btnx: Send keyboard and mouse combination events with mouse buttons

[daou]

btnx-config is definetly a good step forward in making mx configuration easier.

I have a strange problem though. I've mapped my lower thumb button to alt+left and thus use it as Back in browsers.
However, every now and then it goes nuts and goes back several pages, it just keeps repeating itself until I press esc (or alt..not sure which one actually stops it). Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this?

I've noticed this problem with my thumb wheel button sometimes. It's been happening for a long time. Sometimes it doesn't happen for weeks, then it happens a few times a day. I'm not exactly sure what the problem is. If it is not a hardware problem (ie the button fails to send a button released signal from the mouse) then it could be some sync issue with btnx. It might fail to send the release event under some rare circumstances (which makes it very difficult to debug).

I don't consider it an urgent bug (if it even is a bug with btnx). I'll look at it after some bigger issues.

[daou]

I finally got btnx working under Mandriva. I copied the btnx executable to /etc/rc.d/init.d and edited /etc/rc5.d/S99local and added the line /etc/init.d/btnx -b start

One problem that I've noticed pertains to Revoco. I have Click-to-click-mode set, but after some period of activity it somehow reverts to Free-scroll-mode. I've had to change it back a couple of times in the last hour or so. It is too early to determine any pattern.

I do have to kill btnx if I want to change the config file, so that I can then restart it, since I have no way to stop it otherwise.

I will fix the revoco issue. The generic distro issue is not dead, don't worry. I'll start working on it tonight, now that my university exams are over.

[daou]

Sorry for the late reply, I clean installed Gutsy in the meantime and tried again. I noticed before I had installed btnx I was getting the odd behaviour as before, ie forward button on the mouse was doing a right-click in firefox and nautilus. I reconfigured xorg.conf a few times and the problem went away (I can't remember what I did)

Then I installed btnx, and everything works perfectly! (I was using KEY_LEFTALT+KEY_RIGHT, KEY_LEFTALT+KEY_LEFT btw) No random right-clicks anymore. I have even mapped the search button on my VX Revolution to use the deskbar applet that is included in Gutsy. Tres cool!

I have got to say, many thanks for your awesome software, it makes configuring your mouse in Ubuntu so much easier than it ever used to be, and this kind of thing really should be included by default.

Thanks again for all your work, I am really happy with ubuntu and my mouse now!

No problem. I'm glad you are enjoying btnx and got the problems sorted out. Would you attach your xorg.conf on this thread so I can have a look at what values you used?

[daou]

Thanks a lot, everything works like a charm now! =D>

I encountered a little problem, though. If you manually write something like "KEY_E KEY_B" in the keycode input field, you get a "Wrong keycode" popup-infinite-loop. I guess I deserve it, but I don't think you wanted it to work like that. (Sorry, if somebody already posted this, but I was too lazy to read all the posts.)

The key drop-down-auto-completion-entry-box is a little buggy. I'm not too happy with it myself. It's a bit of a hack. However, it is better than the old plain drop-down box because there are hundreds of values.

What does everyone think: would it be better that the key value entry was a simple button that opens a new dialog? This dialog would have a list of the keys and an auto-completion-entry at the top, and an OK button to confirm the selection. Would it make the interface better?

[daou]

I am having issues with mapping the search button on a MX Revolution mouse to mouse button 2 (mimicking the middle button paste).

I installed mvmouse and I have btnx-config set to execute this command:

/usr/bin/mvmouse +0 +0 2

This works fine if I save and restart btnx from within btnx-config, but fails on a reboot, even if I restart the service from the command line. All other buttons work fine, and all other buttons are keymap commands. The only one that fails is the command-line button.

I'll do some testing of the command execution. However, you can just map the search button to "BTN_MIDDLE" and it will work like the middle button (pasting highlighted text). Or, you can use the revoco functions to set your wheel to a different mode. Then you can actually use your wheel click like on normal mice.

EDIT: it seems that you got it working. It was apparently an issue with user permissions on X.

[daou]

Good to hear...It would be good to have a list of standard keyboard shortcuts so we can program our mouses.

I posted a few months ago on this thread asking people to submit useful key combos for this purpose. No one submitted any, so no list exists.

[RVDowning]

I'm having almost the same problem. revoco switches to making the scroll wheel the active click-to-click button.
However, there is an obvious bug in btnx-config here.

If you for instance set revoco to manual, save the config, restart btnx, clost btnx-config and then start btnx-config again and go to the revoco tab, it will be set to Free-scroll mode.
This of course means that if you ever fire up btnx-config and change anything without setting the revoco settings _every time_, the revoco settings will be lost.

I don't think that's related to the bug which resets revoco to free scroll or changes the click-to-click button, but it's a bug nonetheless.

That may have been my problem. I may have been starting and stopping btnx as I added more button functionality. I'll just wait to see what happens when I'm back on that machine again this evening.

[RVDowning]

I will fix the revoco issue. The generic distro issue is not dead, don't worry. I'll start working on it tonight, now that my university exams are over.

Oh, ........ and I thought it was a woman interfering. I was going to have to talk to your relationship manager.....

[daou]

Oh, ........ and I thought it was a woman interfering. I was going to have to talk to your relationship manager.....

That and the exams... I barely had time to eat .

[shimoda]

I pulled back the 0.3.3 release (v.0.3.2 is the recommended) because I wasn't sure if it was stable. I am running it myself and it works just fine. I am getting the same "btnx failed to start" at boot. It seems that some process hasn't started during boot that btnx depends on. It's not really a problem (just looks annoying), because it will keep trying until it's possible to start btnx. However, I will be working to fix it soon.

ok, thanks for your answer!