[Conkeror] Emulating Mouse with Keyboard in X

[Trent W. Buck]

Aditya Siram <aditya_siram at hotmail.com> writes:
> The following might be useful to you when a mouse becomes necessary in
> Conkeror (for example, when a Google Video blocks Conkeror
> key-presses).

More accurately, when the filthy proprietary Flash plugin acquires a
full keyboard grab whenever the pointer is over the its canvas area.
IME banishing the pointer to the bottom right corner (or at least moving
the pointer out of the canvas area) allows you to continue using the
keyboard.

> Under X in Linux, Ctrl-Shift-Numlock turns your Numpad into a mouse
> pointer for a little while. Here is a excerpt from the "Mouse Under X"
> article (http://www.mandrivaclub.com/xwiki/bin/view/KB/XwinXmouse)
> with instructions:
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Keyboard Mouse
>
> X comes with a keyboard mouse, activated by pressing
> CTRL-SHIFT-NUMLOCK.
>
>     * : emulates pressing mouse button 1
>     * <->: changes the emulated mouse button
>     * : enters 'click and hold' mode (e.g. for drag and drop)
>     * : emulates a double-click

Here, at least, the bindings are (all on the numeric keypad):

- 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 move the pointer.
- /, * and - make left, middle and right (respectively) the current button.
- 5 single-clicks the current button
- + double-clicks the current button
- 0 click-and-holds the current button
- . releases click-and-hold

> The emulated movement is very slow,

IME that is caused by running GNOME; in an empty X session (that is,
NOTHING running, except possibly an xvt), I find that the default mouse
emulation acceleration and max velocity values are considerably larger.

I think "running GNOME" specifically means "when gnome-settings-daemon
is/was running".

There's a command-line tool to change the acceleration and max velocity
properties, but I don't remember what it is.  (GNOME users obviously
have to fight gconf instead.)

>  Note that this features times out after a while, so you might have to
>  press CTRL-SHIFT-NUMLOCK again to reactivate it.

That may also be a GNOME "feature".  I've never noticed mouse emulation
disabling itself.