On Tue, Jan 05, 2010 at 08:47:51PM +0000, Przemysław Firszt wrote: > Dnia 2010-01-05, wto o godzinie 16:54 +1000, Peter Hutterer pisze: > > How many users have we had requesting this feature - and not just for > > playing around but because there's a real need for it? > > > > Mapping the tablet to a portion of the screen cannot be solved with > > a device grab and in-application coordinate mapping only if you need to use > > two applications at the same time within that portion of the screen. > > > > Ok, so you need to use two apps in a certain part of the screen - say > > exactly the centre. At this point you need an interface to modify the screen > > area at runtime since one of the applications may need to move or resize and > > you need to rescale that area with it. Once that need is there, it gets > > nasty, because you'll want to update that automatically, which means you'll > > have to have a tracking application that ideally communicates with the > > window manager to take care of this. All that with a driver-specific API. > > > > I'm still not convinced. > > > > > > And in that case, it's better to have the application deal with it than > > > > have > > > > some quirk in the driver that maps against arbitrary areas on the > > > > screen. > > > > > > It's not a quirk. It is a feature :). > > > > Given enough time, any unmaintained feature becomes a bug. > > > My question became a hot topic :-) > Let me explain how it started and why I need it. I tried to use tablet > for hand sketching (my first sketch, created under windows, tablet set > to keep aspect ratio and mapped to part of the screen - see here: > http://firszt.eu/PLD/draw.jpg ). Later I tried to do some sketches under > linux (tablet mapped to whole screen) and the results were .... poor. I > don't need any interaction with application from the wacom driver, but I > want to move cursor/brush/whatever on the screen by 10mm when I move > stylus on the tablet by 10mm.
That's exactly the use-case that should be supported by the application. The app should let you chose how you want that tablet supported, whether you want it scaled to the canvas, to the whole app, etc. There's _a lot_ of details that can only be controlled by the application and the hack in the driver would be a very poor replacement for what could be done. A few examples: - if you resize the canvas, should the tablet area scale with it? - should the tablet area be split according to the canvas shape? - if you move the canvas window, the tablet is still mapped to the same area? - if you zoom in/out, does the scaling change accordingly? - if you zoom in/out, does the tablet change to relative mode instead? - how about the other devices? do you want the erasor in the same mode? or in a different mode, depending on any of the above? all these are usability features that make a lot of sense but cannot possibly be supported by the driver. Sure, the driver solution is the easy one to implement but it doesn't provide anything but the most basic support, it is driver-specific, it likely conflicts with an application-specific implementation, etc. It's a dead-end solution. Also - you may not need these features now but will you still say that once you've gotten used to it? Cheers, Peter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Linuxwacom-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxwacom-devel
