Wacom tablets, TabletPC and Xorg support for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty)

[Dan Colish]

Hi Loic,

The move away from xorg.conf has been to a new hal integration. Please see
the documentation in the wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Input
Configuring  an fdi for your tablet hardware should not be any more
difficult than an xorg and could probably be accomplished by a script. I
believe that the move to hal support for input devices will make the
autoconfiguration much more robust in the long run and hopefully give
xserver the ability to "just work".

--Dan

On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 12:09 PM, Loïc Martin <loic.martin3 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Since Hardy, Ubuntu doesn't provides any configuration for Wacom tablets
>  any more (Gutsy had the lines commented out, but they were there to be
> used if necessary). Part of the reason not to provide commented out
> lines might have been the abscence of a ServerLayout section in
> xorg.conf with new Xorg servers - just uncommenting some lines might
> lead to problems.
>
> The move away from xorg.conf makes it really hard for Wacom tablet and
> TabletPC users to configure their hardware. Most documentation they find
> isn't valid anymore (one of the problem is creating a ServerLayout with
> just the lines for the wacom devices, with X failing to start as a
> result), and even with up-to-date documentation users have to figure
> themselves what device they should configure, make sure they don't mix
> lines between serial and USB tablets (most users would imagine their
> TabletPC to be USB, which is most often wrong), and not forget the
> special line for TabletPC, which is absent from most howto. We still
> maintain the documentation at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wacom,
> but when (if) users find it it's often after their install is messed up.
>
> Graphic tablets are getting more common due to cheaper models, and even
> if you're not a graphic artist, you'll find Wacom devices in many TabletPC.
>
> With Intrepid, the stylus input is recognised by HAL when the file
> 10-wacom.fdi is present (comes with xserver-xorg-input-wacom. However,
> only the stylus can be configured by this method. No eraser, no pad, no
> touch, no cursor.
> See
>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2008-September/005778.html
> > Note that the wacom driver doesn't fully support input-hotplug, since
> > currently you need to initialize the driver multiple times to enable
> > stylus/pen/foo, and that's not possible to do with HAL. The wacom fdi
> file
> > configures the device as stylus..
>
> Traditionnal graphical configuration tools like wacomcpl ("mandatory"
> for LCD tablets like TabletPC and Cintiq tablets, it's included in
> wacom-tools since Intrepid) don't work anymore since they assume hard
> coded device names (stylus, eraser, cursor...) - see
>
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=9d40e4ef0811072319r51d8b4c5sc3553db2627104c6%40mail.gmail.com
>
> ********************
> Now to the problem at hand for Jaunty:
>
> Talking about using 3 (or more) different devices for wacom input
> (instead of just the stylus like in Intrepid)
>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2008-September/005780.html
> On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Timo Aaltonen wrote:
> > It has been confirmed by upstream that what you propose is not possible
> to
> > do with HAL, but instead the driver should use NewInputDeviceRequest() to
> > accomplish the same. Unfortunately, that'll take some time, but here's
> > hoping that the next six months are enough to have that in time for
> > Jaunty. Someone needs to kick^H^H^H^Hask upstream  :)
>
> Where upstream means linuxwacom, see
>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2008-October/005837.html
> > I was referring to linuxwacom upstream, which should be aware of the
> problems
> > with input-hotplug, but has not done anything about it AFAIK.
>
> I contacted upstream, and their answer can be found at:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=167e8a330811070926n3024605m7bd7baa6e24bfedf%40mail.gmail.com
> Here is an extract:
> > Hotplugg is a server-wide issue. It will be resolved for all input
> devices
> > in Xorg, not just for Wacom devices.
> >
> >
> >> - does wacomcpl support the fdi method? It doesn't recognise anything on
> my
> >> setup, but it could also be a bug in the Ubuntu version.
> >
> >
> > fdi isn't part of linuxwacom project. It belows to Xorg. The distributor,
> I
> > think, will include it once it is ready.
> >
> > Ping
>
> So what is Xorg going to do about wacom devices support, and how can we
> make sure that, after one year, this support (or a distribution
> solution) will at least make it into Jaunty?
> Loïc
>
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