Synaptics Gets Predictable Motion, Smooth Scrolling

Posted by Michael Larabel on June 09, 2011

Last week there was the release of a set of patches for X.Org that implement smooth-scrolling support for the X Server. These patches were released by Daniel Stone and today he's now released a set of patches that target the X.Org Synaptics input driver for implementing smooth scrolling, predictable motion, and better acceleration.

For the past several months at Collabora, Daniel has been working on Chromium OS related matters for Google. It turns out that this new input work was done for the Google operating system and is now being released freely for mainline inclusion.

These patches try to make motion as predictable as possible by using hardware time, motion estimation, a better acceleration function, improved palm detection, smooth scrolling, and support for removing erroneous motion using strict filters. This work is applicable to all Synaptics hardware.

There's also a second part of work to the xf86-input-synaptics driver that is said to be more invasive, but he hasn't commented on that work as of yet.

More information can be found in this mailing list message.

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