Wacom tablets and lacking support for dual display setups.

[renderizer]

Hi all you Wacom users out there!



This post is especially for those of you who run a dual monitor setup in combination with a Wacom device.

If you do belong to this people, you have probably run into the fact that there is no fast and easy way to switch the tablet's mapping to another monitor.

Suggestions as to how to implement such a feature have been forwarded to Wacom for quite a long time now, but to no avail.

Wacom love to point out that the current driver structure (which dates back to '98) doesn't allow for such a feature.

Wacom stated that "It was definitely decided not to implement a button to toggle mapping, even so we basically find, that the idea is not bad."

There is a whole thread in the Wacom forum dedicated to this topic.

Go and have a looksee yourself at:http://www.wacom-europe.com/forum/to...=&TOPIC_ID=665

If you read the thread carefully and in it's entirety, you'll notice that it was started way back on 20/04/2002 - that's two years gone without any effect besides a lot of unnerved users.

Wacom says there are practically no users who run a dual display setup at all, which is definitely wrong these days, as I know from lots of specific threads on the CG boards.

All replys from Wacom do away with any suggestions in a pretty arrogant manner, and the tenor is: got two displays? buy another tablet!

The reason I'm posting all this is because I want you to go over to the Wacom site and post a request for some kind of 'toggle tablet mapping' feature.

Again, here's the link to the thread: http://www.wacom-europe.com/forum/to...=&TOPIC_ID=665

Please send your requests and/or suggestions also to support@wacom-europe.com to further broaden any possible impact.

After two years of 'we're not going to do that' some of us are pretty fed up...


Thank you for your support,


Renderizer (Mario)

[renderizer]

Just to make things clear: you CAN, and by default actually DO map the tablet to both displays, there is no problem in that.

But: mapping the whole tablet to both displays not only effectively reduces the per-screen horizontal resolution (and hence the precision) but also distorts the aspect ratio of the screen/tablet relationship (shapes appear squashed horizontally).

Especially when doing real paintwork, this is rather annoying.

It would be nice to have a means to switch the mapped area to different monitors: the whole tablet is mapped to one single display, and with the use of a button (for example, you could use the Intuos' tabletbuttons for this) you switch the mapping to the 2nd monitor.

[zolo]

Any updates on this topic?

[renderizer]

No news at all. They just sit there, fat and arrogant and consider this topic as being cloesd. They said what they had to say. Fullstop.

Bah!

[dapeter]

I'm just waiting for a 16x10 format tablet to match up 1-1 with the new widescreen LCD's on the market.

[jbills]

It's possible to map the tablet to one screen in linux, and then toggle between the 2nd display by going over to the side towards the other monitor and hitting the extreme edge of the monitor, at which point the cursor will jump to the 2nd display and be mapped to that one. This was a huge discovery for me - I do a lot of paint work and I need the extra control and horizontal resolution of only having it mapped to one screen.

Then, oncei it jumps to the 2nd display, ya know, you can jump back to the 1st display the same way by just hitting the edge of the display.

It's just some custom code one of the IT guys here whipped up for me, he's a bit of a tablet guru. This is not possible on windows, AFAIK.

I'll hit him up and see how he configured it.

[jbills]

mmmmkay, here's the gist of it, courtesty of the one and only Jason Grindlay
------------------------

To get the effect you are after I've been modifying /etc/xorg.conf to have some extra commands in it.

I'm not sure how familiar you or your compers are with the layout of that file but usually the relevant sections look something like:

Section "InputDevice"
       Driver        "wacom"
       Identifier    "stylus"
       Option         "Device"      "/dev/input/wacom"
       Option        "Type"          "stylus"
       Option        "Mode"          "absolute"
       Option        "USB"           "on"
       Option        "Tilt"          "on"
       #Option       "TiltInvert"    "on"
       Option        "Threshold"     "10"
EndSection


Section "InputDevice"
       Driver        "wacom"
       Identifier    "eraser"
       Option         "Device"      "/dev/input/wacom"
       Option        "Type"          "eraser"
       Option        "Mode"          "absolute"
       Option        "USB"           "on"
       Option        "Tilt"          "on"
       #Option       "TiltInvert"    "on"
       Option        "Threshold"     "10"
EndSection

(Assuming a modern setup with a usb tablet. Other ones may look a bit different but the same change is needed )

You need to add to each section this line;

Option "Twinview" "horizontal"

(change horizontal to vertical if you have your monitors one above the other.)
So you'll end up with something like;

Section "InputDevice"
       Driver        "wacom"
       Identifier    "stylus"
       Option         "Device"      "/dev/input/wacom"
       Option        "Type"          "stylus"
       Option        "Mode"          "absolute"
       Option        "USB"           "on"
       Option        "Tilt"          "on"
       #Option       "TiltInvert"    "on"
       Option        "Threshold"     "10"
      Option        "Twinview"      "horizontal"
EndSection


Section "InputDevice"
       Driver        "wacom"
       Identifier    "eraser"
       Option         "Device"      "/dev/input/wacom"
       Option        "Type"          "eraser"
       Option        "Mode"          "absolute"
       Option        "USB"           "on"
       Option        "Tilt"          "on"
       #Option       "TiltInvert"    "on"
       Option        "Threshold"     "10"
      Option        "Twinview"      "horizontal"
EndSection

Then you'll need to restart X to make the changes active. (Either reboot or at the login screen press ctrl+alt+backspace)

To make those changes you'll need full root access to the machine in question and this shouldn't be done by anybody unfamiliar with modifying x config files as a typo can stop X (the gui) from loading until it's corrected.

[loops]

Awesome. Is that anything to do with the nVIDIA drivers? TwinView is normally an nVIDIA thing.

I've been using a nasty little cheap Trust tablet, and I've been able to map it to one screen just by messing with xset and the mouse speed, and then moving between screens using the mouse. Nice to know I can use my proper Wacom too, though

[jbills]

yeah, they probably boosted nvidia's name for lack of a better term.

here's what the docs say:

Option "Twinview" "horizontal"|"vertical"|"none"
sets the orientation of TwinView to map the tablet to one
screen and to be able to move the screen cursor from one
screen to the other when tool reaches the edge of the
tablet. The cursor can be constrained in a specific screen
if "ScreenNo" option is added. If you want to map the
tablet to the whole desktop, you should NOT add this
option. The default is "none".[/url]

[jjhale]

Hey,

You can have the tablet map to one of your monitors by changing the preferences on a Mac. It just talks a little Applescript to quickly switch which monitor it maps to.

Check out this post for more:
How to switch tablet input between multiple monitors on a Mac

Hope that helps,

Joe Hale