Rebinding keys while trackpoint is in use?

[avx]

// not sure if this is the best forum, so move as needed.

As you may or may not know, it's usually rather easy to disable a notebooks touchpad while textinput is done, so as to not move the cursor/click by accident - usually that is configurable with a custom timeout.

Now I'm wondering, if something similar, but "in reverse" is possible?

Suppose I've got a notebook with a trackpoint (Thinkpads, upper class Toshiba Tecras, ...). Let's say I used the trackpoint in the last 1000 milliseconds, I'd like to use the u,i,j keys as mouse clicks and return them to normal state once a timeout is reached.

Possible and if yes, how or what tools do I need(not running a DE, so some standalone tool would be nice)?
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[SDNick484]

This is definitely an interesting idea. I don't have a complete solution, but the tools I'd recommend looking at would be:

1. btnx & btnx-config - a daemon to map keys as mouse input (Note: not in portage, an ebuild is here, but the original developer might not be supporting it)
2. xev / xmodmap - I believe these come with X windows, should be a low-level way to do the mapping

As for disabling (or rather swapping) for a short duration after the mouse is used, that may be a little trickier. I would imagine you'd need some sort of daemon polling for that although I could very well be wrong. I haven't used btnx myself, but there's a chance it may have that capability. Anyways, good luck, and please do post back if you find a workable solution.

[avx]

Thanks for your input, though I'm a little confused: from what I find googling btnx (original page is down), it seems it's a tool to bind mouse-buttons to key input, while I actually want it the other way around. Didn't have time to try it, yet, though.
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[SDNick484]

[avx]

Just had the idea to leverage `unclutter`, the tiny dameon looking for mouse movement and hiding the cursor when no movement is found for some time.

It's basically ~400 lines of C and looks rather simple, problem is I don't know enough about it to change it to my needs and so far couldn't find a re-implementation in one of my better known languages(also never did much work on the X11 level).
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[avx]

Mh, found that one could run `xinput test-xi2 $ID` (ID as seen by `xinput list`) and it spits out data when the mouse is moved or clicked. That could quite possibly be wrapped up, not sure if that's the easiest or cleanest solution, though.
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