Touchscreen and mouse as separate inputs?

Question

Can someone give me a good reference on how to achieve this, or just tell me how its done? Google isn't really helping me here, since it always tries to give me recommendations on touchpad :/

Answer 1

As long as your touchscreen is detected as a boring input device, you could do this with xinput. This tool allows you to define new master pointers (the virtual pointer which resembles one mouse pointer) and to detach and attach slave pointers (the actual hardware devices) from and to it.

So all you need to do is

1. create a new master pointer
2. reattach your touchscreen to this new master pointer

This is done similar to this:

1. Create the new master pointer:

   $ xinput create-master touchy
   

   This creates a new master keyboard/pointer pair, where the keyboard is called »touch keyboard« and the pointer »touchy pointer«:

   $ xinput
      ⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
      ⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
      ⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
      ⎜   ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint                     id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
      ⎜   ↳ My Cool™ Touchscreen                      id=14   [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)]
          ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
          ↳ Sleep Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
          ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
          ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons                    id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]
          ↳ HID 046a:0011                             id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]
      ⎡ touchy pointer                                id=15   [master pointer  (16)]
      ⎜   ↳ touchy XTEST pointer                      id=17   [slave  pointer  (15)]
      ⎣ touchy keyboard                               id=16   [master keyboard (15)]
          ↳ touchy XTEST keyboard                     id=18   [slave  keyboard (16)]
   

2. Retach your touch screen slave pointer to the new master

   In this example I'll assume »My Cool™ Touchscreen« to be the device to use (id=14):

   $ xinput reattach 14 15
   

   This will result in the following:

   $ xinput
     ⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
     ⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
     ⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
     ⎜   ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint                     id=11   [slave  pointer  (15)]
     ⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
         ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
         ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
         ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
         ↳ Sleep Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
         ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
         ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons                    id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]
         ↳ HID 046a:0011                             id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]
     ⎡ touchy pointer                                id=15   [master pointer  (16)]
     ⎜   ↳ My Cool™ Touchscreen                      id=14   [slave  pointer  (2)]
     ⎜   ↳ touchy XTEST pointer                      id=17   [slave  pointer  (15)]
     ⎣ touchy keyboard                               id=16   [master keyboard (15)]
         ↳ touchy XTEST keyboard                     id=18   [slave  keyboard (16)]
   

Now your touchscreen should act like an individual pointing device.

Edit: To get rid of the second mouse pointer, which is rather superfluous for a touchscreen, you could use this tool, which utilizes the XInput2 extension to change the pointers individually.