I've read everything I can find on this in the forums here and spent a lot of time with search engines but everything I've found on this has been pretty much Greek to me and most of it seems outdated to boot. I gather this used to be done by editing one or more xorg conf files but that more recently it is done by hal (/me makes not to self: remember to put a crowbar in the pod bay door when stepping out).
So how do I convince Hal to to convince the rest of my computer that I'm holding down the left click button of my trackball, when in reality I'm not, but am faking it by, for instance, pressing Alt-F4 to turn on the please-pretend-I'm-holding-down-the-left-trackball-button-even-though-I'm-not state and pressing it again to turn it off, or something similar? I was thinking I was, if not a jack of the geek trade, at least an 8, but when I read the little I found on this, I felt more like a 3. So, please point me toward something like "Draglock in Ubuntu For Dummies" if you can. Thanks.
I'm using Mate in Oneiric if it makes a difference.