GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 684617
Tablet devices: set default modus to 'Screen'
Last modified: 2018-05-24 13:20:31 UTC
There are many bugs related to tablet issues. As a general workaround it is often recommended to goto Edit/Input Devices, select each single tablet pointer device and set its mode from 'Disabled' (Default) to 'Screen'. I could reproduce this and applying the changes immediately turns on tablet support in GIMP. I think that the 'Screen' configuration of tablet pen devices should be the default (then power-users may change the settings later, but at least one-time users have a good experience with a suitable tablet pressure).
There can be many many devices, and it's impossible to tell which are tablets, without the user looking at them. Enabling all of them by default can have much worse effects. Sorry, we are going to keep them in the state GDK gives them to us, unless the user decides otherwise.
Hello, there are indeed a lot of different input tools, but there are also a known list of tablets. It does need to be exhaustive. Some will be probably missing. But we could already try and activate all known Wacom tablets (most common), as well as some from other brands that we hear about. The list from the linuxwacom project can be for instance a good starting point: http://linuxwacom.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=linuxwacom/xf86-input-wacom;a=blob;f=src/wcmUSB.c;h=9f327ba6b0210a04933da22861750d304d7edb86;hb=HEAD#l172 Note that it lists not only Wacom, but also some tablets from other vendors (Hanwang, N-Trig, and Waltop). The DIGImend project also supports a different list of tablets: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/digimend/index.php?title=Tablet_support_status In other words, there are some known lists of tablets, already available in the FOSS world with all necessary vendor and device references to recognize them. There is all reason to think that if someone has one of these graphics tablets plugged in and opens Gimp, one expects it to work out of the box with pressure sensitivity in Gimp. I would therefore propose to set the default to "Screen" for all these known devices, and "Disabled" for all others (Unknown or those we know we don't want enabled). What about this compromise?
The point you are probably missing is that GTK+ (at least version 2.x) screws up horribly if you ever activate something that is not a tablet. We do that in MyPaint and it's a never ending pain for users who can't click anyhwere or can't paint because some touchpad device or even the wacom intuos touch strip was accidentally put into screen mode. You need a long list of devices and exceptions for this. We do it anyway in MyPaint because MyPaint is good for nothing when pressure doesn't work (in contrast to GIMP).
If I reopen this bug, it will sit here forever, because none of the core maintainers has time to do this when there are more severe problems. If you really want this to happen, please research that list of devices, possibly investigating the MyPaint code, attach a patch here and reopen the bug.
Martin > I understand your point. So we could do it step by step. Let's not take the full list and drop it hoping they are all good tablets. We just list those we definitely know work fine, and when people come on a case by case and tell "I have this tablet and it works well when I activate it", and we add it to the list. Michael > I understand too. I'll study the code when I have some time and will provide a patch if possible. I'll reopen only if I have a valid patch. Thanks!
*** Bug 686242 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Hey Mitch, as I am now a GIMP dev, I allow myself to re-open this. I have no patch yet, but by having it opened, that reminds me to do it someday. :-) I also assigned it to myself.
Small update of importance and target. I'll check this after 2.10 is released as I understand that GTK 3 (GIMP 3.0) will help a lot with graphical tablets (hotplugging and stuff).
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/issues/425.