Tablets

There is a great deal on the subject of tablets on the 'pen computing web page' which lists among other things, how to install a Wacom Xwindows driver for Linux. There are other Linux related pages, such as wacom's product support page which (finally) has links pointing to wacom intuos libraries for linux, and XInput Support for Gimp.

Wacom Artz-II Example Unix Serial Port Direct Drive Source Code

Here's a neat bit of code for those of you that want to talk directly to a Wacom ARTZ-II via the serial port, without any drivers!

At one point I got frustrated with how complicated it was to use the X/Unix device drivers to read the wacom, so I wrote a small program called readwacom.C showing how to directly read pen x/y/pressure/tilt information via the serial port, without the assistance of any 'drivers'.

'readwacom.C' simply prints out the X/Y/Pen/Pressure information that is coming from the tablet. Most likely Wacom doesn't recommend directly communicating with the device, and would prefer you to use their drivers. However, in some situations, it's necessary to 'roll your own'.

Wacom Artz-II Example SGI/X Windows Source Code

Here's a small SGI paint program called tinypaint.c that shows how to use SGI/X windows calls to talk to the Wacom via the Wacom X drivers.

The link below is sample source code showing how to read the pressure sensitive data from a Wacom tablet on a Silicon Graphics workstation using X Extended Events.

The test machine was an Indy running IRIX 5.3, using the Wacom 3.1 driver, and a Wacom ART-Z II tablet.

Wacom included documentation on how to use their driver using Extended X Events, however did not include any example source code.

After reading the documentation, I derived the following source code which I'm supplying here for the benefit of other developers. This is a small bare bones program demonstrating how to read position and pressure sensitive values from the tablet using Extended X events, in the form of a small paint program application.

tiny-paint.C

Simple paint program, showing how to read the tablet using X Extended Events on the SGI. This is the 'right way' to read the tablet (as opposed to polling techniques).

The following is a sample image I freehanded with tiny-paint.C...



If you like this painting, then you might like my sketches page.