"Chording" support?

[beerslayer]

Hi,

I'm new to XMBC, and I'm trying to figure out if there's any way it can do what I'm trying to make it do. Here's the situation:

I have an old two-button trackball (Kensington Orbit). I love the feel of this unit but I miss my mouse's scroll wheel. What I'd like to do is to configure the trackball so that when both of the buttons are pressed and held, rotating the trackball itself vertically will scroll the screen. Failing that, it would be nice simply to add some special functionality of my choice to clicking both buttons simultaneously ("chording").

Can XMBC do this already somehow that I haven't found? If not, please consider this a request for future enhancement.

Thanks in advance,

-- Jeff

[phil]

No it does not support chording. The closest you may get is using layers, but I dont think thats really going to help. I have explained in the past why chording is not easy to implement at the user level, and why XMBC does not have it so I will spare the detail, but essentially there are all sorts of timing issues that make it diffuclt, Maybe one day (but it might take a rewrite of the core xmbc stuff so dont expect anything any time soon).

Sorry,
Phil

[beerslayer]

Thanks for the response. I understand that it isn't easy.

I hate to ask you to recommend a competitor (if there is such a thing as competition amongst freeware developers), but are you (or anyone else reading this, for that matter) by any chance aware of any other free software out there which might allow me to "chord" with my trackball?

[phil]

lol, Im not worried about competition but at the same time, I dont know of any chording supporting app, mostly becuase I dont go looking for these things as XMBC does what *i* want

My usual response for things XMBC cant do is Autohotkey but in this case I dont think thats going to help.
Maybe someone else can help - but its not exactly the buisiest forum here

Thanks,
Phil

[MainTrane]

I know for a fact that AutoHotkey supports Rocker Gestures (Chording) such as clicking RButton while holding LButton and vice-versa. I'm almost positive that you'd be able to do something like LButton+RButton to scroll up and down, depending on which button was pressed first.

A couple of starter pages. Simple Mouse Gesture and Rocker + Rocker Gestures

I doubt there would be a way to get AHK to recognize your trackball, though I could be wrong.

Alternatively
This company ATNSoft has a couple of shareware trials available that may|not be what you're looking for. Haven't tried them myself, but they look well to be developed.