Pressure sensitivity should be enabled by default for Wacom boards

[Kristoffer Lundén]

Binary package hint: gimp

Starting with Feisty, Wacom boards work out of the box, except for pressure sensitivity.

Steps needed to enable pressure today are (in Gimp, about the same in Inkscape and maybe others):

1. File->Preferences
2. Input Devices->Configure extended input devices
3. For each of eraser, stylus and cursor: change Mode from Disabled to Screen
4. Save

For most people, this is just some invocation they have to do and most don't even know what those steps do, or why there's an option to choose Screen or Window and so on.

Given that the system correctly detects and activates the Wacom board, it should be possible to just switch these settings on for affected applications as well. For that matter, if these settings are just set whether or not there is a board, does anything break or could this be a reasonable default in the config files?

For the rare case that someone wants to use a Wacom, but without pressure, this is exposed directly in tool in the Gimp, as you can control what aspects pressure should affect. This setting is viewable and changeable during use, unlike the actual activation.

Suggestion:

Activate pressure sensitivity by default, for everyone, for Wacom tablets.

[C.Kontros (coryisatm)]

Wouldn't everyone's settings be different? Different pads have different pressure levels.

Or is: Option "PressCurve" "0,0,100,100" what your looking for?

[Kristoffer Lundén (kristoffer-lunden)]

No, what I am looking for is to have it enabled, which it isn't by default. You need to invoke strange rituals for that to happen, even though the tablet is already acknowledged by the system and rest works fine. It has nothing to do with levels, xorg.conf or PressCurve.

No matter what tablet is used, it seems to show "cursor", "stylus" and "eraser" and these need to be set to "Screen" to work properly. If there is no tablet, these don't exist.

So, to my thinking, if they do exist, they should default to Screen. Exactly how that is accomplished technically I don't know. For X, xorg.conf contains Wacom entries no matter if you have a tablet or not, that only appliles when there is one.

It's probably possible to do the same with the Gimps config file, as nothing bad happens if I set this, then unplug the tablet.

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

I've also set up a wacom tablet on gimp and agree that this could be simplified.

Some more details here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wacom Not sure if this would be a suitable upstream change or whether it should be an Ubuntu-specific configuration.

[Faunlove (faunlove)]

I just wanted to say that this worked perfectly for me on Mac Leopard, and I have been looking for solutions all day. Thanks so much!

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Have there been any afforts, I have no wacom tablet to test, could anyone tell us please? Thank you!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gimp (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]