IDEA: Chiral motion.

[palmuser]

Hi, I have a request.
I used to have a laptop with synaptics touchpad, and there you can "draw circles" to scroll.

But now I have a laptop with ALPS touchpad, and I can use two fingers to scroll, but after I run out of space on the touchpad, I have to move the fingers back to the top and start again. Apparently any ALPS driver have the "chiral" option.
I missed the chiral motion, I could keep my finger "circling", no need to move it from the bottom to the top.
I have not find a solution. And found a site where somebody said:
Chiral motion is the best invention since sliced bread

Can anybody help me?
Thanks.
Oscar.

[IainB]

I have a similar requirement. I am accustomed to using a Synaptics Touchpad, but now have a laptop with an ELAN Touchpad and the dunderheads who designed the software apparently haven't coded in the chiral scrolling feature.
For me, the single biggest reason for liking the Synaptics touchpad was chiral scrolling. It is definitely not what one would necessarily intuitively wish for, but it proves to be ergonomically superb (e.g., for RSI sufferers), once one has made the effort to change and learned how to use it. I sorely miss it with this ruddy ELAN Touchpad.   

[Shades]

Caveat: I do not own a laptop and seriously dislike the concept behind the touchpad. Somehow, I always had less issues using the "nipple" on a laptop.

Given the info that I encountered about this subject, I get the impression that Windows 10 has a driver support problem regarding chiral scrolling in general and that it appears to be an synaptics-only feature.

Possible fix for chiral scrolling on Synaptic touchpad in Win 10:
    Navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTPCpl\Controls\03TabScroll\
    Find the items 4OneFEdgeScrollChiralInfoText and 4OneFEdgeScrollChiralCheckBox
    Change the Visibility key of both from 4 to 0
    Open the control panel, go to scroll tab and the option should be available again.

Possible fix for chiral scrolling on ELAN touchpad in Win 10:
    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Elantech\SmartPadDisplay]
    "EdgeScroll_Display"=dword:00000001
    Open the control panel, go to scroll tab and the option should be available again.

For ALPS touchpads, barely any info came up during my searches.
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Alps\Apoint
    Look for: ScrMethod
    Set the Hex value to 1 and reboot


There are several sites making the recommendation to replace the synaptic driver from Windows 10 with this one: synaptics_v10.2.4.0_allOS_modded_b2.zip (Google that file name to find download links).
Or you can go an even trickier route an replace the current driver for your touchpad with a driver intended for an earlier version of Windows (7 would be the best version to start with). And you might even consider to use the driver from a different laptop manufacturer (after you checked they used the same model of your particular touchpad).

Tool that might make your Synaptics touchpad more bearable again, in case you don't want to mess around with driver software:
- Two-Finger-Scroll

[IainB]

@Shades:

Possible fix for chiral scrolling on ELAN touchpad in Win 10:
    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Elantech\SmartPadDisplay]
    "EdgeScroll_Display"=dword:00000001
    Open the control panel, go to scroll tab and the option should be available again.

-Shades (August 11, 2019, 05:46 PM)

Thanks for the tip, but that D-Word was already set to 1 in my case. So, no joy. (Sigh.)

[palmuser]

Hi. I finally solved my problem.
But probably this solution only works for Dell Lattitude E6420.

I tried the following driver: (My laptop has win 8.1)
Windows 7 Dell Latitude E6420 XFR ALPS Touchpad Driver 7.1208.101.116 for Windows 7 64-bit download

From the site: drivers.windows7download  (if this is considered spamming, please remove the site name)

And now it is working!

Thanks to the persons that gave their suggestions on this forum.

Note: when I was installing the driver, it said it was older than the installed.

Thanks.

[rjbull]

Have you considered trying a Trackball^w?

[IainB]

@rjbull:

Have you considered trying a Trackball^w?

-rjbull (June 28, 2020, 04:02 PM)

Good point, but in my case I used a clip-on side trackball years ago and, though I found it was an improvement (ergonomically) over the central little joystick in the middle of the keyboard, I found chiral scrolling to be ergonomically a vast improvement. I think they may still use trackballs in military applications though, as - again ergonomically - they were regarded as being more accurate/precise in use (e.g., rapidly targeting crosshairs on a ship for ship-to-ship missile launch where there are lots of ships clustered in the radar display).
Nowadays, I suppose they'd probably use a touch-sensitive (or aware) display screen.