Option to disable Touchpad

[Pete]

When a laptop has a mouse attached, the touchpad just gets (severely!) in the way. There should be an option in the Touchpad Preferences to simply disable it.

[Pete]

Please do a ljttle investigation before you close a ticket! You're wasting my time. Padblocker is not the same thing! It just temporarily blocks the touchpad when the mouse is moved, which is no use to me. I'm not using the mouse when I accidentally hit the touchpad while using the keyboard, causing my app to go crazy. I want the touchpad turned off when I have a mouse plugged in.

[humdinger]

We all overlook something now and then. Diver does an exceptionally good job in triaging tickets year after year. There's really no need to get this angry.

[Pete]

It sounded angry, did it? (:-/) Well maybe it was.. I was specifically asked by Scott to be sure to submit the ticket, so to have it summararily, and erroneously, dismissed a few hours later was at least irksome!

The usual procdedure -- that I've seen on other tickets -- is to note if one thinks it's a duplicate so it can at least be discussed.

[bruno]

I totaly agree with Pete, since I have a anoying big touchpad here too. It is hard to type a text without not touching the big touchpad!

Pete said: "when I accidentally hit the touchpad while using the keyboard, causing my app to go crazy. I want the touchpad turned off when I have a mouse plugged in." sounds not angry at all for me! He is asking for help because he has trouble writing text thats it! I do not know what the mouse has to do with it at all? To write long texts it is a good thing to turn the touchpad off!

[humdinger]

It sounded angry, did it? (:-/) Well maybe it was.. The usual procdedure -- that I've seen on other tickets -- is to note if one thinks it's a duplicate so it can at least be discussed.

That's not my experience. Tickets very often get closed without opening a discussion first. This makes sense, because it's almost always the right decision. Commenting first, waiting a week for response and keeping track of the tickets put on that kind of notice would be a organisatorial drain and is only done when unsure. As said, at times one can be quite sure about something, but be wrong about that...
Much easier to close according to one's assement and rely on people not agreeing with it to simply re-open the ticket. Which is exactly what you did. Just instead of lamenting people wasting your time, a simple, "IMO this ticket was closed prematurely. It's not a duplicate of #123, because of a), b) and c)." wouldn't have been inflammatory.

I know all this is again wasting your time (and mine), but I felt the need to point out the needless rudeness. Lest people think the rough tone isn't minded by the Haiku dev community and people get discouraged getting involved or in case of Diver, get the feeling they better not triage tickets in the future to avoid being lambasted for it.

Back on topic:

Padblocker is not the same thing! It just temporarily blocks the touchpad when the mouse is moved, which is no use to me. I'm not using the mouse when I accidentally hit the touchpad while using the keyboard[...]

AFAIK, Padblocker does not block the touchpad when the mouse is moved, but while the keyboard is used. Which does sound like what you want. Only that you prefer to disable the touchpad completely, all the time, once your mouse is plugged in.
I wouldn't want that done automatically though - I also use an external mouse, but still use the touchpad at times.

Maybe a checkbox in the Input preferences to turn it off manually would be a good solution.

[Pete]

Replying to humdinger:

[snip]

I know all this is again wasting your time (and mine), but I felt the need to point out the needless rudeness. Lest people think the rough tone isn't minded by the Haiku dev community and people get discouraged getting involved or in case of Diver, get the feeling they better not triage tickets in the future to avoid being lambasted for it.

Obviously our perception differs here. I found the abrupt closure to be rude, which I don't think was an unreasonable feeling. It certainly had a discouraging effect on me! Let's leave it there, and I'll try not to be abrasive in the future!

Back on topic:

Padblocker is not the same thing! It just temporarily blocks the touchpad when the mouse is moved, which is no use to me. I'm not using the mouse when I accidentally hit the touchpad while using the keyboard[...]

AFAIK, Padblocker does not block the touchpad when the mouse is moved, but while the keyboard is used. Which does sound like what you want. Only that you prefer to disable the touchpad completely, all the time, once your mouse is plugged in.
I wouldn't want that done automatically though - I also use an external mouse, but still use the touchpad at times.

Yes -- major apologies on this. Bad memory warp. That's what it does: block pointing devices when a key is hit. When I originally broached the topic on the mailing list, PadBlocker was mentioned, so I tried it, but couldn't get it to work at all. And Adrien pointed out that it would block the mouse as well.

I didn't pursue trying to use it for a couple of reasons: I don't want the mouse blocked, and it doesn't activate until a key is hit whereas an accidental pad touch can happen any time!

[FreeFull]

It would be good to have a checkbox to disable input devices, in general. In my case, my laptop has a broken touchscreen that keeps sending inputs, and the only way to stop it right now is telling Haiku not to load usb_hid

[Pete]

Nice to see someone else bothered by this! Just FTR, I'm not really bothered by this any more because I have a folded piece of card over the touchpad which keeps my hands clear enough to avoid activating it. My annoyance returns when the card gets worn enough, but I just replace it!