When using touch screens there can be a need to manipulate the system pointer (cursor) in a number of ways...
Cursor shape / appearance during touch
Operating systems utilise various mouse cursors. Most familiar is the traditional mouse cursor 
shown when a standard mouse device is used, especially for clicks and clicks and drags.
However, with the wide spread use of the touch interface it is considered that using this cursor was inappropriate to touch or a cursor/visual feedback should only be shown when actually touching (to show point of contact) or in some cases that a cursor is not desirable at all when using touch.
Currently our driver does little to affect the cursor shape and its usage, leaving it in the hands of the operating system and any related cursor configuration, except as described below:
| OS |
Cursor settings |
| MacOSX |
MacOS is not a touch aware OS so no cursor manipulation has been implemented specific to touch usage therefore, by default, a cursor is always present. However, we have implemented an option to 'Hide the mouse cursor during touch usage' in UPDD Gestures and UPDD Commander. The cursor is reenabled if a trackpad or mouse is subsequently used. |
| Linux |
When using the Gnome windows manager the cursor, by default, is hidden when touch is used. We have introduced a UPDD global settings 'gnome_default_touch_cursor_behaviour' to change this behaviour if required. 0 = Change default behaviour, 1 (or not defined) = keep default behaviour. Our tests were performed using Ubuntu 16.04LTS. Other distributions may have different defaults / behaviour. |
| Windows |
Currently the driver or UPDD Commander does not attempt to change the cursor in Windows but this can be changed manually.
Windows uses a mouse cursor and touch visual feed back at the point of contact. These can be changed in the Windows Settings as described below:
Define a blank Mouse Pointer
In control panel -> mouse -> pointers
Select the Windows Default scheme
Download and save the blank.cur to a folder.
Select each icon style in turn, select browse and select the blank.cur file (having extracted it from the .zip file)
Click “save as” and give a name, e.g. blank cursor.
Click apply.
In practice just changing the “Normal Select” cursor might be sufficient.
To revert back to a standard cursor just select the Windows Default Scheme.
Be warned - once you have a blank cursor it difficult to use the mouse to change any settings!
Disable touch visual feedback
In Windows Settings enter the following into the Find a setting field:
Win 10 : Touch Feedback
Win 11: Touch indicator
and disable the setting
|
The UPDD driver can be configured to post touch data on different system interfaces. This will of course likely affect the cursor usage as determined by the operating system.
Cursor reset after touch
In some cases, after a touch has been completed it is desirable to reset/return the cursor to its previous position prior to the touch or gesture being performed such that the cursor is not left in some random place. This is especially useful if the touch screen is on a secondary monitor and when used takes away the cursor from the primary monitor such that after touch the user has to constantly return the cursor back to its original position.
We cater for this requirement in a number of ways.
| Component |
Method |
Driver
|
When using the driver to handle the touch clicks there is a setting that indicates to the driver that the cursor is to be returned to it previous location once the touch sequence is complete. This setting is anchor_mouse.enabled and has two associated settings all of which are described here. |
| Commander |
When using UPDD Commander there is a setting to 'Reset mouse cursor after a gesture ends' in the Settings dialog, general tab. |