A while ago I posted about WhatPulse, expressing my liking of the program and encouraging you to use it too. However, since using Ubuntu 10.04 on my laptop with a Synaptics touchpad, I have been having an issue. To be more precise, WhatPulse would not register my clicks any more which is quite the bummer!

After digging around with methods involving udev rules and synclient, it was a WhatPulse developer that solved it for me:

X.org server 1.8 (or 1.7 without HAL): In /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ (in Ubuntu 10.04, the path is /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/), create a new file called 20-custom-touchpad-rules.conf or similar (the precise filename does not matter, as long as the file is in the right directory) with the following contents:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "custom touchpad configuration"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Option "GrabEventDevice" "false"
EndSection

[…]

Reboot, and WhatPulse should be able to register clicks on your touchpad. Note: Tapping the touchpad does not generate real click events; it is the responsibility of the driver to detect taps and interpret them as clicks. Therefore, WhatPulse cannot register clicks that you performed by tapping, and that will not change anytime soon.

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