and made sure that I added “SHMConfig” “true” in appropriate section, ie:
Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Synaptics Touchpad”
Driver “synaptics”
Option “SendCoreEvents” “true”
Option “Device” “/dev/psaux”
Option “Protocol” “auto-dev”
Option “HorizEdgeScroll” “0″
Option “SHMConfig” “true”
EndSection

After reboot, was finally able to open Touchpad from the Startup menu without the bloody annoying “GSynaptics couldn’t initialize.
You have to set ‘SHMConfig’ ‘true’ in xorg.conf or XF86Config to use GSynaptics” message!
Appending the xorg.conf file is apparently not the preferred method of resolving this, but it’s the only one that worked for me, so there it is.

Rick

From the syndaemon man page:

OPTIONS
-i How many seconds to wait after the last key press before enabling the touchpad. (default is 2.0s).
-d Start as a daemon, ie in the background.
-p Create a pid file with the specified filename. A pid file will only be created if the program is started in daemon mode.
-t Only disable tapping and scrolling, not mouse movements, in response to keyboard activity.
-k Ignore modifier keys when monitoring keyboard activity.
-K Like -k but also ignore Modifier+Key combos.

The -t flag is a good suggestion – I guess it is the tapping/scrolling on the touchpad that causes the focus loss (from the window/textbox you I am typing in). I might give that a go – sometimes I do catch the unresponsive touchpad whilst it is locked out for a second!

Credit to yourself for cracking the problem – I just did what I was told!

Anyway, in my case, the syndaemon still worked. That is, the touchpad would not bounce around while I typed. It was just trying to invoke the Touchpad option in Preferences which produced the error. So in the scheme of things, a minor issue.

Talking about the syndaemon syntax, what’s your thoughts on adding the ‘-t’ switch? I believe ‘-t’ keeps the cursor active while you type while still disabling the cursor from jumping around.