USB mouse config, console & X, micro HOWTO

[sd]

I thought I would post the end results of my own struggle to get my 
USB trackball working as I prefer it to work, for the archives and 
for the benefit of anyone else struggling with this issue, 
although my particular configuration may be more, or less, 
relevant to someone else's hardware and preferences.

Hardware
--------
USB trackball with left button, right button, and two small "scroll 
buttons" (one for "up" and one for "down"). It is a Logitech 
Marble Mouse USB (an optical trackball), and I really like the 
feel of it.

What I wanted the mouse to do
-----------------------------
It has only two primary buttons (buttons 1 (left) and 3 (right) and 
no middle button (button 2)), so I wanted to enable "middle-button 
emulation" so that when I pressed the left and right buttons 
simultaneously, it would be as though I had pressed a middle 
button (to do a "paste" function, for example).

In addition, I wanted to use the mouse, somehow, to scroll the 
contents of windows when I was in the X environment (I use KDE).

How I achieved my goals
-----------------------
Here are the relevant exerpts from my /etc/rc.conf and /usr/X11R6/
lib/X11/XF86Config  files --

--- begin excerpt, /etc/rc.conf ---
moused_enable="YES"
moused_port="/dev/ums0"
moused_type="auto"
moused_flags="-p /dev/ums0 -3 -w4"
--- end excerpt, /etc/rc.conf ---

--- begin excerpt, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config ---
Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Mouse0"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "Protocol" "auto"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"
#       Option      "Emulate3Buttons"
#       Option      "Emulate3Timeout" "50"
#       Option      "Buttons" "5"
        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
--- end excerpt, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config ---

Commentary
----------
In /etc/rc.conf I have the mouse port specified twice, using both 
'moused_port="/dev/ums0"' and the '-p /dev/ums0' option of moused, 
the mouse daemon. For some reason I don't understand, I had to 
have both of those, in order for the mouse to work as I wanted it 
to in the console as well as in X.

In a console, the left button of my trackball selects a starting 
point (which can be extended by dragging), the right button when 
clicked defines the end of a selection, and pressing both buttons 
at once pastes the selection into the text entry area. The two 
scroll buttons don't do anything in the console.

In X (in KDE, in my case), the left and right buttons each act as 
they are configured to do, pressing both simultaneously pastes a 
selection, and pressing the small left scroll button (which is 
button 4 of 5, the 2nd button being the virtual middle button 
accessed by pressing both buttons 1 and 3)--anyway, pressing the 
small left scroll button and then moving the mouse (the trackball 
in my case) up or down while the left-scroll button is kept 
depressed, causes the contents of a window to scroll up or down.

This behavior is achieved by setting options to moused in /etc/
rc.conf. Notice that in the XF86Config file the options for 
emulating 3 buttons are commented out--are not active. The 
important options in XF86Config are the "Protocol" "auto", 
"Device" "/dev/sysmouse", and "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

The "ZAxisMapping" option was necessary in my XF86Config, even 
though I specified in /etc/rc.conf that the moused was to report 
Z-axis movement whenever it received Y-axis movement of the mouse 
or trackball, by using the -w4 (wheel mode) option for moused in
/etc/rc.conf. The -w option with the "4" argument (specified either 
as -w4 or -w 4) tells the mouse daemon to substitute Z-axis 
movement for Y-axis movement whenever the 4th button is pressed 
and held down while the mouse is moved. This has no effect in the 
console (that I can see, other than appearing to "freeze" the 
mouse cursor while the 4th button is depressed), but in X it 
causes the contents of a window to scroll, IF the XF86Config file 
is also edited to have the line:

        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

as indicated above.

The -3 option for moused in /etc/rc.conf is what causes 3-button 
emulation to occur, which means that the moused reports that (a 
nonexistent) button 2 has been pressed whenever buttons 1 and 3 
are pressed simultaneously. Because X gets this information from 
moused, it does not need to do the 3-button emulation itself, 
which is why those options are "commented out" in my XF86Config 
file.


Best wishes,
Steve D, NM US

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Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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