Slashdot Mirror
It's Time For Laptop Companies To Switch To Precision Touchpad (arstechnica.com)
A new Windows 10 insider build (version 14946) comes with a new interface for configuring touchpad gestures. In the recent months, Microsoft has also improved the detection of two-finger gestures and clicking on Windows 10, and also added new four-finger gestures. These are welcome changes, and something that many would find useful. Except they won't because their computers likely don't comply with Precision Touchpad spec. ArsTechnica has an opinion piece today in which journalist Peter Bright is calling on all the OEMs to do the needful changes moving forward. From the article: Precision Touchpad made its debut with Windows 8. Co-developed between Microsoft and touchpad company Synaptics, the spec changed how Windows works with touchpads. Traditionally, touchpads masqueraded to Windows as essentially USB- or PS/2-connected mice -- simple two-dimension, single-input devices. Features such as multitouch and gestures were handled by a combination of the touchpad firmware and proprietary drivers. This meant that Windows itself had no ability to add new gestures or refine the finger-detection algorithms; it was all an opaque feature of the third-party drivers. With Precision Touchpad, the raw touchpad input is exposed to Windows itself, allowing the operating system to choose how it handles the complex multi-finger inputs. The gestures, the disambiguation of taps and swipes -- these are all now performed by Windows, not a third-party driver. Unfortunately, many PC OEMs haven't been equipping their laptops with Precision Touchpads. As such, they can't take advantage of the new Windows capabilities. As far as we can tell, it would normally be straightforward for an OEM to make the switch; touchpads from Synaptics, for example, can work as both Precision Touchpads and "legacy" mouse-emulating touchpads that use the Synaptics driver. It's just up to the OEM to pick one option or the other.
Macs have had this distinct advantage over Windows-intended laptops for a long time. Dell, Lenovo, I'm looking at you...y'all trackpads SUCK.
Honestly, I have a $150 chromebook that has a trackpad that is 100x better than all 3 of my $1k+ Windows laptops. Not having proper support in Windows has driven a lot of that, so it's Microsoft's fault. But also, the drivers that implemented these gestures made by the touchpad companies sucked.
This is just another example that if you leave it to OEMs, they basically suck at everything. Microsoft, Google, etc are all learning that they need to drive the bus here, because otherwise the OEMs find ways to cut costs, even on their highest end laptops, and as a result we are getting a lot better hardware here.
You will not find these words in TFA.
Generic PS/2 is the pinnacle of keyboard/mouse interfaces.
When I used windows enabled laptops I was never able to use a touchpad or clit, I just couldn't. I always carry a mouse with me. Then I changed to a MacBook and I learned to use their touchpad. I though it was of necessity that I learned, but recently I had to use a Windows laptop touchpad and figured out that the problem wasn't me but the touchpads. Will this make Windows laptop Touchpads similar to Apple's?
I'd never really given a thought as to _why_ Synaptics and friends required their touchpads to have a full-blown application and a driver installed to have full gesture functionality...but I do know it's another pain in the butt step that has to be automated when a laptop is deployed in order to have a common Windows image. I didn't even know there was a standard. Now I know why - you learn something new every day.
Microsoft does have info on how to implement their standard here but I wonder if Linux hardware drivers can implement the same spec, or if there will always be a "legacy fallback mode" so the touchpad can be used in situations like navigating the UEFI, which has gotten very GUI-like lately.
Hear, hear! It's about time we got support for more and fancier trackpad gestures! I wholeheartedly appr--
[Accidentally scrolls the Slashdot comment interface off the screen due to an errant flick of the trackpad.]
[In a reflexive effort to correct that mistake, changes browser zoom level to 350%.]
[Panics, begins to flail, accidentally submits the comment as is, and somehow manages to open four Outlook windows and MS Paint.]
I turn off all the gesture and scroll support. All I want is a mouse interface and hardware buttons, anything else is too annoying.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
It's time to ditch touchpads entirely and switch to trackpoints. As a graphic designer I am more accurate with a trackpoint than a conventional mouse. I would buy a non-lenovo in a heartbeat if they started licensing their trackpoint technology to other companies (and not a shitty implementation like the dell version of it that appears every few years).
Are they talking about RMI4-protocol connected touchpads?
If so, you can learn a lot of details of their working from libinput's developer blog: http://who-t.blogspot.com/
:wq
"Our old API was shit and didn't take account that touchpads existed, thus forcing mouse emulation and proprietary third-party drivers that don't work on anything else.
After 20 YEARS of laptops having touchpads, we've exposed the underlying data of the devices in question and made it an API that will fuck up the second "3D touchpads" or whatever come along.
Despite having had touchscreens for all that time too, and smartphones for much of it (with capacitative screens, hover, etc.) and entire other OS being designed to take account of those kinds of input devices as the primary input."
And they're supposed to get congratulations for this?
You can also guarantee that the API will be incomplete or difficult to manage, or not backward-compatible breaking all your old laptops, thus still ending up with third-party junk to do the job for us that doesn't work for any other manufacturer.
I'm STILL waiting for the day when the whole keyboard surface is flat-but-springy (like, oh my god, a touchscreen!) so you can type on it, hold a pen on it, or use it as a giant trackpad in the keyboard layout of your choice (numpad or trackpad? Trackpad below and center or off to one side? etc.).
Tech moves SO SLOWLY in this regard until someone spots it after many years and puts out a mass-market device like that and everyone goes "at fucking last".
Oh Jesus, has that become an official part of the English language now?
Microsoft OSes for example were able to detect three finger gestures since 1981.
So basically, stop buying cheap ass bargin basement Windows laptops and get a Mac? Thats what you're saying?
No, it's worse! The touchpad hardware in those trackpad is probably fine, but the drivers or interface hardware probably isn't. If they just upped to this new API Microsoft has in Windows, the trackpads can suck less.
(Most Windows laptops have smaller trackpads than Macs, which hurts, but that can be fixed.)
How about we *don't* have a flamewar?
It's completely pointless and unnecessary. Macs, Windows PCs and Linux PCs all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and it all boils down to what you need it for.
I personally prefer OS X, because it very closely matches to what I want to do. For others, Windows is a better fit. Ditto for Linux.
All platforms have strengths and weaknesses, and it's silly to castigate a platform for some particular weakness when your own preferred platform has weaknesses of it's own.
Please to kindly do the needful, propone the upgradation, and synergize the efficiencies. If necessary, revert the updation and intimate me on the situation.
Seriously... who EVER thought adding all the touchscreen phone gestures to a touchpad was a good idea?
Oh, yeah, Apple. Who's trying to move everyone to just using their mobile OS entirely for years now, and succeeding.
All I want a touchpad to do is move the cursor on-screen, and possibly support two-finger scrolling.
And ESPECIALLY stop with the god-damn Tap To Click, and stop with turning off the god-damn thing if I hit a key in the last second by default. No. Fuck you! Put real buttons so I can actually click with PRECISION if you want to talk about precise movements, then you don't need cockamamie bullshit like disabling it when typing to avoid the wrong gesture, you dumbfucks.
To be usefully close to use they're by definition too close to the keyboard to avoid errant touches, which means all these added gestures? They get triggered by accident if they don't go the 'no touchpad if you touched a key' route. And that makes the device as a whole LESS useful than one with far fewer gestures that can be enabled 24/7.
- WolfWings, too lazy to reset his password, but still here on /. from time to time!
Don't make it about Mac.
Tout it as Apple being a damn good Hardware company.
Everyone talks about multitouch and all....where Windows 10 is concerned I have but one single finger gesture...
I've watched most users with multi-touch devices. They almost NEVER use the features. Why? Because pointing and pressing is so goddamned easy.
Get with the times. the most I see people use multi-touch is pinch/spread to zoom. Rarely do I even find a use for more than that.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
the trackpad on my lenovo is near useless in windows 10. it locks up, refuses to point, tapping has unpredictable results. i've reinstalled the driver many times with no improvement.
oddly, the touchpad will lock up, while the trackpoint works with no issues.
The real problem is the touchpad hardware. The touchpad device itself may not be able to accurately track three or four fingers, and there isn't a thing the operating system can do to fix it. I've noticed this on chromebooks, in particular when I ported the touchpad driver for the Acer C720. The hardware gets very confused if you put more than two fingers down on the pad horizontally (or you cross them horizontally while you slide your fingers around).
It basically makes using more than two fingers very unreliable. My presumption is that a lot of laptops out there with these pads probably have the same hardware limitations.
-Matt
I personally prefer OS X, because it very closely matches to what I want to do.
You want to sit and look cool in your turtle-neck with your Cappuccino in the coffee shop that's way too expensive for me?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Factually wrong.
No, not any touchpad supports multi-touch. It's implemented in the sensor interface IC (which itself is likely a small pre-programmed microcontroller on an ASIC), which usually communicates with the CPU over a SPI or USB bus. Drivers (in the OS) aren't going to help with it. You can see this in Linux already: in KDE, for instance, certain touchpad features will be enabled or disabled depending on your hardware. Basically, older hardware doesn't support multi-finger touch, or it can't detect as many simultaneous fingers as the newest stuff.
No, it's worse! The touchpad hardware in those trackpad is probably fine
No, the hardware probably isn't fine; i have a fairly new thinkpad and it has this wretched spring loaded trackpad that's a nightmare to try to use.
So you're comparing a $700 system to a $2500 system and we're supposed to express shock that the touchpad is better? That's a pretty high tax for a trackpad, which is inefficient at best.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Glad to see someone's already covered Fingerworks. I'm still sore at Apple, though, for shutting them down and sitting on so much of their gestural vocabulary. My TouchStream keyboard let my wrist RSI heal, and I still miss it (it eventually failed after a number of years). If I could buy another, with support, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I see a lot of people here complaining that "trackpads suck" and "gestures suck" and "tapping sucks", because (apparently) their trackpads suck. I'm totally happy with my Macbook Pro's trackpad, with one push-to-click surface, which I only use for dragging; taps for everything else. But, yes, using the trackpad on an HP laptop was physically painful.
Fingerworks did a remarkable job of getting gestural and zero-force input right. Apple didn't completely ruin it when they bought out the technology. It would take a lot to independently engineer a system that works as well, but if anybody has the resources to do it, it's probably Microsoft.
Mod this up. On my home laptop which is on PC-BSD, it doesn't recognize the touchpad, and I'm better off for it - just use the good ole mouse
In Windows 8, typing was woeful due to this issue that you mention, and also the hot corner on the right. Somewhat better in 10, but I still agree w/ you. But if you are using Windows, you could make do w/ Touchfreeze
640x480 should be enough for anybody!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
for Windows 10.
And when they do ship with an SSD it's some 128 gibibyte sandisk piece of shit with no TRIM and a life expectancy of a fortnight.
You want to sit and look cool in your turtle-neck with your Cappuccino in the coffee shop that's way too expensive for me?
Pfft. Cappuccinos were so last year. I drink hipster coffees that don't even have a name yet.
Everyone talks about multitouch and all....where Windows 10 is concerned I have but one single finger gesture...
It's probably for the international market. For example, here in the UK, two finger gestures are often used in connection with MS products.
That has a Precision Touchpad in it with the secondary advantage that every once in a blue moon, a Windows update includes a firmware update for the TypeCover. And I have been impressed to see that Windows updates have improved the touch responsiveness over time and now I know why.
And the TypeCover is also a better keyboard than Apple put in their Mac Book Pros (work PC).
"Seriously... who EVER thought adding all the touchscreen phone gestures to a touchpad was a good idea? Oh, yeah, Apple. "
I am unimpressed by people trying to blame Apple for forcing features they don't like into other products when those other products did it first. There have been gestures on track pads since before there were any iPhones. How can Apple be responsible for forcing a feature from iOS to non-Apple products before there was an iOS?
I am a simple man. A touchpad from ten years ago can fit my needs - left button, right button, edge scrolling. I do like the "chiral scrolling" as well, but that's a bonus. These are all provided with every Synaptics touchpad ever, and Synaptics even awesomely has a driver right on their website that'll handle basically every touchpad you install it on. They have enable/disable/optimization controls for every gesture control available, as well as tutorials on how to use them. It's great. I can't speak highly enough about them. I only realized that there were worse touchpads because I'd been spoiled by getting Synaptics touchpads on my laptops for years, and boy was that lucky.
Alps touchpads aren't too bad either, but that entirely depends on whether you get a Dell branded driver or not. Alps drivers are pretty feature complete, but when they're rebadged as Dell, it's luck of the draw whether there's useful stuff or not. Literally, there are Dell touchpad drivers that don't allow the disabling of tap-to-click.
The ones I can't stand are the touchpads with the "virtual buttons", and HP I'm looking squarely at you. May the lovechild of Carly Fiorina and Leo Apotheker be sentenced to use one of those atrocities until the end of time. They think you click when you don't, and they invariably end up with a slight mouse movement when you do actually click. It's nearly impossible to get an exact location clicked without a mouse on those stupid things, and the drivers for them don't do much to compensate.
The somebody-hates-you company when it comes to touchpad, though, is Sentelic. I returned a $3,100 Origin laptop because the touchpad was THAT bad. I attempted to use the multi-touch features, but it was terrible at its ability to discern exactly how many fingers were on the pad. The PalmCheck discernment was abhorrent, and the button placement was such that I was right-clicking when I typed because I'd hit the button. The drivers were a year old when I got the laptop, and good luck finding Sentelic online. It was the worst touchpad experience I've ever had.
So yes, Windows providing a standardized interface is a godsend for people who have Sentelic touchpads or the crappy Dell drivers on the Alps ones. I do hope that Precision is able to be overridden by my Synaptics drivers though, because I'll take them over the Windows implementation any day.
So Windows finally arrives at the point my Mac reached in 2008?
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
I can think of a particularly appropriate one that supposedly dates back to the days of knights and longbows.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's time for laptops, notebooks, phones, desktops, and anything else that needs to be trusted or taken seriously to switch to ECC RAM. As memories get cheaper, larger in total and smaller in geometry, and especially when people use devices at 35,000 feet, there is no excuse for everything (executable code and the content) to be untrustworthy.