I'm going through libinput source and it mentions clickpads at some places. I've a laptop with a touchpad and I've never used a clickpad before. Can anyone explain how a clickpad works, what are the basic mechanics?(from a user POV) For example, left middle and right clicks, scrolls etc. I've searched on net and haven't found anything relating to that matter.
1 Answer
Generally, a laptop "clickpad" is a touchpad with no visible physical buttons. Instead, the entire touchpad itself can be pressed down as a button.
Often, painted lines indicate designated 'button' areas (like this). Depending on which area you were pressing, libinput will recognize it as a left/right click. This is mostly software-defined – libinput itself can decide to e.g. add a middle-click area if it wants to.
(Except for Apple products, which don't use reserved 'button' areas at all – click type just depends on how many fingers you were pressing. Libinput can work in both modes.)
When not pressing down to click, the same areas still work like a regular, large touchpad (although libinput adds some filtering to prevent accidentally moving the cursor when trying to click).
All touch-only gestures – tap-to-click, scrolling – are the same as in regular touchpads.
