[PLUG] Configuring Kensington Orbit Scroll Ring Trackball buttons

[Rich Shepard]

On Fri, 5 Jul 2019, tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com wrote:

> The first thing I would try is to check if the system receives events from the
> buttons/wheel/... whatever that contraptions of yours have:

Tomas,

Guess I did a poor job of explaining the situation. Short answer: yes, the
system receives, and reacts to, all button/ball/ring events. There's just no
'middle' button defined.

The left button selects whatever is below the pointer and highlights text in
virtual terminals, the browser, and other applications. There's no way to
paste the highlighted text because pressing both left and right buttons
simultaniously does nothing.

The right button brings up menus on the panel, desktop, and open
applications.

The ball moves the cursor around the screen.

The scroll ring moves the screen/view vertially up and down in the browser
and other applications.

> lsusb - should show your device - you can increase verbosity with -v or -vvv or
> even -vvvvvv

$ lsusb
...
Bus 004 Device 045: ID 047d:2048 Kensington Orbit Trackball with Scroll Ring

> If you observed responses on your not working buttons/wheel/... events you
> should be able to configure/map those to work with some google-fu.

Which might work if the search terms produced relevant results; 'kensington
orbit scroll ring trackball button mapping' does not produce such results.

> Maybe start here:
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mouse_buttons

The examples here are for specific devices and I cannot translate lines like
these:
   Option          "evBits"  "+1-2"
   Option          "keyBits" "~272-287"
   Option          "relBits" "~0-2 ~6 ~8"
   Option          "Pass"    "3"

to the Kensington trackball.

> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Logitech_Marble_Mouse

"The Logitech Marble Mouse is a pointing device with four buttons and a
trackball," The Kensingto Orbit Scroll Ring Trackball is a pointing device
with two buttons and a trackball and horixontal scroller.

> https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/map-mouse-on-linux/

xev:

Left button

KeymapNotify event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
     keys:  0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
            0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0

Right button

KeymapNotify event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
     keys:  68  0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
            0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0

both buttons also display

KeymapNotify event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
     keys:  4294967199 0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
            0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0

Here, /usr/share/X11/xorg.config.d/10-evdev.conf contains:

#
# Catch-all evdev loader for udev-based systems
# We don't simply match on any device since that also adds accelerometers
# and other devices that we don't really want to use. The list below
# matches everything but joysticks.

Section "InputClass"
         Identifier "evdev pointer catchall"
         MatchIsPointer "on"
         MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
         Driver "evdev"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
         Identifier "evdev keyboard catchall"
         MatchIsKeyboard "on"
         MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
         Driver "evdev"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
         Identifier "evdev touchpad catchall"
         MatchIsTouchpad "on"
         MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
         Driver "evdev"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
         Identifier "evdev tablet catchall"
         MatchIsTablet "on"
         MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
         Driver "evdev"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
         Identifier "evdev touchscreen catchall"
         MatchIsTouchscreen "on"
         MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
         Driver "evdev"
EndSection

Nothing for either the Kensington trackball or the generic Nspire 2-button
mouse with scroll wheel (which is the third/middle/paste button when
pressed).

Regards,

Rich