If you are really tired of having the cursor wander all over while you are typing, perhaps you will like this script. Obviously this presumes that you have a usable pointing device (mouse) or that you don't need the touchpad for a while when you are typing.
Here's what to do:
First verify that you have synclient installed ('which synclient'). Fix that if not installed
From a root terminal session
1. Copy the script to a ...bin directory in your path, eg /usr/local/bin/padoo (or some other name)
2. chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/padoo (or some other name)
3. exit from root mode
'padoo' (turn off if touchpad is on, turn on if touchpad is off). synclient does not require toot permissions.
I always keep a terminal session open, but you may prefer to map this to a hotkey. I'll leave that exercise for you to decide.
#!/bin/bash
# toggle Touchpad setting - default is off - cer 12/1/2010
t=`synclient -l | grep Touch` # returns ' Touchpad = 0|1'
ix=`expr index "$t" "="` # answer is 1 relative
ix=$(($ix+1)) # skip over blank
oo=${t:$ix:1} # this use is 0 relative
if [ $oo -eq 0 ]; then
offon=1
msg=off
elif [ $oo -eq 1 ]; then
offon=0
msg=on
else
offon=1
msg=off
fi
echo "Turning touchpad $msg"
/usr/bin/synclient Touchpad=$offon
Enjoy,
--
Collins
