Decoding the mouse
 

Hi,

my old mouse died. She became 12 years old...what a young soul... ;)

Today I had to buiy a new one (Logitech MX518,wired).

This one has a laser a some additional buttons to play with.

General question: Are these buttons free for assigning any function
to them (do they send "button 4 on mouse was pressed") or do they
codes which represent a (very small) part of a USB-keyboard (sending
"Page Up" of keyboard was presses) and how can I access these
additional buttons?

Thanks a lot for any help in advance!
Best regards,
mcc

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Decoding the mouse
 

Am Fri, 14 May 2010 13:16:39 +0200
schrieb meino.cramer@gmx.de:

>
> Hi,

Hi,

> my old mouse died. She became 12 years old...what a young soul... ;)
>
> Today I had to buiy a new one (Logitech MX518,wired).

I have that one, too, though I bought it about 2.5 years ago, so there might be
differences I'm not aware of.

> This one has a laser a some additional buttons to play with.
>
> General question: Are these buttons free for assigning any function
> to them (do they send "button 4 on mouse was pressed") or do they
> codes which represent a (very small) part of a USB-keyboard (sending
> "Page Up" of keyboard was presses) and how can I access these
> additional buttons?

Yes, you can access them. I use the button under the "-" button to maximize
windows, for example. I had to manually configure my window manager (Awesome)
for that, though.

On the other hand, Firefox recognizes the arrow buttons on the side and goes
forward and backward in the tab history when I press them, without any conscious
configuration on my part.

The events my mouse sends are (checked via "xev"):

8: backward arrow
9: forward arrow
10: "maximize" button

The "+"/"-" buttons are not accessible, I believe, since xev doesn't report any
events when I press them. I guess the mouse handles their events in
hardware/firmware.

> Thanks a lot for any help in advance!
> Best regards,
> mcc

HTH
--
Marc Joliet