Rotate mouse/cursor axes

[Riceboy004]

I've just discovered the magic of screen rotation and xrandr. My laptop (Asus S5n) is small enough that I can hold it like a book, and subsequently i can read pdf's as if i was reading book. However, it is a little annoying that my touchpad control doesn't change. Holding in book position, "up" on the touchpad translates to "right" on the screen. Is there any way to rotate my touchpad mappings? Preferably without needing to restart xorg, so that I can batch together a rotate-screen command with a rotate-cursor command in a script. Thanks.

[Riceboy004]

(Bump)

[mrpeenut24]

I've also been wondering about this. Anybody know if it's possible?

[popperoga]

Just found a solution to rotate the screen and the touchpad simultaneously. Here the procedure.

1. Enable xrandr
make sure that xrandr is installed:
sudo apt-get install x11-xserver-utils

Add this line to the xorg.conf file

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
	...		...
	Option		"RandRRotation" "true"
EndSection

then rotate the screen with this command:
xrandr -o [right,left,inverted,normal]

2. Patch the synaptic drives and enable touchpad XY flip

The following section has been taken from this website.

Modify the xorg.conf according to this:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
        Option          "SHMConfig"             "true"
EndSection

Install those packages:
sudo apt-get build-dep xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Get official sources:
apt-get source xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Patch and compile the new drivers:
cd xfree86-driver-synaptics-*/
wget http://www.helsinki.fi/~rantalai/synaptics/axis_patch
patch < axis_patch
make

Backup the original drivers
mkdir original_drivers
cp -p /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so original_drivers/
cp -p /usr/bin/synclient original_drivers/

Install the new drivers:
sudo cp synclient /usr/bin/
sudo cp synaptics_drv.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/

Usage:
synclient Xrandr=0
xrandr --orientation normal

synclient Xrandr=1
xrandr --orientation right

synclient Xrandr=2
xrandr --orientation left

synclient Xrandr=3
xrandr --orientation inverted

You can also write a simple script that automatically rotate the screen and the mouse/touchpad. Create with your favourite text editor a file named rotation and copy&paste this:

#!/bin/sh
if   [ $1 = "normal" ] ; then
    synclient Xrandr=0
    xrandr --orientation normal
elif [ $1 = "right" ] ; then
    synclient Xrandr=1
    xrandr --orientation right
elif [ $1 = "left" ] ; then
        synclient Xrandr=2
    xrandr --orientation left
elif [ $1 = "inverted" ] ; then
    synclient Xrandr=3
    xrandr --orientation inverted
else
    echo "rotation [normal,righ,left,inverted]"
fi

Then
chmod +x rotation
sudo cp -p rotation /usr/local/bin/

Hope it works!

[dreamessence]

Hey!
Thanks very much for the post, rotating the cursor is sth i've been meaning to do for a long time, but i didn't have the skills to do it.

I've followed all your steps and yet when i type:
synclient Xrand=1
I get:
Can't access shared memory area. SHMConfig disabled?

But i did change the xorg.config file to allow for the SHMConfig (i.e. I set it true).

Any idea?

Thanks a lot,

]d[

[popperoga]

Try to use this line in the xorg.conf:

Option          "SHMConfig"             "on"

[emunrradtvamg]

[QUOTE=Riceboy004;5939785]I've just discovered the magic of screen rotation and xrandr. My laptop (Asus S5n) is small enough that I can hold it like a book, and subsequently i can read pdf's as if i was reading book. However, it is a little annoying that my touchpad control doesn't change. Holding in book position, "up" on the touchpad translates to "right" on the screen. Is there any way to rotate my touchpad mappings? Preferably without needing to restart xorg, so that I can batch together a rotate-screen command with a rotate-cursor command in a script. Thanks.[/Q