Using mice adopted to my hands / 2018-11-28

The old rsi problem was acting up again, just like I had RSI in 1999.

One of the things I now did was add a left-side mouse on the linux desktop at home. I have used a left-side mouse for a number of years on a linux desktop and used the instructions from the xmodmap manpage:

       Many  pointers are designed such that the first button is pressed using
       the index finger of the right hand.  People who  are  left-handed  fre‐
       quently  find  that  it is more comfortable to reverse the button codes
       that get generated so that the primary  button  is  pressed  using  the
       index  finger  of  the  left  hand.   This  could be done on a 3 button
       pointer as follows:
       %  xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1"

But I now have two USB mice, one with a forward/backward button and a clearly right-handed design and one simple one on the left. And it is possible to selectively swap mouse buttons on only one input device with xinput.

The list of all inputs:

koos@thompson:~$ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse           id=9    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech Optical USB Mouse                id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Burr-Brown from TI               USB Audio CODEC  id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ VIA Technologies Inc. USB Audio Device    id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ daskeyboard                               id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ daskeyboard                               id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=14   [slave  keyboard (3)]

Setting the button order happens with xinput set-button-map which needs an ID. Solution in .xsession:

xinput set-button-map $(xinput list --id-only "Logitech Optical USB Mouse") 3 2 1

Oh, and in that other operating system I use (Windows) one of the problems is the user can't set mouse button order per device. And technical specifications of left-handed mice do not list whether the buttons are swapped in hardware.