Saturday, July 15. 2006

Evoluent VerticalMouse 2, wrists, and linux

Photo: Evoluent VerticalMouse2
It's the Chinese Year of the Mouse. First my beloved logitech mouse died. All I could get on short notice at the time was an IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0 (see there for installation) though I'd have preferred another logi, the size and shape of which suit me better. Now I mucked up my lower arms and wrists — no, not typing those 200 line poses on MUSH: I was stupidly carrying home my groceries when I should have sent a man. Let's face it, at BMI 18 you don't have the muscle, and you shouldn't and needn't be without a strong guy to serve and to protect, anyway. : )

So much for being ecologically minded. Next time I'll take the beamer. Or something. Anyway, my arms hurt, a little when typing, and a lot when using the mouse. Untwisting them into the vertical (handshake position) immediately relieved the pain, so I went looking for a mouse that would work in that position.


Diagram: twisted arm positionI ended up buying the offering from Evoluent. I first tried to order through Amazon US, but their affiliate doesn't seem to be shipping techs to Europe. Luckily, I found a retailer in Germany who carries them. Ordered on Tuesday (I think), delievered on Saturday, it came with an USB-to-PS2 adapater and a mini-CD labeled "Windows" presumably containing Windows drivers. Since I already knew the arm position would relieve my pain, I realised much would depend on the size of the mouse corresponding with that of my hand — size does matter. Luckily, this seems to be the case. (What this means for you I don't know; as you may have gathered, I'm the tall modelesque type and have slender pianist's hands, and the mouse seems a decent fit. No idea how it would work for guy hands, or a really petite woman's. The measurements are on the manufacturer's website though.) The mouse has three buttons on the right, a clickable (but non-tilting) mouse-wheel between the first and the second button, and a thumb-button on the left. There is a "left-handed" variety of the mouse where everything is the other way around.

My demands were specific: the thumb button should be a middle button ("paste"), because that's what I'm used to from the Logitech (I also configured my IntelliMouse that way, though I would often mis-paste just reaching for the mouse due to the unfortunate position of the two thumb-buttons on that mouse). Since my right hand's index, middle and ringer-finger would rest on the three buttons on the right (rather than on first, scroll-wheel, and middle button), I wanted those buttons to be buttons 1, 2, and 3 (or "left, middle, and right"). Since customarily, clicking the scroll-wheel, something I do rarely, also produces a middle-click, I wanted to maintain that behaviour as well, in accordance with the principle of the least surprise. I briefly considered turning off the scrollwheel altogether because wheeling hurt, but ultimately decided against it. Here's the setup; for explanations of the various components in general and XF86Config and evdev in particular, see my article on the IntelliMouse Explorer:

/etc/X11/XF86Config snippet:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse[1]"
Driver "evdev"
Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/event2"
Option "Dev Name" "Evoluent VerticalMouse 2"
Option "Dev Phys" "usb-0000:00:10.0-2/input0"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

~/.xsession snippet:
# reorder mouse-buttons.
# if xmodmap complains about number of buttons,
# remove entries starting from end.
# The idea here is make the buttons on the right
# buttons 1,2,3 and map the other buttons (the
# thumb-button and the clickable scroll-wheel) to
# indices low enough for imwheel (see below) to see.
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 6 4 5 8 9 3 7 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32"

# start imwheel; see ~/.imwheelrc below
# The idea here is to map the thumb-button and the
# click of the scroll-wheel to Button2 (the "middle"
# or "paste" button in X11). Unfortunately, xmodmap
# alone won't let you map several physical buttons to
# the same code, so we'll need both xmodmap and imwheel.
imwheel -k

~/.imwheelrc snippet:
".*"
None, Left, Button2
None, Right, Button2
Control_L, Button5, Alt_L|Left
Control_L, Button4, Alt_L|Right
Shift_L, Button5, Button1|Home
Shift_L, Button4, Button1|End

As an aside, this mouse has a cable — I didn't mind so much, as all that wireless nonsense is beginning to get on my nerves, batteries always being empty at the worst times imaginable or peripherals losing contact (or maybe, my keyboard's about to die), but you may feel differently. The retailer I ordered from only had the black/silver variety (though both left- and right-handed), you'll find other colours (to go with an Indy or O2, maybe) on the manufacturers site. There's also a "chrome" variety that reminds me of the classic cylons (and will no doubt give rise to all the usual jokes, Cylon & Furuncle, Cylons of the Lambs, Cylon Running etc.).

So much for now; I'll keep you updated on how my arms agree with the new electric rodent.

Lastly, respect the limits of feline payload, and if you ruin your paws, don't randomly buy something some chick on the web recommends — check with the vet!
Posted by Azundris in English at 11:17 | Comments (24) | Trackbacks (0)
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Azundris on :

*Day 1. Connected mouse, set up as per above, wrote this blog entry. Works fine so far, no pain at all when mousing, right wrist feels slightly funky for a few moments when changing from mouse to keyboard. Would have ordered vertical keyboard too, but the fact that the cursor keys are in the middle between the two vertical alpha-pads, and horizontal at that, has deterred me so far. Also checked out the Kinesis Evolution keyboards so I could work like Captain Kirk, but they seem to be revamping their product line, so I couldn't buy one.

Some reviews said you need a few days or weeks to get used to it; not so -- it worked for me from second one, just pixel-exact positioning doesn't quite work yet; usual operation no problem, drawing using the mouse: later. Maybe that's what they meant? I also haven't knocked the mouse about when moving my hand, expecting the former to be less high -- again, maybe later ...

Will keep you updated.

Azundris on :

*Kinesis Evolution "Captain Kirk" keyboard (discontinued):
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/evolution.htm

SafeType vertical keyboard:
http://www.tifaq.org/keyboards/vertical-split-keyboards.html
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0%2C1697%2C1034140%2C00.asp

JWZ on ouchie hands:
http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/wrists.html

Bill Clementson on ouchie hands:
http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060131.html

The typing injury FAQ:
http://www.tifaq.org/

Azundris on :

*In related news, I'm also trying out gnome-typing-monitor. It does the usual thing -- suggest a break of n minutes every m minutes; n and m are configurable. If you take the break earlier, you reset the counter counting up to m (which is visualized in the system tray as a growing green bar that turns into a red blinking one shortly before the break: wrap up your stuff, break ahead!). You may postpone a break once it's started (a feature you can explicitly disable); this will put you back into the red blinky state, meaning, the timer will try to force a break on you again a few minutes later. The postponing serves welle nough in case of emergencies, but in non-emergencies, it just gets too annoying, and you eventually do take your break. : ) I understand similar solutions exist for KDE.

Azundris on :

*More install-fu for Evoluent (linux/X11+evdev):
http://peppesbodega.nu/node/Evoluent+and+X.org

Azundris on :

*Observation 1:
Index on left button, middle finger on wheel, ringfinger on middle button, pinky on right button wouldn't work anyway, at least not for me: it positions the hand so the palm drags over the desk.

Observation 2:
Yes, it takes a while to learn that this mouse stands taller than the rest, I caught it once or twice moving my right hand back to the keyboard. Fortunately didn't knock it off the desk or anything, though.

Isotopp on :

*Darum haben die ja das Kabel dran gemacht. :)

Azundris on :

*Day 2. Much better so far. I /think/ it was already getting a little better before, between trying to rest the hands and taking aspirin (against any inflammation, aspirin does not really work for pain for me, anyway), but now it seems /much/ better, so I'm happy I bought the mouse. Let's see whether it lasts. Again keep in mind that even if it turns out that it works for me nicely, it might still do nothing for you -- there's a million ways to mess up your hands, and I'm sure there are a lot that this mouse won't do you a blind bit of good for.

Azundris on :

*Day 5. Still happy. Seems to help. Thank you, Evoluent!

Azundris on :

*Day 18. Much better. Hard to say how much was normal healing, how much taking it easy, and how much the mouse -- and how much sheer luck, really --, but, I'm happy, I'm relieved. Thank G-d, thanks evoluent, thanks healing power. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Azundris on :

*Day 45. (Or whatever.) Still no complaints. Good buy.

Azundris on :

*I finally set up the mouse correctly for the laptop (above setup was for my desktop machine), and now it's

~/.xinitrc
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 6 2 4 5 3 9"
imwheel -k -b 67

The rest's the same (~/.imwheelrc and such). Well, actually, the device and event changed, but that was to be expected. Yours will vary.

/etc/x11/xorg.conf
Option "Device" "/dev/input/event7"
Option "Dev Phys" "usb-0000:00:1d.1-2/input0"

Azundris on :

*Actually, the bloody device changed on me again, but as I was to find out, it longer matters:

For one thing, there now is a directy of symlinks, so
/dev/input/by-id/usb-Kingsis_Peripherals_Evoluent_VerticalMouse_2-event-mouse
will refer to the correct event-file.

For another, even that is unnecessary, as long as you get the "Name" option right in the xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse[1]"
Driver "evdev"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "Name" "Kingsis Peripherals Evoluent VerticalMouse 2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

~/.xinitrc
ls -1 /dev/input/by-id/usb-Kingsis_Peripherals_Evoluent_VerticalMouse_2* > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 6 2 4 5 3 7"
imwheel -k -b 67
fi

With a little bit of luck, this is the last we'll hear of the whole mouse-config thing.

Azundris on :

*Le sigh.

Of course, when you set the USB-mouse as core-pointer (primary mouse), X won't start when the mouse is absent. Like it's wont to be when you're out and about with the laptop.

When you don't set the USB-mouse up as core-pointer, xmodmap won't do you a blind bit of good, as that only operates on the core-pointer.

So whoomp, here it is: another 90 minutes of my precious time wasted: xmootmap. Allows you to remap buttons of secondary mice.

http://www.azundris.com/hacks/c/xmootmap-0.1.tar.bz2

~/.xinitrc snippet:

# if the USB mouse is connected, remap its buttons!
xmootmap|grep -i mouse|grep -i usb
if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]
then
xmootmap 2 1 6 2 4 5 3 7
imwheel -k -b 67
fi

Azundris on :

*~/.xinitrc
...
imwheel -k -b 450067
...

~/.imwheelrc (space goes in front of all non-quoted lines!)

"^screen$"
Control_L, Up, Control_L|a|n
Control_L, Down, Control_L|a|p
None, Up, Page_Up
None, Down, Page_Down

".*"
None, Thumb2, Button3
None, Thumb1, Button2
Control_L, Button5, Alt_L|Left
Control_L, Button4, Alt_L|Right
Shift_L, Up, Home
Shift_L, Down, End

Azundris on :

*None, Up, Button5
None, Down, Button4

(Append these two lines at bottom so desktop will still receive wheel-events -- otherwise, the last focused window will receive page up/down events instead, and we need the wheel to spin beryl's desktop cube.)

Azundris on :

*Got bored with it interfering with all the other mouse-wheel fu (change opacity, saturation, brightness, zoom, ...) I have configured in beryl. Dropped back to
imwheel -k -b 000067
thereby releasing the wheel to beryl and the apps, or rather, not catching and processing it in imwheel at all. All I really need from that is the remapping of the buttons anyway, since X stupidly refuses to have several buttons render the same code.

Azundris on :

*since evdev breaks X11 on kernels with realtime patches enabled for me, I removed the evdev section and all references to it from my XF86config, and lo and behold, the mouse still works fine on a current set up.
So this makes the remap in ~/.xinitrc:

...
# this is with evdev
ID=`xmootmap|grep -i mouse|grep -i usb|sed -e's/. ID \([0-9]*\),.*/\1/g'`
if [[ "x$ID" != "x" ]]
then
xmootmap $ID 1 6 2 4 5 3 7
else
# this is without evdev, which works perfectly fine on newer setups
# and seems in fact necessary on -RT kernels (real-time patches enabled)
ID=`xmootmap|grep -i "default pointer"|sed -e's/. ID \([0-9]*\),.*/\1/g'`
xmootmap $ID 1 6 2 4 5 8 7 3 9
fi
imwheel -k -b 000067
...

and ~/.imwheelrc (all lines after first indented with one space!)

".*"
None, Up, Button4
None, Down, Button5
None, Thumb2, Button2
None, Thumb1, Button2
Control_L, Button5, Alt_L|Left
Control_L, Button4, Alt_L|Right
Shift_L, Up, Home
Shift_L, Up, Home
Shift_L, Up, Home
Shift_L, Down, End

Atanu on :

*Thanks for writing this up. Today is my first day with the Evoluent mouse - and I'm encouraged by your experience. Hope that you are still pain free.

Azundris on :

*I'm still using it, and my wrists seem OK for the time being. I was lucky. Hope it works for you (standard disclaimer, mouse is good, but you may still want to see a doctor).

Regina on :

*Dear Azundris, I have an Evoluent mouse which until now I have used in Windows. Now I have installed Ubuntu and want it to work the same way. I wonder if you could help me figure out how to map the buttons? I am looking for:

thumb = back
top button = left
middle button = double-click
bottom button = right click
scroll = scroll

I am a complete beginner to Linux.....
TIA!!

Azundris on :

*I'm not sure what "back" means. If that's back as in web-browsing, try whether Alt-CursorLeft does what you want. If so, bind it to the desired mouse-button using imwheel. Similar for double-click, apparently you can do that with imwheel by passing a repeat parameter (", 2") at the end of the line. Haven't tried it myself though. Everything else as described in the article.

bminish on :

*thank you for the guide on configuring the Evoluent under linux. solved my xorg issues and so far i am very happy with the mouse. it feels great, mice and my hands do not get along very well.
Now if only i could find a high quality clicky keyboard with no number pad I would be sorted ;-)
At the moment I am trying a Fujitsu ergonomic keyboard. and it's annoying me, I am far too used to buckling spring keyboards like the IBM 'M' series

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your configuration
regards Brendan

Azundris on :

*Excellent, glad it was useful!
I'm still thinking that when I next get a keyboard, it'll be the SafeType. :-D

Chris Walker on :

*If you're looking for a keyboard with no number pad, you could try a goldtouch. See http://www.goldtouch.com/ for details. I use one but have a numeric keypad on the left side of the keyboard should I need to use one. The other problem I've experienced so far is trying to make Mandriva switch off the Num Lock LED at start-up as the U,I,O,J,K,L and M keys are used as numeric keys with that on and it screws things up when entering things like passwords at logon.

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