[bedevtalk] Optical mouse is jerky in BeOS

[Stephan Assmus]

On 2006-01-21 at 04:55:20 [+0100], Magnus Hellman <magnush at bigpond.net.au> 
wrote:
> Hey all,
> I've been meaning to post this on one or another Be list but never got 
> around to it, so I'll post here to kick off the list ;-)
> 
> I bought an optical mouse a couple of months ago.  It works fine in Window$ 
> XP, but in BeOS the pointer movement is jerky and really difficult to 
> position accurately.  Is there some solution to this, like some sort of 
> undocumented setting in the Input Server?  Or something else?  Or should I 
> go back to buying a new balled mouse every few months? (they're dirt cheap 
> but it's a pain having to replace them so often -- yes know how to clean 
> them out, but they still deteriorate eventually).

The issue should definitely not be the fact that the mouse is optical! I have 
installed tons of optical mice on different BeOS machines. I don't know of a 
secret input_server setting, but checking out the speed and acceleration 
values could be beneficial. The lower the speed, the less jumpy the movement. 
You could also try different mouse drivers, EMouse for example uses a 
different acceleration algorithm. If nothing helps, try going for a different 
optical model? Just for kicks, and since this is BeDevTalk... you could also 
write a filter device that literally filters your mouse positions and 
smoothens them out... :-)

Best regards,
-Stephan