synaptiks is a touchpad configuration and management tool for KDE, available under the terms of the simplified BSD licence (see COPYING).
It provides a System Settings module to configure basic and advanced features of the touchpad. Additionally it comes with a little system tray application, which can switch the touchpad automatically off, while an external mouse is plugged or while you are typing.
Please refer to the website for more information about synaptiks including some screenshots, a detailled handbook and also some API documentation for interested developers.
synaptiks is implemented in Python atop of PyQt4 and PyKDE4 and requires the following native libraries and tools:
- Python (at least 2.6, Python 3 is not supported)
- PyQt4 (at least 4.7)
- PyKDE4 (at least 4.5)
- libXi (at least 1.4, earlier releases are untested)
- gettext (only required during installation to compile the translations, can be removed after successful installation)
- Docbook XSL stylesheets (only required during installation to compile the handbook, can be removed after successful installation)
Moreover some Python modules are required:
All these libraries must be available before installing synaptiks. It is recommended, that you install them through the package manager of your distribution. However, the Python modules listed above are also automatically installed by the installation script of synaptiks.
Additionally synaptiks has some optional dependencies, which are not strictly required, but enable some additional features or improved components in synaptiks:
- libXtst (client side of the XRecord extension, for improved keyboard monitoring)
- dbus-python and UPower (to handle mouse devices correctly across suspend and resume)
Finally xf86-input-synaptics 1.3 or newer must be installed and configured as touchpad driver. synaptiks will not work, if the touchpad is managed by a generic mouse device driver like xf86-input-evdev.
Please make sure, that any previous release of synaptiks is completely removed before this release of synaptiks is installed.
If all dependencies are installed, you can simply install synaptiks using pip:
sudo pip install synaptiksThis will automatically download and install synaptiks and all missing Python modules (but not the native libraries).
If pip is not available on your system, please download synaptiks manually, extract the archive, and run the following command from the source directory:
sudo python2 setup.py install --single-version-externally-managedMake sure, that you pass the option --single-version-externally-managed, otherwise synaptiks will not be installed correctly. Therefore it is absolutely recommended, that you use pip.
If you like or dislike synaptiks or if you have any problems with synaptiks, feel free to send an email with compliments or blame or with some questions.
If you have found a bug in synaptiks, if miss a certain feature or have any proposals concerning synaptiks, please report them to the issue tracker. To help us with solving this issue, please include any information that you can get into your report, including especially any error messages or tracebacks. If unsure, better post more information than required.
All development of synaptiks happens on GitHub. The complete source code is available in a git repository:
git clone --recursive git://github.com/lunaryorn/synaptiksIf you want to create or update translations, or fix some issue in synaptiks, or even add some new features, please fork this repository on GitHub and send a pull requests with your work. Of course, should you dislike GitHub, you can also send patches through the issue tracker or through email.