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I have a Magic Trackpad, it's configured as described here. The following works:

  • 1 finger Tap = Leftclick
  • 2 finger Tap = Rightclick
  • 3 finger Tap = Middleclick
  • 2 finger Drag = Scrolling

But out of curiosity, I'd like to play with PyMT, which comes with a nice multitouch demo (Details: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch/PyMT).

When starting it with "sudo python -m pymt.tools.demo", the PyMT-Window opens but doesn't register/display any multitouching. Actually, it doesn't display anything but a blank window where the touches show show up. I was expecting something like in this Screenshot.

Any ideas where I went wrong or what I didn't correctly understand? :-)

Community
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pableu
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2 Answers2

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Since you've configured your MT to use the synaptics driver, it's working in a kind of "touchpad emulation" mode. My understanding is that the true multitouch and gesture functionality requires the evdev driver, which unfortunately doesn't provide the same basic pointing functions (two-finger scrolling, two and three-finger taps) with the MT at the moment. So for this release, true multitouch gestures and basic pointing functions are mutually exclusive, and we're resorting to synaptics as a temporary measure until evdev catches up.

You can follow multitouch-related happenings by joining the multi-touch-dev mailing list, or visiting the #ubuntu-touch channel on Freenode.

mgunes
  • 9,820
  • Thanks, that clears things up. I didn't realise that you need the evdev-driver for true multitouch :-) – pableu Oct 15 '10 at 08:06
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Please see this to get help and see other resources about MultiTouch in Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch#Community%20Help

There is a detailed guide there for using the Apple MT in Ubuntu, including the PyMT demo wiki - which I have since updated.

MagicFab
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  • Thanks, but I've read quite a lot of stuff in the Ubuntu Wiki before asking my question. I don't think I've come acros a section that said that the MultiTouch-Demos won't work if you use the synaptics-driver. Maybe this could be added to the "Synaptics style functionality" section here? https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch/AppleMagicTrackpad – pableu Oct 25 '10 at 08:22
  • For the information of MacBook( Pro) users, this doesn't apply to MacBook( Pro)s. The synaptics driver (included in -desktop) implements two-finger right-clicks and can be configured for scroll. The non-configurable but quite usable multitouch X input driver from the mactel PPA gains thumb-resting and -dragging and will soon (once released) support back-swiping as well. – A Student at a University Feb 13 '11 at 23:49