As you probably noticed from the Introduction, a touchpad was the chosen controller. Several pointing and control devices had been considered in addition to a touchpad, including some sort of keypad, a set of scroll wheels, a pointing stick, and a trackball. The touchpad won out based on flexibility and ease of integration with the display. A different choice may work better for you.
A pointing stick was high on the list based on size. It'd be smaller than about anything, but I couldn't find one that could be plugged in and used like a mouse. It would have had to be integrated into the display or some housing would have had to have been contrived, and arrangements would have been needed to wire it into the mouse interface on the base. On the other hand, USB and PS/2 touchpads were readily available and one could be attached to an edge of the display housing. That left the problem of figuring out a good way to attach it.
The Velcro came from a local fabric store. A nice older lady there asked what I was making with it, to which I smiled and said, “A computer.” She responded with silence and strange look...
In the end, I chose Velcro. Permanent attachment to the housing would have been easy enough, but temporary attachment would permit moving the pad to various locations as desired. Black-colored, soft, loop Velcro was attached around the three flat sides of the display frame and the matching rough, hook Velcro was attached on the back of the touchpad. The result provided a highly flexible solution with a fairly clean look.I figured that, if something better came along, the touchpad could easily be replaced with a different controller of comparable size that could be plugged into an available USB or PS/2 port. But later in the project the touchpad turned out to be a very good choice with a few unanticipated advantages over other controllers.
