[GLLUG] mouse wheel

[Matt Graham]

On Monday 31 March 2003 16:13, after a long battle with technology, 
Dylan M. wrote:
> hrm, how do you get the mouse wheel to work?
>
> 1) mouse drivers
> 2) XFree86

"mouse drivers" are a difficult thing to look at since there are 
actually 2 of them:  The kernel-level modules responsible for 
interpreting the raw data from the hardware, and the XFree86 mouse 
protocol handlers.  You don't want to fool around with the kernel-level 
modules; there are only 2 of these that are really important, the 
module for the PS/2 port (typically compiled directly in), and the 
module for USB Human Interface Devices (called hid, "modprobe hid".)

The XFree86 protocol handlers are probably what you want to look at.  
These are defined/used in /etc/X11/XF86Config like so:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "USBMouse"
        Driver          "mouse"
# protocol handler defined below, most USB mice use the IMPS/2 protocol 
# unless they have more than 5 buttons
        Option          "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
        Option          "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
# wheel typically generates events on buttons 4 and 5
        Option          "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5"
        Option          "Buttons" "5"
EndSection

> 3) windows manager

It's doubtful that the window manager does anything special/useful in 
your case.  Which window manager are you using, anyway?

> its a microsoft "Wireless Optical Mouse Blue" (which seems to only
> work well with the "explorer" drivers in X), running on slackware
> 8.1, kernel 2.4.20, XFree86 4.3.0, and blackbox 0.65.0

Aha.  Is this mouse PS/2 or USB?  X 4.3 is still kind of beta; even 
Gentoo is still using X 4.2.1 unless you bang on it.  If it's using the 
explorer/PS2 protocol, that typically means it has more than 5 buttons.  
Does it?  Could you post the relevant section from your 
/etc/X11/XF86Config ?

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