replacing "your-user-name" with (obviously) your user name
5) add the following at the bottom, replacing Y withthe number you made a note of in step 2

"/usr/bin/xte 'mouseclick 1' 'mouseclick 1' &"
b:Y + Release

and save
6) run

xbindkeys -n -v

to check if there are any errors in your config file
7) If that has all worked then you need to configure xbindkeys to run at X startup - the method will vary depending on you DE/WM - I use fluxbox and so simply added

xbindkeys &

to my ~/.fluxbox/startup file

Hope that helps!