t440-support.dox

/**
@page t440_support Lenovo *40 series touchpad support

The Lenovo *40 series emulates trackstick buttons on the top part of the
touchpads.

@section t440_support_overview Overview

The Lenovo *40 series introduced a new type of touchpad. Previously, all
laptops had a separate set of physical buttons for the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick">trackstick</a>. This
series removed these buttons, relying on a software emulation of the top
section of the touchpad. This is visually marked on the trackpad itself,
and clicks can be triggered by pressing the touchpad down with a finger in
the respective area:

@image html top-software-buttons.svg "Left, right and middle-button click with top software button areas"

This page only covers the top software buttons, the bottom button behavior
is covered in @ref clickpad_softbuttons "Clickpad software buttons".

Clickpads with a top button area are marked with the <a
href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/input/event-codes.txt">INPUT_PROP_TOPBUTTONPAD</a>
property.

@section t440_support_btn_size Size of the buttons

The size of the buttons matches the visual markings on this touchpad.
The width of the left and right buttons is approximately 42% of the
touchpad's width, the middle button is centered and assigned 16% of the
touchpad width.

The line of the buttons is 5mm from the top edge of the touchpad,
measurements of button presses showed that the size of the buttons needs to
be approximately 10mm high to work reliable (especially when using the
thumb to press the button).

@section t440_support_btn_behavior Button behavior

Movement in the top button area does not generate pointer movement. These
buttons are not replacement buttons for the bottom button area but have
their own behavior. Semantically attached to the trackstick device, libinput
re-routes events from these buttons to appear through the trackstick device.

@dot
digraph top_button_routing
{
	rankdir="LR";
	node [shape="box";]

	trackstick [label="trackstick kernel device"];
	touchpad [label="touchpad kernel device"];

	subgraph cluster0 {
		bgcolor = floralwhite
		label = "libinput"

		libinput_ts [label="trackstick libinput_device"
			     style=filled
			     fillcolor=white];
		libinput_tp [label="touchpad libinput_device"
			     style=filled
			     fillcolor=white];

		libinput_tp -> libinput_ts [constraint=false
					    color="red4"];
	}

	trackstick -> libinput_ts [arrowhead="none"]
	touchpad -> libinput_tp [color="red4"]

	events_tp [label="other touchpad events"];
	events_topbutton [label="top sofware button events"];

	libinput_tp -> events_tp [arrowhead="none"]
	libinput_ts -> events_topbutton [color="red4"]
}
@enddot


The top button areas work even if the touchpad is disabled but will be
disabled when the trackstick device is disabled. If the finger starts inside
the top area and moves outside the button area the finger is treated as dead
and must be lifted to generate future buttons.  Likewise, movement into the
top button area does not trigger button events, a click has to start inside
this area to take effect.

@section t440_support_identification Kernel support

The firmware on the first generation of touchpads providing top software
buttons is buggy and announces wrong ranges.
<a href="https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/3/7/722">Kernel patches</a> are required;
these fixes are available in kernels 3.14.1, 3.15 and later but each
touchpad needs a separate fix.

The October 2014 refresh of these laptops do not have this firmware bug
anymore and should work without per-device patches, though
<a href="https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=02e07492cdfae9c86e3bd21c0beec88dbcc1e9e8">this kernel commit</a> is required.

For a complete list of supported touchpads check <a
href="https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/input/mouse/synaptics.c">the
kernel source</a> (search for "topbuttonpad_pnp_ids").

*/