Mouse and Touchpad system settings do not allow touchpad to be disabled while typing

[Ben Weiner]

Description: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Release: 16.04

For Ubuntu users who do not choose to customise their desktop environment, the Mouse & Touchpad system setting is the only way to set up the touchpad as they would like it to be.

This program is missing one significant setting: to disable the touchpad when the user is typing. Disabling the touchpad when the user is typing means: when a user presses a key, any input (a tap, a drag) from the touchpad will be ignored for a preset period. A secondary, and less important, setting would allow the user to vary the period.

There are, or have been before release 16.04, other programs that can be used more or less successfully to set up a touchpad in Ubuntu. Following the upgrade to 16.04 the utility I installed seems to have gone. I can't even remember what it was called, but I could not get it to have any noticeable effect!

This inability to disable the touchpad has affected me ever since I started using Ubuntu on a new laptop in January 2015. On my laptop -- using Ubuntu from release 14.10 to 16.04 -- it has never been possible to disable the trackpad when typing, and I have been suffering in the last few weeks from a repetitive strain injury to the left shoulder which I would blame entirely on the fact that I have to hold my wrists slightly away from the touchpad for the duration of my typing -- typically eight hours a day. I am sure I am not the only one to suffer direct physical health consequences as a result of the shortcomings of the Mouse & Touchpad settings program in Ubuntu. It would be great to prevent other people from suffering in the future.

I am aware that there are some hardware issues surrounding the implementation of the setting, but I think it would be better to face these with a decent requirement spec than to ignore them.

I am writing following some reading around the issue, in particular https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/+bug/1576685?comments=all. Because that bug has been closed, marked Invalid, I think the place to flag up the problem is at the higher level. Please specify this functionality so the coders can fix it properly:-) I can report that the command syndaemon -i 1.0 -K -d does not disable the touchpad when I am typing: it's still in need of a fix.