Comment 17 for bug 489830

jilgoosbee, are you able to use the XF86TouchpadToggle (FN+F8) when using gpoining-device-settings? Are you able to disable the trackpad in gpointing-device-settings and have the setting persist?

gpointing-device-settings and gnome-mouse-properties (Gnome's default mouse preferences app) have 2 different methods/gconf keys they use for disabling scrolling or the touchpad. gpointing-device-settings uses /desktop/gnome/peripherals/SynPS@47@2@32@Synaptics@32@TouchPad/off , which can be set as 0 for On with tapping and scrolling, 1 with tapping and scrolling disabled and 2 with the entire touchpad disabled. gpointing-device-settings also has separate keys for toggling vertical/horizontal scrolling and tapping. | gnome-mouse-properties uses /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/touchpad_enabled to disable the touchpad (which I assume is bound to XF86TouchpadToggle because there is no option to disable the touchpad in gnome-mouse-properties). It also has its own separate keys for toggling scrolling/tapping.

How can these conflicting settings be reconciled? Is this really what these "priorities" settings at /apps/gnome_settings_daemon/plugins are meant to do? If so, it seems it only happens at load-time, but gnome-mouse-properties tries to reassert control over these functions at certain times.