If there's a more appropriate forum for this, please move it there.

Hi there. I whipped up a little program in Visual Basic 6 to control the mouse using absolute positioning on Synaptics touchpads. It will appear as a little eye icon in your system tray. This may or may not be more comfortable to use in all of Windows, but if you want to play osu! with a touchpad, you NEED this. It actually works very well. I for one, have it in my Startup. I use the toggle shortcut mentioned below whenever I decide to play osu!.

You can configure the corners of the screen to be mapped to different positions on the touchpad if you want. Just click the buttons on the form, and hit space while your finger is on the position you want.

You can also hold Shift+Ctrl to temporarily disable Absolution, or use Ctrl+Alt+A to toggle it on and off as you will.

Don't know if you have a Synaptics Touchpad? That's easy to find out. Just grab the generic Synaptics driver installer, and run it. It's right here: http://www.synaptics.com/support/drive.cfm

If you have a Synaptics Touchpad, it will install or update the touchpad drivers on your system. But if you don't, then it will tell you so and exit.


A few caveats, though:
- It _will_ take some getting used to, but it's not hard by any means.
- Before using this program with osu!, you must set osu!'s sensitivity to 1.0x. Use an external mouse, or do it before starting SynAbs.
- Before going into standby, right click on the tray icon and disable Absolution. The cursor is unresponsive before logging in if you don't. You can also hit Ctrl+Alt+A before logging off and after logging on, or when you log back in, hit Shift+Ctrl and it will come back.


Without further ado, here's the download link:
http://eternaleon.googlepages.com/SynAbs.zip

I'd be happy to address any problems or add whatever features that I can. I'm not a stellar VB6 programmer by any means, but I'll do my best. Enjoy!


Updates:
10/27 - Vertical scrolling is functional + misc. changes in code
10/29 - Corners can now be redefined; changes saved in an INI file
11/2 - Shift+Ctrl temporary absolution disable + Ctrl+Alt+A absolution toggle hotkey
1/30 - The program now works. I blame it entirely on Vista.

V_v
O_O
^_^
You, good Sir, have just won 5 Internets.

It makes me sad my Sony laptop doesn't use a synaptics touchpad .

I just noticed something: If you set mouse sensitivity at 4, you can use a touchpad combined with this program to get an INSANE amount of bonus points. >:3

What, on spinners? That's frightening. O_O;

Well, in any case, thanks for the compliment. Sorry the program won't work with your laptop, Peppy. Out of curiosity, what kind of drivers does it have?

Update!!!

Vertical scrolling should now be functional. I don't have a horizontal scrollbar, though; if anyone would like to help me get it implemented, PM me and I'll let you know how you can help me.

If vertical scrolling is NOT working for you, let me know, and I will look into it. PM me and I'll let you know how you can help me as well.

Also, if you know how to intercept a standby message in VB 6, so that I can unacquire the device before standby and re-acquire it after, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could share that gem of info.


Simply re-download the program for the update.

Update!

You can now redefine the top left and bottom right corners of the touchpad. Instructions on how to do so are in the about window (just double click the eye). These custom settings will be saved in an INI file named SynAbs.ini.

I still need help getting horizontal scrolling working, and I also need help with the standby thing. If anyone can help, that'd be greatly appreciated.

ARGH. I'm triple posting.

Anyways, this new update adds two useful features for those who want to use SynAbs in everyday Windows use.

1. Shift+Ctrl - Temporary Absolution disable
If you need to be precise anywhere for some reason, and this actually happens a lot, just hold Shift+Ctrl. As long as this key combo is down, the pointer will move in relative motion. Upon releasing it, absolute motion will resume.

2. Ctrl+Alt+A - Toggle Absolution
It's just a useful hotkey shortcut to toggle absolution.

Right now, these features can't be disabled or configured. Next update will add stuff to the about window to configure this.

Hi, I just "borrowed" from work, but got this message when opening your application

"Component 'SynCtrl.dll' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid"

The SynAbs.exe file is only 40kb. Any idea what's wrong?

This means that the laptop you are using doesn't have a synaptic touchpad. In short, you can't use this app.

Not necessarily. When I switched to XP from Vista, I had that same strange problem. I even had the blasted source of all everything and it didn't work. I fixed it, but due to lack of interest toward the program, I chose not to bother with updating it.

I've uploaded a zip file, and this time it has the DLLs in with it for good measure. Give it a shot and see if it works now.

http://eternaleon.googlepages.com/SynAbs.zip

I've also realized that using SynAbs in normal Windows activity quickly becomes a pain in the ass. Good thing I added that Ctrl+Alt+A shortcut.

Sorry. Most touchpads can only use fingers. Some can use pens, but I don't know of any, nor do I know if they'll work. This program maps the corners of the touchpad to the corners of your screen, so using your finger won't be that bad.

That is, if this program works for you. I still haven't recieved any feedback on it yet.

This map has been deleted on the request of its creator. It is no longer available.

Yay, this laptop has a Synaptic and it works with SynAbs.

This will take some zetta getting used to.

This map has been deleted on the request of its creator. It is no longer available.

Don't work for me, i have a Synaptics ClickPad 7.4, i wanna test it, i'm in Windows 7 x64, i have two mouse of 1600DPI and a Wacom Intuos4, can you support the program for windows 7.

The Error:
Error '-2147418113 (8000ffff)' Error en tiempo de ejecución :
Error de Automatización

I have windows in spanish.

Just randomly thrown in:

Do you think this could be done with the non-absolute Bamboo Multi-Touch surface? I would love to give it a try with my fingers on the tablet, but it only supports relative positioning (Wacom states: Since you don't use the screen as touch surface you don't know where the cursor is. -> hence they won't add a mode for absolute positioning :'( )

They said on the Wacom forum the drivers delivers absolute positions as you can see here:


(You can get there by Holding Ctrl and pressing the "Info" button in the settings)

@TiZ
Great job. I use homemade pen of this:



It cost me a candy-bar price + time ~10min, haha
It rly works like tablet, yeah I can play even insane maps

I also have a 7.4 synaptic touchpad and i get the following error

"System Error &H80004002 (-2147467262). No such interface supported"

I wanted to try, but my computer don't agree D:

(Inb4 not compatible with windows8)

What a bump!

Anyways, I tried this and worked on my laptop. Probably because the laptop is old which runs Windows Vista. The program is made 5 years ago, so don't expect it to work on newer machine.

Winshley wrote:

What a bump!

Anyways, I tried this and worked on my laptop. Probably because the laptop is old which runs Windows Vista. The program is made 5 years ago, so don't expect it to work on newer machine.

My laptop run windows 8 but it's 4 years old and when I got it it was on windows vista D:

That probably because the way Synaptics driver are developed for Windows 8 differs to that for Windows Vista.

You might wanna try dual-booting Windows Vista then...

Arnold0 wrote:

Winshley wrote:

What a bump!

Anyways, I tried this and worked on my laptop. Probably because the laptop is old which runs Windows Vista. The program is made 5 years ago, so don't expect it to work on newer machine.

My laptop run windows 8 but it's 4 years old and when I got it it was on windows vista D:

same problem encountered, seems it doesn't work on win8...

I can confirm that this runs perfectly well on the run of the mill windows 7 machine. I wish I could make it click when I tap it though.

Nice tool.

For win 7, I can confirm it works using the v15 driver but not v16 driver.

for those who play on linux, you might like to take a look at this:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/239823/u ... ics-tablet

it say ubuntu but it works on fedora too, and maybe others that use xorg

I have to get the absolute position of a finger on the touchpad rather than just relative movement.

the synaptics driver doesn't do this, but the evdev driver does. So you need to configure your X server to use the evdev driver for the touchpad instead. The following configuration snippet will do that for you provided you're running server 1.8 or later.

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "evdev touchpad"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Driver "evdev"
    Option "Mode" "absolute"
EndSection

Save this as /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-evdev-touchpad.conf and restart the server. Note that this only changes the behaviour of the touchpad itself, not the data in the events but then again that data is always absolute anyway. Also, by using evdev instead of synaptics you're losing the ability for two-finger scrolling, tapping, etc.

to disable it, just delete that conf file and restart the server

I have a problem here, when I start it, it says "Incorrigible paradox detected. Aborting." Any idea why?

MRStres wrote:

I have a problem here, when I start it, it says "Incorrigible paradox detected. Aborting." Any idea why?

maybe incompatible touchpad?
is your touchpad a synaptics touchpad and using the synaptics driver?

asl97 wrote:

MRStres wrote:

I have a problem here, when I start it, it says "Incorrigible paradox detected. Aborting." Any idea why?

maybe incompatible touchpad?
is your touchpad a synaptics touchpad and using the synaptics driver?

Well, first it's Alps, after I installed the driver, it became synaptic. Is that the problem?

MRStres wrote:

Well, first it's Alps, after I installed the driver, it became synaptic. Is that the problem?

it works on my laptop, mine is SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad, note the word, Synaptic

so it could be the problem if yours isn't synaptic, not all touchpad give absolution, so maybe yours is one of those

the app would only work with a touchpad that got absolution.

to find out what touchpad yours is,
on linux:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

on window:

idk, try googling it

asl97 wrote:

on window:

idk, try googling it

Lol

It is located in the Device Manager, under "Mice and other pointing devices".

Edit : nvm, the synaptics touchpad was on my previous laptop ._.

cant download in the given link anyone got another link
?

i don't understand how to use this, can somebody explain to me? :c

EDIT: nvm, i just played around with the program and got it to work XD

Could anyone help me with the error//////// System Error &H80004002 (-2147467262).

Has anyone got this working on a windows 8 machine?

iceandele wrote:

Has anyone got this working on a windows 8 machine?

No luck here on 8.1.

On Linux, one may be able to switch between Absolute and Relative mode with xinput set-mode <device name> ABSOLUTE (<device name> being either the full name or the id of your touchpad (without the < >); use the command xinput to get this info). Switch ABSOLUTE to RELATIVE when you want to switch back, or just reboot. May or may not work depending on other factors (was able to do so on Ubuntu 13.04, but not 13.10).

I get a System Error &H80004002 (-2147467262). No such interface supported error I'm going to assume it's because I'm running Windows 8, because I do have a synaptics touchpad. Any plans on fixing that?
Also, Visual Basic is a bit of an outdated language. You should consider using C# instead.

Does anyone know if this works on Windows 8?

Axast wrote:

Does anyone know if this works on Windows 8?

Didn't work for me on 8 or 8.1.

i repeatedly smashed my face upon the computer keyboard and it didnt work any advice?

6 years and no update. Any touch pad wizards here?

why necro this i thought there was actually an update

Can anyone re-upload this? The download link doesn't work :/

^yeah, I for one would like to try using it

I still have this on my computer even if it never worked for me (windows 8), you are lucky
http://puu.sh/7yG9M.rar

First of all, do you guys know the pens sold for phones? Those work pretty well, you just got to detach the cable. Talking from personal experience.
Example here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/10x-Metal-Unive ... 20e10aaaa8

And this one, but I don't have the slightest idea if it works: http://www.ebay.com/itm/5X-STYLUS-BALLP ... 2c70dbaa2e

Also, as a second note, YOU NEED TO TURN RAW INPUT OFF for it to work in osu right now.

I got an error on this.... Says something about synctrl.dl not correctly registered