Toshiba Portege M400: Getting the "multi-function" button (thumbstick) working

Support & Help Requests Hardware
#1

Hello to all.

I have a small collection of Toshiba Portege M400 pen-tablet laptops and am currently working toward getting all tablet-related functions working as expected. The majority of these haven’t been a problem – the tablet itself is a Wacom serial type and worked out of the box, and handling screen rotation was achieved by mapping a button to a script – but there’s one function button I haven’t been able to get working yet: the “multi-function” button, which is a thumstick/joystick on the bottom of the screen bezel.

What I’d like to be able to do is get this emulate a mouse so that moving the stick moves the mouse pointer, and depressing/clicking the button itself acts as a left-click or enter. The problem is that each movement of the stick is regarded by the OS as a two-key combination: either Super_R+[a number key] when checking through xev, or Mod4+[a number key] in the Keyboard Shortcuts control panel. I have no idea how to map those key combos to “mouse pointer up”, “mouse pointer left”, etc. Anyone have any experience in this arena?

Thanks. :slight_smile:

#2

While I have no experience myself, you might want to check out something called xmodmap to change what that action does.

#3

I’ve been playing around with xmodmap and it doesn’t appear to provide a solution. Due to the way the OS interprets the keystroke combination generated by the thumbstick, I can’t seem to map it to any mouse pointer actions (or the keyboard’s standard up-down-left-right keys) without either getting no results at all, or screwing up some other keyboard input – the top-row 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 keys most specifically.

Oh well… it’s more of a nice-to-have thing than something critical, so I’m not too put out by leaving it as it stands.