KDE mouse control fails to set touchpad for left-handed operation

Binary package hint: kcontrol

Environment is:
* Dell Inspiron 600m
* AlpsPS/2 Glidepoint touchpad
* Ubuntu Dapper
* KDE desktop
* kcontrol 3.5.2-0ubuntu26

Perform: System Settings -> Mouse -> Left handed -> apply

This does not have any effect on the touchpad button order (i.e. button 1 remains the left button).

The Gnome control panel works correctly, the touchpad buttons can be remapped.

Also ... in previous versions of Ubuntu, the Alps Glidepoint appeared as a 12-button mouse to X, and I could remap the touchpad for left-handed use by saying:

xmodmap -e 'pointer = 3 2 1 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12'

Now when I try that I get an error:

xmodmap: commandline:1: bad number of buttons, must have 9 instead of 12
xmodmap: 1 error encountered, aborting.

I have a guess at what is causing the xmodmap behavior ... in previous releases I set touchpad as my CorePointer and did not configure any other pointing devices.

In the default Dapper installation the PS/2 port (currently empty) is set as the CorePointer, and I suspect xmodmap may be trying to reconfigure that. Maybe kcontrol is doing the same???

Here are relevant sections from my configuration:

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier "Default Layout"
        Screen "Default Screen"
        InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
        InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
        InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
        InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
        InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
        InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "Configured Mouse"
        Driver "mouse"
        Option "CorePointer"
        Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
        Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
        Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver "synaptics"
        Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
        Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
        Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
        Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
        # local additions below
        Option "SHMConfig" "on"
        Option "TapButton1" "3"
        Option "TapButton3" "1"
EndSection