[NBLUG/talk] Gaining the full benefits of a 5-button mouse?

Kyle Rankin kyle at nblug.org
Mon Jan 12 08:37:00 PST 2004


On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 07:50:19PM -0800, Lincoln Peters wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 19:26, E Frank Ball wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 06:41:13PM -0800, Lincoln Peters wrote:
> > } I just upgraded to a 5-button mouse on my Debian box.  So far, I can use
> > } the left, right, and whell buttons normally and without any difficulty,
> > } but I can't figure out how to configure the two extra buttons.  It seems
> > 
> > What window manager are you using?  It's likely configured there.
> 
> I'm using Sawfish (the default window manager in GNOME 2.4), and it
> looks like the Sawfish Configurator controls this in the "Bindings"
> tab.  However, it looks like something has already mapped these buttons
> so that Button 4 is treated as Button 2 (the middle button), and Button
> 5 is treated as Button 3 (the right button).
> 
> I think I traced the problem to the XFree86 configuration and fixed it,
> but I'll have to log out and log back in to be sure that it works.  And
> that can be somewhat disruptive to my work flow when I'm running a lot
> of programs.  I'll report back as soon as I get a chance to try it.
> 
> -- 
> Lincoln Peters <sampln at sbcglobal.net>
> 

For 5-button mice, you usually need to set your Protocol in your XF86Config
to "ExplorerPS/2".  In fact, here's the InputDevice config for my
Intellimouse Explorer:

   Section "InputDevice"

      Identifier "Mouse1"
      Driver  "mouse"
      Option "Protocol"    "ExplorerPS/2"
      Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
      Option "Buttons" "7"
      Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
      Option "SampleRate" "400"


   EndSection

Now, your mouse might be slightly different from mine, mine ended up
mapping the scroll wheel to 6 and 7, which isn't exactly what I wanted, so
I had to use xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5" to get it all arranged
properly (I put it in my .xinitrc so it'd start at boot, you might have to
do something different to get it to start at boot if you have to do this).

Also, a window manager agnostic solution to bind those extra buttons is a
tool called imwheel that you should have with your distribution.  It lets
you configure events to occur on a per-application basis either due to your
scroll wheel or your thumb buttons (I used to use it so that Mozilla would
go back with one thumb button and forward with the other one). 

Oh, and the thumb buttons should work out of box in Quake 3 :)

-- 
Kyle Rankin
NBLUG President
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org
IRC: greenfly at irc.freenode.net #nblug 
kyle at nblug.org



More information about the talk mailing list