Comment 65 for bug 296610

Sebastian,

Your patch gets us most of the way there. There's still a minor problem, apparently with the mouse buttons. They can occasionally get stuck in a "pressed" state.

To reproduce, in Ubuntu (Gnome):
1) Press and hold the touchpad's left mouse button while the pointer is on the desktop (or anywhere in Nautilus).
2) Drag with the trackpoint (the stick).
3) Stop dragging with the trackpoint.
4) Release the touchpad's left mouse button.
5) Notice that the computer still thinks that the left mouse button is down. This behavior continues until you initiate an event (movement or buttons) with the trackpoint.

The inverse works, too (using the trackpoint's buttons and the touchpad for dragging.)

I believe this happens because the button state for each device is independent. Back when I was using someone else's patch, I fixed this by setting the button state for both devices any time the state for one of them changed. I don't think that's an unreasonable design, as I can't imagine a time when you'd really want to track them separately. Could you add this to your patch?

Incidentally, the Windows driver seems to handle the issue by disabling the touchpad and touchpad buttons any time it is processing events from the trackpoint. I'm not sure that's desirable, but it is likely the way that the manufacturer intended for the device to be used.