Comment 4 for bug 556670

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Tina Russell (tinarussell) wrote :

Ugh, I have this problem too. It might be even worse; right now for me, if I make a paintbrush stroke in GIMP using the stylus, the UI will not recognize my next stylus action, even if that action is to draw another stroke. Also, I’m getting a similar bug in Inkscape, so I think this must have to do with an underlying, common library.

So:

- I make one paintbrush stroke using the stylus
   - If I try to make a second stroke immediately after, GIMP will not recognize it. It will, however, recognize a third stroke, but not a fourth, a fifth, but not a sixth, etc. GIMP will only recognize every other stroke I make; I suppose it’s requiring me to click on the canvas area again so that it knows I’m still painting.
   - If I try to click something in the UI, like a menu or the sliders in the tool options, immediately after the first stroke, GIMP will not recognize it. Clicking the title bar doesn’t even work for me; usually, I minimize and then restore the entire GIMP window, or click on the titlebar for one of the mini windows, and then the UI works again. (Making a paintbrush stroke after I restore the window or click a mini-window title bar also works, though with all the described caveats.) (I have the mini windows set to “utility” in the “Window Management” settings, by the way—I’m not sure if that’s the default.)
   - If I make a second paintbrush stroke immediately after the first, and then after _that_ click on something in the UI, the second stroke will not work—but the UI will. Apparently, it goes into “UI mode” after every brushstroke.

Additionally, sometimes I’ll be using a window like Preferences or the Save As dialog and suddenly nothing in the window will respond to a click. For that, I usually click the main window title bar—which will, oddly, work—and then click back on the window I’m using, and it will work.

And, as I said, the copy of Inkscape I’m using is having similar problems. I don’t really know what the two have in common in terms of underlying extended-input tech, though the input device settings UI for GIMP and Inkscape both use identical identifiers and terminology. These problems have not, however, appeared in MyPaint, which also takes extended input (including differentiating between the stylus tip and the eraser), so perhaps it’s something shared by Inkscape and GIMP but not by MyPaint.

Oh, and disabling all input devices in GIMP except for the stylus didn’t work for me (and besides, even if it did, not having the eraser would be a serious drawback). And, all of these problems happen only with the stylus, not the mouse, but the stylus being nigh unusable in a professional graphics program is a major problem.

I’m using Ubuntu 10.10 on a Lenovo ThinkPad X61 tablet. The versions of the packages I’m using are:

GIMP: 2.6.11-1~getdeb1~maverick (from the GetDeb repository, though I’ve also tried with 2.6.10-1ubuntu3.1 from the Ubuntu repository and the same problems occur)
Inkscape: 0.48.0-1ubuntu1 (from the Ubuntu repository)
MyPaint: 0.9.0-1~lffl~maverick~ppa (from this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~ferramroberto/+archive/maverick )

Please help!