Add two-finger scrolling/two-finger tapping to Touchpad options

[Tim Hull]

Binary package hint: gnome-control-center

I did notice that options for touchpad tapping, vertical scrolling, and horizontal scrolling are now included in the Mouse preferences.
This is definitely a great improvement over having to configure these options in xorg.conf - hardly a trivial task for new Windows converts.

However, there are still a few options that can't be configured from here that would be incredibly helpful to have here.
The particular options I am referring to are:

* Sensitivity options - this is one of the things Walt Mossberg complained about in his Ubuntu review...
* 1/2/3 finger tap - allow these to be assigned to right, middle, or left click as the user wishes
* two-finger scrolling - this is what Macs use by default, and the synaptics driver allows for this.
* circular scrolling - also available through Synaptics driver
* corner taps - these are quite useful on my MacBook, as I errantly tap a lot but still want an actual button for right-click

Also, it may be a good idea to use Mac-like defaults for appletouch touchpads and Windows-like defaults on all other touchpads - that way, everything behaves as the user expects it to (in most cases)...

[Benjamin (tibasic-forever)]

I agree this would be an awesome option to have on Ubuntu. There seem to be some bugs with the current two finger scrolling though and may need to be worked out first.

However, I don't agree about making it default depending on the machine.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Indeed would be good to have this option specially since i'm using a macbook and i have to modified the xorg.conf file each time, marking it as triaged, thanks.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

I plan to work on this for Jaunty, and might just slip it in for Intrepid if things go well.

[David Prieto (frandavid100-gmail)]

I was about to open a very similar request.

[Stefano Rivera (stefanor)]

This appears to have been done in Karmic, but there isn't an option to switch between the two.

As an Ubuntu-on-mac user, I'm now being driven nuts by having my touchpad configuration different to what I'm used to (and different to my other machines)

[Brian Rogers (brian-rogers)]

Some options are there now in System -> Preferences -> Mouse, in the Touchpad tab.

There's the option to disable the touchpad while typing, and to enable tap-clicks. For scrolling, we have disabled, edge scrolling, and two-finger scrolling, plus a checkbox for horizontal scrolling. If tap-clicking is on, then two-finger taps perform right clicks and three-finger taps perform middle clicks.

Though there's currently no way to change what two and three finger taps do, nor are there corner tap or circular scrolling settings, and there's no touchpad-specific sensitivity setting either.

[lsutiger (judelandry2002)]

In 9.04 and past distributions of Ubuntu, a two finger tap was equivalent to a middle click. Now it has changed to a three finger click? Why the change?

[Sebastian (sebastianhaselbeck)]

2 finger scrolling works in 14.10

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

There is a switch to enable two-finger scrolling for the touchpad in the Settings app in Ubuntu 17.10 (which will be released later this month).

If you have other issues, please open separate bugs for each issue.