There used to be an old laptop that had this. And integrated mouse that you could pop out and use, the pop it back into the laptop case when not needed.
It might be kinda neat to have a expansion module that did something similar. When not used, the mouse is tucked away as an expansion module. Click a button and it pops out and little mouse (likely shaped like the expansion module housing ) and wired into the expansion module connector. When ya are done, just click it back into place
Bonus if you can do something like this in collab with swiftpoint
It certainly would be a fun expansion card to have. Though given the small size I’m not sure how many would use it much. So Framework might not want to invest in stocking it. Feels like more of a community expansion card.
For a wired mouse, which it seems you were suggesting, QMK has full mouse support. Though there is a limited number of optical mouse sensors that have available drivers. I converted my Steel Series 15 button mouse over to QMK and I love it. There are a couple QMK forks that supports the nrf52 series BT chips. BlueMicro is one.
You are thinking of the HP Omnibook series starting at the 300. They where way ahead of their time, and was some of HP’s best engineering. I miss that HP.
What might work is a trackpoint that folds into a drawer inside the module. Pull the drawer out and the nipple snicks upright and locks into position. Press a flat button (part of the bottom surface) to unlock, bend the trackpoint down into its drawer and push drawer in. Electronics can go beside the trackpoint bed.
It would need to have a retractable structure, with some locks to fix it in the “bigger shape” mode. Difficult to do in an useful way, but I would love to try if someone is up for the challenge.
It would be really cool, plus it could charge itself by being connected to the usb while docked and automatically connect to Bluetooth when undocked.
But what would be the point of that? In the 16" you can even put a trackpoint in the keyboard old laptop style.
