Multiple mouse buttons (more than 5!)

[TechyBen]

So, apparently I can terminal/text file it... but any chance of a GUI option for Linux Mint? I just want to be able to set buttons 8 and 9 to something like shift and ctrl.

 

Strange how there is zero support natively... well, unless I wish to recompile the Kernel or something (sarcasm... please don't kill me!).

[Wild Penquin]

I did a Google search I think you could do this with xbindkeys and xte. See: https://askubuntu.com/questions/624756/how-can-i-map-keyboard-buttons-to-my-mouse-buttons

 

You can bind any mouse key (or key+mouse combination) to trigger pretty much anything (command, script, keystrokes). With xte you can even fake any keystroke.

 

Long answer and some thoughts (about the lack of a GUI options and other stuff):

 

If you want someone to implement a GUI option for this (from your wording I'm not sure are you asking for help or someone to make this option into the GUI, which you already know doesn't exist), then I think you are on the wrong forum. Better place is the official forum for the DE or Distro you want the feature implemented on, or better yet, a feature request on the appropriate bugzilla. You need to invest some time in making a good feature request, and rationalize why the features you want to implement are needed and/or are a priority, if you ever wish them to come into fruition (i.e. give good examples of use cases and problems that a proposed feature would fix).

 

A tool to do what you want does (possibly?) not exist just because it makes no sense to most people. You are probably trying the wrong approach to some other problem; can you be more specific, why do you want to do this; what is your use case? What you are trying to achieve?
 

The behavior of mouse keys should be (ideally) defined higher on the software stack (software should react to the mouse key events the way the user wants). But, sometimes software does not have the features you need ... so I can see that what you need might come usefull. But it is a corner case! After all, they are a different (physical) keys, and even separate devices.

 

Conclusion: as this is a corner case, it it should not be a GUI option in the first place, at least not in the core GUI of the DE; that should be left to more common use cases, since if every users (special) needs would be covered, options will grow exponentially, which will make the GUI quite a mess eventually. So this seems like a job for a user script or for third party tools (such as xbindkeys/xte and others; someone could of course write a frontend GUI for a certain use case!). But scripts and command line utilities will always be more versatile than a feasible GUI can be - for this kind of task! This is a classic example of "right tool for right job".

[/long answer]

[TechyBen]

Nah. I was just trying the off chance that someone knew of a GUI option... a lot of people here use things like Razor mice... so might have more experience. Guess not.

 

I'd not actually passively aggressively imply someone, here of all places, makes a GUI just for me... that might be people assuming cultural/social things way too much...

[snip]

A quick Google for Windows gives the likes of this: https://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/xmousebuttoncontrol.htm

 

Thing is. People can say what they like till they are blue in their face. I am dyslexic. *Any* character based system will take me 10x longer than a GUI one. Setting the file dependencies, the input keys, the output keys and the bugfixing to editing the files manually in Linux is gonna take me days just to learn how to learn the syntax for mouse input. For example:

 

Quote

# Button 6 closes a tab
"xvkbd -text '\Cw'"  # Sends Ctrl-w
b:6

So, from that I can deduct the Cw is "Ctrl-w", so C is Control? And lower case is what... the letter? Oh... so where do I even find the character maping for this? Loads of wonderful Linux tutorials are like "Install software. yaourt -Sy xbindkeys xvkbd then just put in the actions you want..." with no explanation of how you put in actions.

 

So mini rant over. But I do get annoyed how this is the kind of answer every time (hence my joke about recompiling Kernels or something!). This site has a more in depth tutorial:

https://medium.com/@Aenon/bind-mouse-buttons-to-keys-or-scripts-under-linux-with-xbindkeys-and-xvkbd-7e6e6fcf4cba

 

But ends with

Quote

"The syntax should be pretty self-explanatory."

Whoops, so that's me, again, totally excluded from the "community" (not the OS, not the system, but the community) because everyone assumes people just *know* syntax, programming, binary, and assembly code.

 

So now my new question is, "What is the syntax for character/keyboard input to set the buttons in XVKBD?"

 

[snip]

[edit out half my remarks] Ah... I give up. I should not get offended or angry. That's my bad. Never mind.