virtual-touchpad

Virtual Touchpad

This application allows you to use a mobile phone or tablet as a touchpad and keyboard for your computer.

No software needs to be installed on the device.

Quick Start

On Windows, you can use the pre-packaged binary virtualtouchpad.exe. When you run it, an icon will appear in the notification area. Hovering over this icon reveals the URL to use on your phone or tablet.

If no pre-built executable exists for your platform, launch it from a terminal::

python -m virtualtouchpad

This will start an HTTP server. It will print the line::

Starting server http://<computer name>:<port>/...

Connect to the URL displayed.

Installation

Install this application by running the following command::

pip install virtual-touchpad

Installation issues

When installing, the dependencies for this application are also downloaded. Some
of the dependencies are native libraries and must be compiled before they can be
used.

There is no standard way of providing any dependencies for the native libraries
through this website, so they must thus be present on your computer before you
run the installation, as do *Python* development headers files.

The easies way to install the headers is via the packager manager provided by
your operating system. The names of the packages required depend on your
specific operating system.


Building
--------

If you want to have access to pre-release versions, you can clone the *git*
repository available from the linked *home page* below. Install by running this
command::

    cd $VIRTUAL_TOUCHPAD_REPO
    python bootstrap.py
    # Follow instructions to activate virtualenv
    python setup.py install


Building a native binary

If you intend to run the build target build_exe, you must activate the virtualenv.

This is to ensure that no optional dependencies for any libraries, PIL in particular, are included from the host system. PIL contains import statements for Tk and Qt, which will increase the size of the resulting binary, and thus the download and startup times, considerably.

Release Notes

v0.19.1 - Include QR view

• Make sure to actually include QR view in built package.

v0.19 - Access control

• Added possibility to restrict access to anyone in front of the screen.
• Updated visual styling of documents.
• Corrected display of stack trace for internal server errors.

v0.18 - QR code

• Added QR code view to provide the mobile device URL. Just click Connect mobile device... in the system tray menu.
• Updated aiohttp to version 1.2.

v0.17.1 - Allow access to root

• Allow accessing http://server/ instead of http://server/index.xhtml.

v0.17

• Dropped support for Python before 3.5.
• Added menu to system tray icon to allow stopping Virtual Touchpad.
• UPdated icon.
• Updated mouse and keyboard control library with many fixes.
• Improved handling of disconnection.
• Improved bootstrapping on OSX.
• Corrected host name for ZeonConf.

v0.16.2 - Include Release Notes

• Actually include release notes when publishing on PyPi.

v0.16.1 - Corrected Resources

• Actually include help files in PyPi package.
• Corrected handling of getting the root.

v0.16 - Multi platform prebuilt packages

• Added support for building native packages for all platforms.
• Disallowed serving files outside of the resource directory.
• Correctly serve the keyboard layout on Python 3.
• Corrected parsing of git output when making release.

v0.15.3 - Fixes for OSX

• Enabled dragging on OSX.
• Increased scrolling speed on OSX.

v0.15.2 - Fixes for Windows

• Reenabled clicking and scrolling for Windows.

v0.15.1 - Fixes for iOS

• Do not require the browser to support HTML5 Fullscreen, since this is not supported on iOS.
• Allow the application to run unpackaged again.

v0.15 - Python 3 Support

• Added support for Python 3.

v0.14 - System tray icon on Mac OSX

• Added support for system tray icon on Mac OSX by replacing internal system tray icon handling with pystray_.

.. _pystray: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pystray

v0.13 - Mac OSX Support

• Added support for Mac OSX by replacing internal keyboard and mouse handling with pynput_ and, for now, making the systray icon optional.

.. _pynput: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pynput

v0.12.4 - Corrected packaging

• Ensure that only dependencies for the current platform are required.
• Allow loading the systray icon for Windows when running from a wheel.

v0.12.3 - Corrected clicks

• Corrected touch pad clicks.

v0.12.2 - Corrected imports

• Corrected imports.

v0.12.1 - No more PIL

• Replaced dependency on PIL with Pillow. This should make it possible to install from PyPi.

v0.12 - Shiny Keyboard

• Support for keyboards has been added. For now only two layouts are included.
• The user interface has been polished.
• Virtual Touchpad now broadcasts its presence on the network using mDNS.

v0.11 - Translations

• Virtual Touchpad can now be translated into other languages.
• Added Swedish translation.

v0.10 - Systray on Windows

• Added systray icon for Windows.

v0.9.2 - Fixed building on Windows

• Virtual Touchpad now supports zip-safe again.
• The build script does not fail if ImageMagick convert is not the first convert on the path.

v0.9.1 - Fixed systray window on Linux

• The systray window is no longer mapped on Linux.

v0.9 - Systray on Linux

• Added systray icon for Linux.

v0.8 - Configure sensitivity

• The sensitivity and acceleration of the trackpad is now configurable.
• Clicking is now easier and allows the finger to move slightly across the screen.

v0.7 - Run from single file

• Virtual Touchpad can now be run from a zipped egg.
• Py2exe is now supported to pack Virtual Touchpad into a single exe file on Windows.

v0.6 - Windows support

• It is now possible to run Virtual Touchpad on Windows.

v0.5 - Installation possible

• Corrected snapping of bottom tool bar.
• Corrected bugs in setup script that prevented Virtual Touchpad from being installed.

v0.4 - Basic help

• Made scrolling a lot smoother.
• Added basic FAQ.

v0.3 - Extended user interface

• Added support for drag-and-drop.
• Added a bottom toolbar with a fullscreen button.
• Increased size of message box text.

v0.2 - Initial release

• Basic touchpad support, with hard-coded sensitivity and acceleration.
• Basic offline support using AppCache.